TIL #125: The Red Knight
Not a dry eye in the house as Lewis wins again.
The Installation Lap is a weekly Substack column dedicated to helping Americans develop a deeper appreciation for Formula 1.
Sir Lewis Hamilton grabbed his 106th Grand Prix victory and, crucially, his first for Ferrari, in Barcelona this weekend. To say the win was an emotional one is an understatement. F1 cameramen had no trouble finding misty-eyed fans in the stands, often with some combination of Ferrari caps and t-shirts and brandishing the Union Jack. The Ferrari team were as jubilant as we’ve ever seen them. Lewis himself was very emotional, often struggling for words, his voice quavering in post-race interviews. It is scenes like this that invite F1 commentators, fans, and journalists to reach for hyperbole as one of the few means we have to express and explain just how much the ups and downs of an F1 campaign mean to everyone involved. Nobody in the history of Formula 1 has won more races than Lewis Hamilton. With his victory in Spain, he is 15 wins clear of the legendary Michael Schumacher. Lewis is 35 wins clear of superhuman Max Verstappen. How could someone whose success is so abundant, so obvious, and so profound be moved to tears by an otherwise regular Grand Prix victory that has relatively minor championship implications? Because this stuff really matters to Lewis. He cares, deeply. So too do Ferrari, the fans, and fans of F1 specifically and motorsport in general.
Professional athletes spend a lot of time and energy presenting the world with a steely, stoic facade—armor meant to conceal their soft, childlike hearts and the profound emotional experience of working, training, and performing at the highest levels of professional sport. That armor has made it easy to forget the rather mundane reality that makes professional sports possible: These people care more about what they do than almost anything else in the world.
How many times have we seen a baseball player hit a towering home run and just trot around the bases like it is all no big deal? I hate that. In those moments I want to see the 9-year-old hiding inside the grownup burst out smiling, shouting, skipping around the bases, and exhorting fans and teammates alike with the joy of using a stick to hit a silly ball into the crowd. It seems sometimes that it is only in the most pressure-filled moments, when the stakes are the highest, that it becomes permissible to bear one’s emotions at moments like those.
People were crying in Barcelona on Sunday because they care so very much. People were crying tears of joy last night as the New York Knicks won their first NBA Championship in 53 years. That win matters to the players and to the people of New York, who, like Lewis, have a long history of sporting success despite a half-century-long dearth of Basketball success. People were crying and cheering in Le Mans on Sunday morning as Toyota, a former F1 participant, won the legendary and grueling 24-hour race. Images from Le Mans of F1 flash-in-the-pan driver Nyck de Vries telling his Toyota team to remain calm as his co-driver, a former F1 driver from a generation ago, Kamui Kobayashi, embarked on the very last lap of the famed Circuit de la Sarthe. Just under four minutes later, as Kobayashi crossed the finish line, the Toyota teams exploded in celebration. Tears and hugs, high-fives, and handshakes. Winning an NBA title, winning Le Mans, or winning the Spanish Grand Prix means something to the people who work and strive in these arenas. They have invested the precious, irreplaceable hours of their short lives to be good, to be great, to be the best, and to arrive there, in a moment they’ve been dreaming of for years; that’s when the tears start to flow.
Lewis, like Max and Fernando, is at the point in his career where he is racing history much more than he is racing against the other drivers. Nearly everything Lewis, Max, and Fernando do in F1 every time they get into the car now leaves another mark on the history of the sport. For good or for ill. Martin Brundle, as astute an observer of Formula 1 as anybody currently living, recognized the moment for what it was as the coverage of the race was winding down.
“That’s an iconic sight; Lewis Hamilton winning in a Ferrari, there’s no doubt about that.”
Above, I used the phrase “relatively minor championship implications.” That is true at the moment. But, qua F1, what is minor today could be gigantic tomorrow.
Kimi Antonelli, despite a brutal DNF, still has a firm grip on the Championship. He leads Lewis by 41 points with George now 50 points behind his young Italian teammate. That is a surprising championship order, with large but not insurmountable gaps, considering the DNFs we’ve been seeing. As George showed in Canada and Kimi experienced on Sunday, Mercedes are still strong in 2026 but not bulletproof. I say strong but dominant? Not now, not after the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. While Mercedes reliability must surely be a concern for the team, I suspect a bigger concern is that Ferrari proved on Sunday that they have found correlation.
Ferrari brought a big upgrade package to Barcelona, one of the few teams to do so. They debuted a new nose, new front wing endplates, new brake package, new floor, and a new diffuser arrangement. And when they got the car on track, those upgrades worked. Lewis was a mere .064 seconds off of George Russell’s pole time and then went out and won the race on outright pace. Yes, Lewis got a helping hand from the virtual safety car, but before and after that he was setting fastest laps while Kimi and George had trouble responding. Toto Wolff and the Mercedes gang are now in a real fight with Ferrari. Mercedes brought upgrades to Canada, and they worked. Ferrari brought upgrades to Barcelona, and beat Mercedes. If both teams have correlation, then the development war between the two teams is going to be as big a fight as the battle between the drivers. Not to mention that if George Russell’s luck, or lack thereof, holds and Lewis can continue to eat into Kimi Antonelli’s points haul, then we could be in for a truly wild ride in the driver’s championship. That’s not even counting that the very crashy Charles Leclerc will certainly taste champagne if Ferrari are fast again, and as we discussed in a previous column, McLaren and Red Bull may be behind, but they are both top teams with top drivers. Lando, Oscar, Max and Isack are not going to sit on the sidelines while Kimi and Lewis fight for a title. This season is so strange. In March and April, that strangeness looked bad in the form of battery power surges and Mercedes dominance. Now, in June, that strangeness looks like a two-way title fight with unexpected protagonists and open spots at the table for others to join. The summer run from Austria at the end of June to the Netherlands at the end of August is going to be exciting. Strap in, gang.
