Jolyon Palmer has said he doesn’t expect Lewis Hamilton to win his eighth Formula 1 title this season.
Ferrari are looking to end an 18-year title drought, and both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will feel they’re in with a real chance of delivering it.
Last season, Leclerc finished well clear of Hamilton, winning by 86 points and taking all seven of Ferrari’s podium finishes.
Johnny Herbert has already backed Hamilton based on what he saw during testing. And while the start in Bahrain was slow, the pace picked up by the final week.
But Jolyon Palmer remains unconvinced that Hamilton can claim his first title since 2020 – and believes not having a permanent race engineer may be playing a role.
Palmer questions whether lack of stability in Hamilton’s team could hurt title hopes
Palmer spoke about Hamilton’s situation during the Chequered Flag Podcast, looking ahead to the season opener in Melbourne.
He said: “He has a temporary interim race engineer who’s a race engineer that has worked with Ferrari before, worked with Kimi Raikkonen in there, and has a lot of experience.
“He’s gone away from his race engineer from last year, and he’s expecting to get a new permanent one coming up. But it’s not good for Lewis really to have that level of doubt and a change of personnel before such a difficult set of regulations to get your teeth into.
“Communication is going to be so important. There’s going to be information overload, I think, for the drivers.
“So you want to build up a rapport with your race engineer. You want to know each other inside out, and Lewis hasn’t got that.
“So he was a bit jovial in the last Bahrain test, but I don’t know. Ferrari looked good, but I thought Leclerc looked really good as well, and Lewis is going to be up against him.”
Jolyon Palmer left stunned by Ferrari’s rear wing innovation during F1 testing
Pre-season testing always throws up new ideas as teams look for any edge they can find, and this year was no exception under the sport’s updated regulations.
Ferrari stood out with a couple of bold moves. Their car drew a lot of attention, not just from fans but also from rival teams like McLaren, who were keeping a close eye on what they were up to. Alongside their distinctive exhaust setup, it was the flipping rear wing that really got people talking.
Speaking about what some have started calling the ‘Macarena’ wing, Palmer said: “It blew my mind when I saw that in testing!
“I’ve watched a lot of Formula 1 cars. I’ve seen a lot of modern-day Formula 1, where I know in the past there was a Tyrrell that ran with six wheels.
“Just seeing this Ferrari rear wing, so when they activate what looks like DRS – it’s now called active aero – straight line mode.
“But the wing flips, inverts upside down, which means that they’re going to get a better top speed, effectively less drag.
“I don’t even know if they’ll run it. They literally did it for one lap of testing, came back in the pits, changed it back over and then we never saw it again.
Lewis Hamilton was ‘experimenting’ with Ferrari’s 2026 car during testing
Hamilton knows there’s a lot of ground to cover if he wants to get ahead of Leclerc, not to mention the competition from Mercedes, McLaren, and Red Bull.
Until qualifying in Melbourne, nobody will know for sure where everyone stands. But it looks like the top four teams from last season are still setting the pace.
Throughout testing, Hamilton was seen experimenting with different lines and energy recovery methods as he tried to figure out the best way to handle the new Ferrari.
With so many rule changes over their careers, drivers like Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are expected to adapt quicker than most of the grid.
But Hamilton didn’t immediately adjust to ground-effect cars in previous seasons, which may be one reason why Palmer isn’t fully confident this time around.
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