Ferrari Form 2026: Rising Points, Still Third on Form

Ferrari form in 2026 is real but it is not the best on the grid. Across Rounds 14 to 17 (Spain, Azerbaijan, Malaysia and Singapore), Ferrari scored 85 points. Red Bull took 120 and Mercedes 105. Ferrari's weekly haul did climb from 12 points in Spain to 27 in Malaysia, which is the trend Lewis Hamilton was pointing at on Thursday. The data says the direction is right and the claim to be the top scorer needs a closer look.

What does Ferrari form in 2026 look like round by round?

Start with the shape of the curve. Ferrari scored 12, 20, 27 and 26 points in those four rounds. It is a clean staircase that someone forgot to put a handrail on: up, up, up, then a one-point step back.

Mercedes went the other way. They scored 35, 35, 18 and 17. That is a sharp drop for the team that leads the season, though a four-round window says little about the season total. For the full 17-round picture, Mercedes still lead our tables with 513 points to Ferrari's 383 and Red Bull's 312.

Narrow the window to Rounds 16 and 17 and the picture sharpens. Ferrari scored 53, Red Bull 61 and Mercedes 35. In those two rounds only Red Bull out-scored them.

Is Ferrari the top scorer of recent races?

Hamilton said, as reported by Formula1.com, that Ferrari has scored more points than anyone over recent races and that execution has improved across the last four.

Our tables run to Round 17. On that evidence, over Rounds 14 to 17, Ferrari is third behind Red Bull and Mercedes. Over Rounds 16 and 17, Ferrari is second. The United States and Mexico City races are not yet in our results tables, so we cannot test the claim for a window that includes them. Treat it as a fair description of the direction, not a proven ranking.

Which Ferrari driver is carrying the points?

Here the split is wider than the team story suggests. Over the same four rounds, Charles Leclerc scored 54 points to Hamilton's 31. Leclerc finished fourth, fourth, fourth and second. Hamilton retired in Spain, then finished sixth, third and sixth.

Strip out the Spanish retirement and the gap narrows but does not vanish: Hamilton scored 31 from three finishes, Leclerc 42 from the same three rounds. The one race Hamilton finished clear of his teammate was the Malaysian round, third against fourth.

On the grid, it is closer than the points. Hamilton qualified ahead of Leclerc in Spain and Malaysia, Leclerc ahead in Azerbaijan and Singapore. That is two apiece, which fits the full-season read in our Hamilton vs Leclerc breakdown, where the pair finished 21 points apart after 17 rounds.

How big a share of the season is this window?

Put the four rounds against each team's 17-round total and the real story is Red Bull. Their 120 points in the window is 38 percent of the 312 they have scored all year. For Mercedes, 105 of 513 is about 20 percent. For Ferrari, 85 of 383 is about 22 percent.

Those four rounds are about 24 percent of the 17 rounds run so far. Ferrari and Mercedes are scoring at roughly their season pace. Red Bull is scoring at about one and a half times theirs, led by Max Verstappen, who took 86 points in the window, more than any other driver in our tables.

So when the conversation turns to who has momentum, Ferrari is a fair answer, but Red Bull is the better one. Ferrari's improvement shows up against its own season, and against Mercedes in the last two rounds. It does not show up against the team that has been building its year from the back.

The counter-argument

The fair objection is that four rounds is a small sample, and a retirement distorts any short window. Hamilton's zero in Spain was a retirement, not a pace problem we can measure, and it cost Ferrari points in the first round of the window. Remove Spain and Ferrari's average climbs to roughly 24 points a round across the last three (73 points in three rounds).

The other objection runs the opposite way. Ferrari's best finish in this window was second place. A team can climb every week and still not win, and that is where Ferrari sits in these four rounds.

What it means for Brazil

The Sao Paulo Grand Prix is Round 20, and Ferrari arrives with the momentum Hamilton describes and the internal question he wants answered. We covered the latter in Hamilton wants Ferrari talks. If Ferrari keeps both cars scoring in the 8-to-15 range, the points curve stays on the up. If a first-lap clash removes one car again, the staircase loses a step.

For the live picture, check the championship standings and compare lap pace on our telemetry page once Friday practice data lands.

My read: Ferrari are the most improved of the top three, not the best of them. Both statements can be true.