Speaking of fights and protagonists, the farce that is the Monaco Grand Prix is still haunting the paddock. To pick up on a thread from last week, the insane pit lane speeding story from Monaco is not yet in the rearview mirror.
In the last week, Alpine filed a right-of-review for the penalty Pierre Gasly received in Monaco for speeding in the pit lane. Alpine’s contention was that Pierre was robbed of a podium as he finished P3 on the road but was later demoted down the order due to a 5-second penalty. This pit-lane speeding issue affected drivers throughout the weekend, not just during the race. During practice sessions, Kimi Antonelli, Alex Albon, George Russell, Fernando Alonso, and Franco Colapinto were all warned for their pit-lane speeds. During the race, Gasly, Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Franco, and Oscar Piastri were all given 5-second penalties.
We later learned that this “speeding” occurred because, first, the Monaco pit lane is a weird shape (curved on entry, curved on exit, and banana-shaped in the middle), and second, because of how F1 and the FIA use timing loops to measure pit-lane speeds.
In the interim between Monaco and Barcelona, Alpine got their day in court, and Pierre Gasly’s penalty was overturned. This is from an article in Motorsport.
“In the video conference between Alpine and the stewards, which was also attended by the majority of the other teams, it was established that the distance measuring system used to measure pitlane speeds was “inaccurate and overestimated the speed” of Gasly’s car. This was based on evidence provided by Formula One Management, the series promoter, which is responsible for the timing system.”
Results from the Monaco Grand Prix now show Pierre finishing P3, netting Alpine 15 points! That is a big win for Gasly and Alpine. Naturally, you’re now assuming that George Russell had his penalty overturned as well, since his 5-second penalty came at the end of the race when the field was bunched up and had the effect of bumping him down into 12th place after getting yet another penalty for his failure to serve the first one correctly. George came away from Monaco with zero points for all his troubles. No! None of that has happened. Only Gasly and Alpine had their race results overturned.
When asked about what could be done for George Russell in light of Gasly and Alpine’s victory in their right of review, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said,
“I [was just] on the phone with our lawyers to look at what we can do for George,” Wolff said. “We are assessing as we speak what the Gasly situation does for George. We wouldn’t appeal the Gasly result, certainly, but we would like the FIA to look at what could be the remedies for George’s race. I think we are having some timing limitations and some other legal constraints, but definitely something we have a reason to be annoyed.”
These right-of-review cases are usually considered a waste of time. The crucial part of a right of review is that a team present new evidence that sheds new light on an incident. Normally, F1 and FIA have so much data and so many camera angles that teams can’t shed a meaningful new light on an incident. However, Gasly and Alpine cleared this hurdle. The lads from The Race made a video about this, in which they share a report issued after the right of review, showing that the pit lane was measured incorrectly. Here’s the key bit of that report as shared in The Race’s video,
“…the shortest distance between the first and second loops of the zone was found to be only 2615cm, i.e. 77cm less than the setup distance used by them to calculate the speed of the car in that “zone” of the pit lane.”
That’s right, Monaco didn’t have the correct measurement of the length of the pit lane. Just when I thought I couldn’t loathe this Grand Prix any more…oh, don’t worry gang, it gets worse. It also came out in the report that the race stewards, during the race, “found it unusual to receive so many reports of alleged speed breaches…” and that those breaches were all about a tenth of a kilometer per hour over the limit. In America, we have a phrase that describes this: “No shit.” The stewards asked the official timekeepers about this at the time, and Race Control came back to them and said there was no problem. Contrast this ridiculous situation with our discussion above about how much teams and their athletes care and invest in their sport. People who care and give that much deserve better than this sort of bush-league incompetence.
As we saw, Toto has got the lawyers on it, but it is unclear what will come of that. McLaren are also reported to have informed F1 of its intention to appeal, but that is not the same thing as officially lodging an appeal. Red Bull and Racing Bulls have also lodged an intention to appeal.
It is unclear now what will happen with Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, and Racing Bulls. It is also unclear what could be done. Untangling the knot of a complicated Grand Prix with time penalties is nearly impossible. A Grand Prix doesn’t lend itself to clear-cut counterfactuals.
Regardless, the entire incident is embarrassing, and for us at TIL it is just another bit in the mountain of reasons that Monaco has outlived its usefulness as a modern Grand Prix circuit.
Austria, Red Bull’s home race, is fast approaching, and we are looking forward to seeing not only how the new cars run at this circuit, but with a re-energized Lewis Hamilton in a fast Ferrari, Kimi Antonelli still being amazing, and professional bridesmaid George Russell looking for some points and some respect, there is all to play for this summer.
Happy to see de Vries win at Le Mans, tough go in F1, seems like a nice enough guy.
Happy for Lewis too, Landon probably just happy to finish the race!
But man, poor K-Mag! My boy had a terrible Le Mans, BMW came 2nd while the #15 BMW was last among the finishers.