Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari replacement is set – but one thing has to change | F1 | Sport

Lewis Hamilton’s F1 replacement is already on the grid, but one thing has to change before filling the shoes of the seven-time champion. Hamilton could be embarking on his final F1 season, with the performance of Ferrari’s latest SF-26 crucial to whether Hamilton sticks around for another year. He secured P4 in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as he chases a first podium for Ferrari.

If he does stay, Hamilton could call it quits at the end of 2027 or 2028, with one driver in prime position to steal one of the most coveted slots on the grid. British star Oliver Bearman breezed into F1 after impressing in the lower formulas before starring in a one-off race appearance for Ferrari at Saudi Arabia in 2024.

This quickly guaranteed a seat at Haas in 2025, but then things started going awry. At his very first race at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, Bearman crashed in both free practice sessions, putting him on the back foot.

Ferrari is likely to forgive a junior driver exploring the limit on his F1 debut, but what came next was more concerning and could backfire in 2026. The British driver was a regular talking point in the FIA race stewards’ room, picking up a whopping 10 penalty points for infractions. Over one season, that’s an astronomical total.

His biggest problem was around red flags, falling foul of session stoppage rules on more than one occasion. At Monaco, Bearman was penalised for overtaking under red flags during free practice, resulting in a 10-place grid penalty and points on his licence.

Just a few races later, Bearman offended the race stewards once again as he failed to slow sufficiently for red flags in FP3 at Silverstone, even losing control of his car and crashing into the barriers. This was the worst of the bunch, with Bearman handed a 10-place grid penalty and four penalty points on his super licence in one go.

Bearman knows he had a scrappy start to the year, previously admitting that the first half of his rookie season was littered with “very costly mistakes ». His other four points came at Italy, Brazil and Abu Dhabi and leave Bearman teetering on the edge of an F1 race ban.

FIA penalty points remain on a driver’s Super Licence for 12 months, meaning Bearman has to walk the tightrope until the end of May when his Monaco points are revoked. Drivers have been elevated into top teams based on the performances of one single race, think Nyck de Vries at Monza in 2022, Sergio Perez after Sakhir 2020.

What if Bearman is banned and Haas manages to deliver a car capable of challenging for points or a podium in the first six races? Bearman has lost one shot to impress Ferrari bosses and stake a claim to Hamilton’s seat.

In the wider picture, if Bearman doesn’t cut out the mistakes in 2026, will Ferrari want to come knocking at all? Perhaps not. Having not won a title in almost 20 years, the Italian marque is desperate for success and wants a finished product capable of winning.

Charles Leclerc was incident-prone at Sauber and brought that trait to Ferrari in his half-hearted title tilt in 2022. The Monegasque looks like the finished product now, but will Scuderia bosses want to wait for Bearman to blossom as they did with Leclerc?

The 20-year-old is next in Ferrari’s conveyor belt of talent, but must cut out the mistakes if he wants to stake his claim to one of the biggest seats in world motorsport.