Fred Vasseur has chosen his words carefully. With Ferrari 45 points adrift of Mercedes in the constructors' championship after three races, the Scuderia's team principal has declared a new phase in the 2026 season.
"In Miami, a different championship will begin," Vasseur said, summing up the scale of the Miami GP upgrade Ferrari validated at Monza this week.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton split 200 km of track time behind closed doors at the Autodromo Nazionale, running the SF-26 with a revised floor, a new front wing, weight-reduction components, a revised engine cover and the now-infamous Macarena rear wing. Vasseur himself has described the Miami bundle as "a package and a half" — not a routine race upgrade, but an accumulation of components normally split across two or three race weekends now landing all at once.
The timing is not accidental. The five-week break created by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix has given Ferrari more wind tunnel hours, more simulator runs and more preparation than a normal inter-race gap would allow. Monza itself was chosen deliberately: its long straights and heavy braking zones make it the hardest track on the calendar for energy management, which is exactly where Ferrari needed data.
It is also the first opportunity any team has had to run a 2026 car under the updated energy management regulations ratified by the FIA on Monday. Maximum energy harvest in qualifying has been cut from 8 MJ to 7, peak super-clip power has been raised from 250 kW to 350, and a qualifying loophole Mercedes and Red Bull had been exploiting has been closed. Ferrari were the team that lodged the complaint about that loophole with the FIA in the first place — and are now the biggest on-paper beneficiary.
The Macarena rear wing is the headline curiosity. Vasseur himself is credited with the name after watching a prototype rotate its upper element through roughly 180 degrees during activation, evoking the 1990s dance. Earlier race-weekend prototypes did not make a competitive debut because the FIA required adjustments to comply with the 4/10 opening and closing range in the regulations. Those adjustments have now been made, and Ferrari engineers believe the wing can significantly reduce the SF-26's drag on long straights while maintaining cornering downforce. That is a direct strike at Ferrari's biggest performance deficit to Mercedes.
Hamilton has been the public optimist inside the team, describing the 2026 cars earlier in the season as the best form of racing he has experienced across his entire career and pushing back against critics of the regulations. Leclerc, meanwhile, has carried the qualifying burden while complaining that the new rules have dulled the single-lap spectacle that built his reputation. The Miami regulation tweaks are designed to bring precisely that qualifying Leclerc back to the front row.
Caution is warranted on the engine side. Former Ferrari engineer Paolo Filisetti has publicly warned that closing Mercedes' estimated 20-30 horsepower advantage mid-season is not a simple task. Ferrari's realistic path to victory runs through aerodynamic efficiency, improved energy management under the new rules, and the ADUO mechanism that allows manufacturers to close power gaps under specific conditions. A more significant Ferrari power unit step is reportedly planned for the European rounds later in the season.
Mercedes have won every race so far and have Kimi Antonelli on two victories from three starts. They are also the team most exposed by the rule changes. If Ferrari's package delivers in Miami and the FIA tweaks narrow Mercedes' advantage by even a few tenths, the gap closes enough to turn the 2026 season into a genuine three-way fight. If it does not, a 45-point deficit begins to look insurmountable.
Twelve days remain until Miami. Vasseur has set the expectation publicly. Ferrari's season now turns on whether the Monza data matches the Vasseur line.
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*Originally published on [Formula One News](https://newsformula.one/article/vasseur-miami-different-championship-ferrari-sf26-upgrade-monza-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
