Lewis Hamilton gets first taste of another Ferrari F1 car in Barcelona

Lewis Hamilton was back behind a Ferrari F1 car on Tuesday as his preparation for the 2025 season continued in Barcelona.

This time, Hamilton got the opportunity to drive Ferrari’s 2024 challenger - the SF-24.

The SF-24 narrowly missed out on the F1 constructors’ championship to McLaren, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz winning five races in 2024.

On paper, the 2024 car was a significant upgrade on its predecessor - the SF-23, which Hamilton drove last week.

The seven-time world champion crashed the 2023 car during his second day of running last week at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

However, Ferrari are involved in a Pirelli test, which is focused on next year’s tyres, and they were forced to make an unusual set up change as a result. 

As per Autoracer, to replicate 2026’s rules, Hamilton’s Ferrari was set up with extremely low levels of downforce.

This is uncommon for Barcelona, given traditionally teams would opt to run a lot more downforce during the actual season because of the nature of the corners.

With the 2026 rules expected to result in a 20 per cent loss in downforce, the set up tweak should give Pirelli better data as they continue with their tyre development.

Specific details of what happened in the test have yet to be revealed by Pirelli, but it seems that for Hamilton, it’s gone a lot smoother than last week.

Leclerc makes up for lost ground

On the other side of the Ferrari garage, Leclerc was also in action, driving the SF-23.

This utilised some of his allocated TPC (testing previous cars) mileage.

Leclerc missed out on crucial running last week following Hamilton’s shunt.

Ferrari weren’t the only team testing in Barcelona, with McLaren also assisting Pirelli with their 2026 tyres.

Sky Sports Italy also reported that Alpine were present at the Spanish circuit.