Jacques Villeneuve has called on Ferrari to make Lewis Hamilton its clear priority for 2026, saying the team’s best chance of winning again is to build around the seven-time world champion rather than Charles Leclerc. Speaking on The F1 Show podcast, Villeneuve said Hamilton has settled in at Ferrari, is pushing hard and has the experience and mentality needed to succeed. He said Leclerc has already had enough time to shape the team around himself and argued Ferrari cannot afford to split its focus if it wants to contend for the title.

The pressure on Leclerc has grown as Hamilton’s form has improved. Hamilton won the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, his first victory for Ferrari, after back-to-back second-place finishes in Canada and Monaco. The result ended Hamilton’s nearly two-year winless run and Ferrari’s own drought, while Leclerc has endured a difficult stretch with back-to-back retirements in Monaco and Barcelona, plus a crash in Monaco and another in Barcelona qualifying. Reports on the gap between them vary, with Leclerc said to trail Hamilton by 30 points in one account and 40 in another. Ferrari had already extended Leclerc’s contract before his home race.

Others in the paddock also pointed to Hamilton’s growing influence. Guenther Steiner said Leclerc’s poor run could force him to follow Hamilton’s approach, including technical preferences such as the brakes discussed in Monaco, and suggested Ferrari could improve by paying closer attention to Hamilton’s setup direction. Juan Pablo Montoya said a driver’s comfort with the car can unlock more speed and that the team should adapt the car around the driver. Hamilton said his improved results have come from changes to his race team, race engineer and weekend approach. David Coulthard offered Leclerc some reassurance, saying Hamilton may only remain a Ferrari rival for about two more years, even as the balance inside the team has shifted toward Hamilton.

Nico Hulkenberg’s Barcelona Grand Prix ended in unusual fashion after gravel or a stone thrown up by Liam Lawson’s car at Turn 12 struck the emergency kill switch on Hulkenberg’s Audi and shut the engine down. Hulkenberg said Lawson had run wide while the pair were fighting for ninth place, and that debris from the gravel strike triggered the switch and left the car to coast to a stop. The retirement came on lap 28.

Hulkenberg said the car “totally switched off” and that he had never experienced anything like it in his career. He was able to limp back to the pits, but the car would not restart. Audi later said gravel hit both the fire extinguisher and the ERS kill switch, causing the sudden loss of power. Hulkenberg’s mechanics initially treated it as a routine pit stop and changed his tires before the problem was identified.

The incident denied Hulkenberg what would have been his first points finish of the 2026 season. After the race he remained 19th in the standings for Audi. Lawson said he did not know his mistake had caused Hulkenberg’s retirement and called the situation “so unfortunate.” Audi racing director Allan McNish said the failure was a frustrating end to a strong weekend for Hulkenberg.

Jak Crawford will make his second Formula 1 free practice outing of the season for Aston Martin at the Austrian Grand Prix, driving Lance Stroll’s AMR26 in FP1 at the Red Bull Ring. The session will be his fourth overall FP1 appearance for the team and Aston Martin’s second of four mandatory rookie practice runs required this year.

Crawford first raced for Aston Martin in FP1 at Suzuka earlier in 2026, and the team has also used him in place of Fernando Alonso after Alonso arrived late following the birth of his first child. He arrived in Austria after completing a Pirelli tyre test with Aston Martin in Barcelona, and the team said he has accumulated more than 3,800 kilometers in Formula 1 machinery.

Aston Martin trackside officer Mike Krack said the run will help evaluate Crawford’s progress in a live race-weekend environment and give the team more data for development. Crawford said he knows the Austrian circuit well, having driven there before in Formula 2 and Formula 3, and said he hopes to provide useful feedback.

Red Bull’s significant upgrade package for the Austrian Grand Prix is unlikely to be enough on its own to close the performance gap to Mercedes and Ferrari, team principal Laurent Mekies said, as the team continues to chase roughly four tenths of a second per lap. Mekies pointed to Ferrari’s Barcelona upgrade as an example of how much performance can still be unlocked through development in Formula 1’s 2026 rules era.

Mekies said Red Bull has been making gradual progress since Japan and believes Mercedes’ early-season advantage is starting to fade, but he said the team still needs further steps after Austria. He said the package will be judged on the lap time it produces on track, not on expectations, and rejected the idea that Red Bull is in no man’s land, saying it is still competing with the top four teams. Red Bull arrives at the Red Bull Ring still dealing with balance and grip issues and is described as having the fourth-best car under the current rules.

The Austria upgrade will be Red Bull’s second major update of the season after Miami, when it introduced a new sidepod design and a rotary rear wing concept. The team is focused on chassis-side gains because it did not receive power-unit upgrade tokens, and the Austrian package may also help reduce weight, with Red Bull still believed to be above the 768kg minimum. In Spain, Mekies said the team’s best realistic result before late retirements would have been to beat one Ferrari and one McLaren, while Max Verstappen finished fourth after the race changed late on.