Ferrari’s Monza plan: Hamilton leads, Leclerc follows

Ferrari has decided how it wants to qualify at Monza, and the interesting part is the order. Lewis Hamilton goes first. Charles Leclerc follows in his wake.

That is not a statement about hierarchy. It is a calculation.

Why Hamilton goes first

A slipstream only helps if it is predictable. A car ahead that is quick but scrappy leaves dirty, shifting air behind it, and the driver following spends the lap reacting instead of attacking.

Hamilton has been the more consistent of the two Ferrari drivers on opening runs this season. Clean laps, repeatable, no surprises. That makes his wake something Leclerc can plan around rather than survive.

So Ferrari is using each driver for what he has actually been good at. Hamilton delivers the stable tow. Leclerc, who has generally found the final tenth when it counts, takes it.

Hamilton leads Ferrari’s tow train at Monza. Photo: Ferrari Media Centre

Why a tow is worth more this year

Here is the bit that makes 2026 different.

Under the old rules, teams turned up at Monza with extreme low-drag rear wings and gave away almost everything in the corners to gain on the straights. The current regulations have pulled everyone back from that extreme, so the cars carry more drag down the straight than a Monza car used to.

Which means the drag you can remove for free, by sitting in somebody else’s wake, is worth more than it was. A tow has gone from a nice bonus to a genuine part of the qualifying plan.

McLaren has reached the same conclusion from a different direction, arriving with a rotating rear wing it calls the H-wing. Everybody is chasing the same tenths. They are just chasing them differently.

New parts for the run to the Rettifilo

Ferrari is not relying on the tow alone. It brings an upgraded power unit and new aerodynamic parts aimed specifically at the long run down to the Rettifilo chicane.

That matters, because the plan only works if the car underneath it is fast enough to convert a tow into a lap time. On paper Mercedes is still the team to beat. Ferrari has spent the season chasing that gap with real ideas rather than incremental ones, including the Macarena wing and the FTM solution, both of which turned heads when they appeared.

Monza is where those choices either pay or do not.

What Monza does to Leclerc

Ask Charles Leclerc about this race and the tone changes.

He grew up partly in Italy and lived with his kart mechanics there, and the connection has never worn off. The red crowd that fills Piazza Duomo every year still gets him.

“You never get used to it,” he says. “It goes beyond logic.”

He is also honest about the cost of it. Monza takes everything: the pressure, the crowd, the media week. He says he is prepared to be completely wrung out on Monday, as long as he is on the podium on Sunday.

That is a useful way to think about the weekend. The emotion is real and it is not the strategy. The strategy is execution.

Photo: Ferrari Media Centre

The part of 2026 nobody talks about

There is a quieter story underneath all of this, and Leclerc is open about it: these cars have forced drivers to unlearn things.

Getting on the power early out of a corner used to be a fundamental skill, drilled in through years of karting and junior formulae. With the drag characteristics of the current cars, that same instinct can cost you. The time you gain on corner exit can be gone again by the next braking point.

Rewriting a reflex built over fifteen years is genuinely difficult, and it is happening to every driver on the grid at once. Leclerc’s summary of the era is blunt: every mistake gets punished twice as hard. Perfection is not the target, it is the entry requirement.

What Ferrari actually needs

Both drivers have delivered this season. Hamilton won in Barcelona on a faultless weekend. Leclerc did the job at Silverstone.

What Ferrari has not often had is both of them at their best on the same Sunday. At its home race, with new parts, a plan for qualifying and a crowd that expects rather than hopes, that is the thing that has to happen.

Monza is emotion and it is arithmetic. This weekend Ferrari needs both to land.

Also this weekend: Antonelli starts from the back, and our previews of Alpine and Audi. Quotes from Leclerc’s Monza media day. Photos: Ferrari Media Centre. Published 3 September 2026.