Ferrari's much-trailed Miami upgrade package was supposed to mark the moment the SF26 stepped up into a genuine three-way title fight with Mercedes and McLaren. Karun Chandhok says the rival garages have already concluded the opposite.
Speaking on Sky Sports F1's Miami review programme, the former Hispania driver and now full-time analyst said sources inside Mercedes and McLaren believe Ferrari's biggest in-season development swing has fallen well short. Chandhok argued that Maranello's two title rivals were able to put clean air between themselves and the Ferraris through the entire Sunday race in Miami, and that internal post-race debriefs at both factories landed on the same conclusion.
Chandhok suggested it is a disappointing showing from a team that opened the season with one of the strongest race-pace baselines on the grid. Ferrari was within striking distance of Mercedes in the early flyaways, and the assumption inside the paddock was that the Miami parts would close that gap to genuine race-winning territory.
Instead the on-track pace told a different story. Lewis Hamilton finished outside the points on track in Miami before being promoted to sixth via Charles Leclerc's 20-second penalty for a first-lap incident. Hamilton called the race 'a long afternoon in no man's land', flagged a recurring power-deployment problem he has now raised in three of the four 2026 rounds, and admitted he had 'nothing to fight with' once Franco Colapinto damaged his floor on lap one. Leclerc, who started ahead of Hamilton on pure single-lap pace, owned his own meltdown without ducking it.
The technical picture matches the pundit gloom. Ferrari brought arguably the largest upgrade of the field at the Miami International Autodrome, including a new floor edge, a revised diffuser geometry and reworked rear-suspension fairings. Race-pace data showed Ferrari running roughly six tenths a lap slower than Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli on similar tyre stints, and visibly off the pace of Lando Norris' McLaren even in clean air.
The head of Ferrari's race operations, Diego Tondi, conceded post-race that the team needs to 'understand why the upgrade did not deliver the step we expected' before the Canadian Grand Prix in early June. That admission, against the backdrop of Hamilton's recurring power complaints, is part of what has Mercedes and McLaren confident they can ringfence the title fight to a two-team contest going into the European leg of the season.
For Hamilton, hope rests on whether the Miami struggles were down to a Colapinto-induced floor failure rather than a fundamental package issue. Chandhok was clear that the rest of the pit lane is no longer waiting to find out. If Mercedes and McLaren are right, Ferrari's SF26 has just used its biggest development bullet of the first half of the season, and missed.
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