Puffing out his cheeks at the start of a series of media interviews, Lewis Hamilton grinned a smile some two-and-a-half years in the making. “Jeez, where do I start?!” he told Sky Sports’ Craig Slater, after a day under the Catalunyan sun he had long dreamed of. On a red-hot afternoon, for the first time since Mexico in October 2024, it was rich scarlet red on top of the podium once again.
Even for 41-year-old Hamilton, who has experienced and endured just about every sensation possible in his two decades in Formula One, this was something new. Something fresh. And perhaps, most tantalisingly of all, something worth building towards for the rest of the 2026 campaign.
