Lewis Hamilton broke the spell and finally clinched his first victory donning Ferrari colors, finishing in first place at the Formula 1 Barcelona Grand Prix last weekend.
The seven-time world champion started only from second on the grid in Spain, but he managed to take advantage of the Italian team’s solid strategy, along with a pace superior to Mercedes, to rise to the top of the podium. This was his first win since the Belgian Grand Prix in 2024.
Curiously, Michael Schumacher’s first win with Ferrari in F1 came in Spain in 1996, 30 years earlier. Therefore, Hamilton recalled his earliest memories and of watching the seven-time champion in red as well.
“This is the first step of our history. And I just found out that it has been 30 years; I just remembered that it was 30 years ago that Michael won. I was probably at home, on my sofa, watching that race, like many of you, with a plate on my lap, eating a sandwich, or perhaps chicken soup or something like that. On a Sunday, I was 12 years old, if I wasn’t racing,” he commented.
“Just looking at that red car and thinking: ‘What will it be like to sit in that red cockpit?’ My cockpit is white, which I don’t like very much. I wanted it to be red like Michael’s. I’ll make it red again at some point. [I wondered] what it would be like to sit in that red car, which I had the opportunity to test last year,” he added.
