Lewis Hamilton's first win for Ferrari did more than end an 18-month wait. It handed the rest of the grid a problem they can already see coming.
The clearest warning came from the world champion who finished third. Lando Norris brought his McLaren home 23.7 seconds behind Hamilton at Barcelona, and his read on the gap was blunt.
"We're lucky that Ferrari doesn't have a better engine at the minute," Norris told Sky Sports F1. "If they had a better engine, they're dominating. They're the class of the field in terms of cornering performance at the minute."
He did not soften it. "We're not even close to them. It's the realistic point of it. We're a long, long way from where we need to be," Norris said. "If they make improvements on the engine side, then they'll embarrass everyone. We need to really get our heads down and see what improvements we can do."
That last line matters because Ferrari is about to get help. Under the FIA's new Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) system, the first assessment put Ferrari's power unit more than 4% off the benchmark set by Red Bull Powertrains. Being that far back earns Ferrari two engine upgrades this season and two more next year — the catch-up mechanism Norris is worried about.
"They were able to upgrade their car, they gained performance and now they lean on winning races and today they could capitalise," Stella said. "So, definitely there is work to do with the car performance."
Stella credited Ferrari with "the best chassis" in the field and pinpointed exactly where the red car hurts everyone else. "We see, especially in the medium speed corner, that Ferrari is the fastest in the corners, not necessarily the fastest in the straights," he explained, noting McLaren stays competitive only through the quickest corners while struggling for grip in the medium- and low-speed sections.
The one person refusing to join the alarm is the driver who won. Hamilton, fresh from a maiden Ferrari victory many had begun to doubt would come, batted away talk of a first title since 2020.
"Honestly, with the way that the year started out, I have not really been thinking about it like that. I've not been thinking about an eighth," Hamilton said. "Mercedes have come out the gates with a blistering car and blistering pace, both drivers doing such a great job. We know we have this power deficit. There's going to be tracks where we go to with long, long straights where that makes it even harder."
His framing is the counterweight to Norris's warning: the chassis is there, the engine is not. "We've got a great car at the core and if we keep adding performance and we can go through the corners quicker, maybe we can narrow that deficit down a little bit until we improve or until we close the gap on power," Hamilton added.
The disagreement is really about timing. Norris and Stella see a car that already corners better than anything else and an engine deficit the rules are designed to shrink. Hamilton sees a power gap that will keep biting at circuits like Austria, the next round on June 26-28, where the straights are long and Mercedes — winners of every race before Barcelona — should reassert themselves. Stella expects exactly that, tipping Mercedes to have the best overall package in Austria while Ferrari stays "the fastest car in the corners."
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/norris-warns-ferrari-will-embarrass-everyone-with-engine-gains). Visit for full coverage.*
