Lewis Hamilton thanks his fans: They “rescued me last year”

Lewis Hamilton‘s Barcelona victory, his first with Ferrari, is one of the standout feel-good moments of the 2026 Formula 1 season so far, coming after a difficult maiden campaign with the Italian team last year. He says he managed to come back “from really quite a low place” – not least because of the support he received from both his team and his fans.

“I really feel like my fans really rescued me last year,” he said after his first victory in almost two years in F1. “My family also, and friends that stuck with me through it all.”

He said that while many doubted him throughout a difficult first year with Ferrari, which resulted in the first podium-less season of his almost two-decade Formula 1 career, he also heard the voices of those who continued to believe in him.

“I think for the people that say the negative stuff, I often use that as fuel,” he told Sky Sports. “I think it’s easy to be negative about people, and I think the ones that are worse is when it’s a driver that knows how hard it is in this field to do a job, and today they don’t even have the success that I have, and they talk negatively.

“But it was really the fans that rescued me, as I said. Last year, several of the fans were shouting to me, ‘don’t forget who you are’. And that really resonated with me, and I had to question how do I find myself again, how do I find my centre, how do I find the courage and the strength to keep going, to keep building, to keep trying.

“And the team have been amazing, as I said. There’s lots of things that I wanted to change, change my whole race team engineer-wise, helped get this car in terms of development, pointing it in the right direction. There’s still a lot of work to do.

“I remember watching the red car and always wondering what it would be like to be winning in that car. What it would be like to stand on that podium and be the one giving the team the moment to sing the national anthem. And there’s nothing like it. It’s absolutely incredible.

“And I came from really quite a low place to get back here, and I think it’s just really about never giving up, never second-guessing yourself, never giving up on yourself, and just keep on trying.”

Going for an eighth?

With Hamilton sitting second in the drivers’ championship, many see him as a title contender – including his former Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Kimi Antonelli, who replaced the Briton at Mercedes, leads the championship by 41 points after Barcelona.

Yet Hamilton says it is still too early to talk seriously about the possibility of securing an eighth world title.

“Well, honestly, with the way that the year started out, I have not really been thinking about it like that,” he said. “I’ve not been thinking about an eighth. Of course, what we had worked towards has been being able to win, but I’ve always been conscious of the fact that it takes time. And Mercedes have come out of the gates with a blistering car and blistering pace, both drivers doing such a great job.”

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images

While many now consider Ferrari to have the best chassis in Formula 1, while Mercedes still appears to have the stronger overall package thanks to its power unit. As such, Hamilton believes Ferrari has work to do before it can consistently beat its rival.

“We know we have this power deficit,” he said. “There’s going to be tracks where we go with long, long straights where that makes it even harder. But as I said, we’ve got a great car at the core and if we keep adding performance and we can go through the corners quicker, maybe we can narrow that deficit down a little bit until we improve or until we close the gap on power.

“[It’s] very, very hard to think long-term at the moment. I think it’s just about taking it one race at a time, one week at a time.

“Yeah, we just keep pushing and enjoying it. We have to just have fun with it as well.”

At the same time, Hamilton stressed that he remains confident not only in his own abilities, despite being one of the oldest drivers on the grid, but also in Ferrari’s potential.

“I feel great physically, you know, racing with 19-year-olds who are doing amazing, but I feel great,” he said. “I think it’s so early in the season to get to this point. These guys [at Ferrari] have really listened and really worked hard to add performance and be innovative. This year is all about innovation. We came out with the bit on the rear exhaust. We came out with the rear wing, the Macarena.

“And this is what I was asking for last year. It was like, ‘this team has to be the leaders in that’, and they’ve shown that they can and they will. And we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. By no means is this something that’s just going to happen all the time. We’ve got a heavy, steep mountain to climb ahead of us to try to do this as Mercedes has all year so far.”

In Austria this week, Ferrari is expected to introduce an upgraded power unit together with a new Shell fuel specification aimed at extracting additional performance from the engine.

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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