Just a few weeks ago, Ferrari looked genuinely capable of pushing Mercedes hard in 2026 and giving Lewis Hamilton a real chance at becoming the first driver ever to win eight world championships. After the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in early July, the Scuderia seemed to have found something special. Sure, Mercedes were dropping points left and right, with George Russell's Monaco disaster and reliability issues everywhere from Canada to Barcelona, but Ferrari just kept delivering solid race weekends with cars that seemed to be getting better and better.

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Then Hungary happened. McLaren walked into the Hungaroring, looked at Ferrari's supposedly perfect setup for that track, and basically laughed them out of the building. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were on another level entirely, and Ferrari finished fourth and fifth despite being heavy favourites. Mercedes stumbled too with third and seventh, but at least they had the excuse that the circuit doesn't suit their car. Ferrari just fell flat when it mattered most, which is starting to look like a pattern.

The real problem revealed itself at Zandvoort this week. Ferrari bolted on some cutting-edge new floor upgrades so delicate they couldn't even test them in damp conditions. Hamilton finished seventh in the sprint, stuck behind Max Verstappen and left shaking his head. The setup change that was supposed to help absolutely threw the car into a completely different direction. Even worse, the same upgrades didn't bother Charles Leclerc as much, which suggests it's not just about the parts but how the team's managing them.

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Here's the thing that's genuinely painful to watch: Ferrari are falling back into their old habits. They're absolutely brilliant on a Friday, decent in the early stages of qualifying, then mysteriously terrible when the stakes get real. They keep flashing glimpses of real pace at exactly the wrong moments. It's the classic Ferrari script they've been writing for decades, and right now, at the one moment when they actually have a genuine shot at taking Mercedes down, they're reverting to form.

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There might be an engine upgrade coming at Monza that could change everything. Maybe the aero team has something brilliant hidden away. But right now, with the summer break done and the business end of the season approaching, Ferrari look like the capricious, promise-filled team that historically chokes when it counts. And that probably means Lewis Hamilton's best chance at that elusive eighth title is slipping away.

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