Lewis Hamilton’s fabulous win in Barcelona on Sunday, his first in 686 days, pushed open a door that might just lead to the record eighth world title of his dreams.

His triumph at Circuit de Catalunya came as a bigger surprise to one individual than to anyone else, namely the Hamilton of last year. He practically begged Ferrari to replace him back then. 

‘Absolutely useless,’ he critiqued himself on that miserable day when he qualified 12th in Hungary vis a vis his red team-mate Charles Leclerc’s pole. ‘The team have no problem,’ he added. ‘It’s me every time.’ Painfully, like a stuck record, he wondered out loud variations of the theme whether the Scuderia should ‘change the driver’. Him.

Then aged 40, it seemed as if his move to Ferrari on £80million a season as the destination he had always selected for himself was falling flat. His legacy, as the GOAT was getting bruised purple.

Blunt facts buttressed his negative self-assessment. To this day, of all his 106 race wins only three of them have come in the last five years, one of them after George Russell was disqualified at Spa in 2024. He has lost out to his team-mates, at Mercedes and Ferrari, three times over the last four campaigns.

But now, post-Spain, a decent hope, a live chance, an iridescent flicker, from 41 points short of Mercedes’ leader Kimi Antonelli seven races down in the 22-race schedule. And the thing with Lewis is that when he senses an opportunity, history suggests he responds to the call. 

He is a driver always at his most potent when a prize is in sight, as well as being a sportsman who thrives on criticism to fuel the best of himself, not least expressed as the mixed race kid, now long grown up, who took on a white man’s sporting citadel.

Here, we look at the crucial factors that have changed his fortunes between last year and this, as he stands second in the championship table: Antonelli 156, Hamilton 115, Russell 106.

God-given talent  

Foremost, Hamilton’s strength lies in his inherent talent, which was clear from his earliest forays as a karting star. His father Anthony augmented this innate ability by standing at the side of the track, marking where his boy should brake later. A tough taskmaster, Anthony nurtured what nature had gifted Lewis. 

Camp Colorado and the inner peace  

Hamilton trained over the off-season like mad to make sure he is in as good a physical condition as at any point in his career, the ravages of aging notwithstanding. 

He went to Colorado, where he spends a large chunk of the winter and owns a property, to start his fitness regime in December with family around him. He took his niece and nephew skiing, clearing his mind after the trauma of 2025, ‘disconnecting’ and ‘finding inner peace’.

But he followed these conditioning regimes a year before his Ferrari debut. Over drinks at our hotel bar in Maranello, Anthony told me Lewis was fitter than ever as he first turned the wheel of the Ferrari at their Fiorano test track, in January 2025. 

In fact, only once has Lewis turned up at the start of the season other than in tip-top condition and that was in 2022 because he had spent the winter seriously considering whether to continue in the sport, given the manner of his defeat - that safety car! - to Max Verstappen in the title showdown in Abu Dhabi the December before. 

Yes, he is in good nick, again, but his mental reinvigoration is more key to his revival than any obvious physical gains. 

Feeling the Ferrari love 

Ferrari is another world. McLaren and Mercedes, his previous teams, were Anglo-Germanic (Mercedes supplied engines to McLaren in those days). Niki Lauda, one of Ferrari’s great champions, argued to me once that Ferrari worked best when there is a balance of nationalities. 

‘Michael,’ he opined of Schumacher, a five-time world champion in red and seven times in all, ‘was the Teuton, and then you had the Italians in big numbers, but remember the bridge was supplied by the English (such as Ross Brawn, their pragmatic technical chief). Lauda added, as only he could: ‘Otherwise, if you leave it all to the Italians it is a mess of romance and spaghetti.’

Lewis seemed to find himself all abroad last year in that Ferrari environment. Now, he has made his will known, and to count as writ, acting as the bridge Lauda referenced. ‘Fred,’ referring to Vasseur, his team principal, said Hamilton, ‘is finally listening to me.’ 

The direction of the car is now in Lewis’s hands, and he is a sharp, experienced operator in this field of expertise, well-equipped to convert the raw seat-of-his-bum experience in the car into engineering advances. We are seeing the results.

Comfort in the cock-pit  

The most important facet of all: this year’s cars under new regulations that dropped the stiff, ground-effect rules that did not suit Hamilton’s late-braking style (thanks, Dad!). 

This is a fundamental help, and Lewis has steered these physics towards his specific requirements with more rear-end downforce. He demonstrated his comfort in the cockpit by braking so late in qualifying in Spain.

The gift of Santi 

A small gain, but part of the picture in finding his comfortable space, is changing race engineers from Riccardo Adami to Carlo Santi, with whom he enjoys a burgeoning relationship more akin to his old Mercedes pit-whisperer Peter Bonnington. 

And even the strategy on Sunday was bang-on, which is not always the case at Ferrari, to put it mildly. In fact, Hamilton may have won the race anyway, even without the early stop and the boon of a cheap stop brought about by a safety car. 

He would have needed to have passed the Mercedes pair of Russell and Antonelli. But roaring 19.5sec clear by the end was impressive, aided by the temperature, 30C ambient, 50C on track, suiting his tyres entering their prime window. Mercedes were beaten fair and square. Game on. 

The Kim Kardashian factor 

Happiness in his private life feeds into his new lease of on-track life. 

Kim Kardashian, take your bow. 

The double engine upgrade 

He had been pushing closer and closer to a win these last few races, with podiums in Canada and Monaco. Ferrari are on the march. 

And, extra hope for him, the Mercedes cars, and those they supply engines to, are showing unreliability. Breakdowns hobbled Russell in Canada and Antonelli in Spain. 

Ferrari are further favoured here. Mercedes are allowed one upgrade under rules designed to level the playing field under the new regulations; Ferrari are permitted two, which may come as early as next weekend in Austria.

Change in team dynamics 

The internal dynamics are changing. Leclerc is Ferrari’s golden boy, hand-reared like General Melchett’s Speckled Jim, to be the Scuderia’s next champion. 

He is fast and huge respect goes to him. But he is prone to pressure. And a magnet to walls. Hamilton’s mechanics are chanting his name and he is flattering them with his, er, pidgin Italian. Both love-ins hold up despite his visits to Maranello being somewhat irregular.

Leclerc showed his mental fragility when his previous team-mate Carlos Sainz was ‘up his chuff’, as Murray Walker used to say. LH has CL on the defensive, and that’s not a place the Monegasque is happy to be. 

Foot to the floor   

A final thought. We can more properly evaluate Hamilton’s ambitions for an eighth title over the next month. He needs to ram home his gathering momentum in Austria, and, seven days later, at Silverstone, where he has written poems of success year after year.

Hopes are high, the jury is out.