Lewis Hamilton outlines ‘night and day’ difference between Mercedes and Ferrari F1 2026 cars

Lewis Hamilton has outlined the areas where there is a “night and day” difference between Mercedes and Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars.

Mercedes remains the benchmark in F1 this season after continuing its unbeaten start to the 2026 campaign as Andrea Kimi Antonelli clinched a dominant fifth win on the bounce at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Hamilton ran second for most of the race and ultimately watched Antonelli pull clear in the first stint. The seven-time world champion could not get ahead during a standing restart following a late red flag and had to settle with P2.

After the race, Hamilton highlighted where the Mercedes is clearly stronger and what Ferrari needs to do to improve its SF-26.

“Unfortunately, we both basically got pretty much the same starts,” Hamilton said.  “I think I gained on him just a little bit and I was almost to his rear wheel, but not enough to pop me in the lead, unfortunately. And then as we got going, I just got to see him pull away.

“The performance they have is next level, so it was a good experience because it gives me a much better idea of where I need to have the team lean and improve, not only from what I'm feeling, but what I'm seeing as well. And, yeah, there's lots of things that we need to react to.

"Just general performance. Downforce-wise, clearly they're above us, and then, obviously, the power. For us here, power's not such an issue. It's just downforce.

"You can see just on traction, those guys were night and day different to us. Hopefully we've got some performance coming, and the guys are working pretty hard back in the factory, so I hope that they're happy with this result.”

The result has seen Hamilton move up to second place in the championship, 66 points behind Antonelli and two ahead of his former Mercedes team-mate George Russell, who finished out of the points after his race was wrecked by a disastrous double penalty.

"I can't believe that I'm second in the championship, and I'm really happy and thankful for that, and I couldn't have done that without this team, without the reliability that we have," Hamilton said.

"It's still very early days in the season, so we just have to keep chasing. It's actually easier to change than it is to defend, I would say, in life. And so while these guys are very, very high, we're going to keep pushing, keep chasing. I have no doubt at some stage we're going to get there."