Why Hamilton Keeps Landing in the Stewards' Office at Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton’s maiden season in red was always going to be scrutinised more closely than most. A seven-time champion switching teams for the first time since his rookie year invites attention by default. But the volume of stewarding activity his 2026 campaign has generated — six separate incidents now formally reviewed by the FIA — has moved the conversation beyond simple curiosity and into a genuine debate about pattern, perception and whether Ferrari’s new man is being held to a different standard.

What’s Happening

The headline figure is stark: six incidents involving Hamilton have reached the stewards this season, a frequency that outstrips almost anyone else on the grid. Ferrari’s public response has been notably protective, framing the run as a “succession” of misfortune rather than a reflection of driving standards — the implication being that Hamilton is being caught up in incidents as much as causing them, and that the accumulation owes something to circumstance rather than a consistent pattern of fault.

That framing matters, because stewarding decisions in Formula 1 are rarely black-and-white. Investigations don’t automatically mean penalties, and being “referred to the stewards” is often simply due process after any coming-together, any track-limits ambiguity, or any contentious overtake. Six referrals is not the same as six punishments. But six referrals is still six moments where Hamilton’s name has been the subject of FIA attention in a single season — and in a sport where narrative compounds on itself, that number becomes a story in its own right, regardless of how each individual case was ultimately resolved.

Layered on top of this is the fallout from Hungary, where Ferrari chose not to impose team orders between Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Insiders have since suggested that decision could work against Hamilton specifically — not necessarily through malice, but through the mechanics of racing: two cars from the same team fighting freely creates more opportunities for the kind of close-quarters incidents that end up in a stewards’ report. If Ferrari continues to let its drivers race rather than intervening, Hamilton’s proximity to Leclerc on track may simply generate more borderline moments than a driver further down the order with less to fight for.

Why It Matters

For Hamilton, this is about more than accumulating cases and penalty points. Reputation in Formula 1 is a compounding asset or liability — stewards, like anyone else, are human, and a driver who arrives at a hearing with a recent history behind him is not adjudicated in a vacuum. That doesn’t mean bias in the sense of unfair treatment; it means context inevitably colours interpretation of marginal calls, and a pattern of referrals can shape how the next borderline incident is read, even subconsciously.

For Ferrari, the stakes are just as significant. A team that signed Hamilton to add a title-calibre presence to complement Leclerc cannot afford a season defined by its lead driver’s disciplinary history rather than his results. Every hour spent defending Hamilton publicly, or managing the fallout of a penalty, is time and political capital not spent on car development or strategic execution — the areas where Ferrari has historically found ways to undermine its own campaigns even without external controversy.

And for the wider championship picture, the team-orders question adds a further complication. Declining to manage Hamilton and Leclerc’s battles removes any suggestion of favouritism internally, which is admirable in principle — but if it exposes Hamilton disproportionately to incidents and penalties, Ferrari may find itself accused of costing its own driver points through inaction just as easily as it would have been accused of bias through intervention. There is no clean answer here, only trade-offs.

The Wider Context

None of this happens in isolation. Formula 1’s stewarding has been a live debate for years, from consistency complaints during Hamilton’s own title fights at Mercedes to the ongoing tension between letting drivers race and policing contact firmly enough to deter it. Drivers switching teams have historically faced an adaptation period — different cars, different balance characteristics, different team dynamics — and it would be naive to assume Hamilton is immune to that simply because of his experience. Even the greatest drivers have had rockier-than-expected opening seasons at new teams, needing time to recalibrate their sense of where the limits of a car and a rival’s space actually lie.

At the same time, the FIA’s stewarding panels rotate and operate under scrutiny themselves, and there is little evidence to suggest any panel has systematically targeted a specific driver over a rolling season. What’s more likely is a convergence of factors: a driver still finding the exact edge of a new car, a title fight — or at least a constructors’ fight — generating high-stakes moments, and a teammate battle that Ferrari has chosen to let play out naturally rather than manage from the pit wall.

GP Headlines’ Take

Six incidents in a season is too many to dismiss purely as bad luck, but it’s equally too few, and too varied, to declare a targeted campaign against Hamilton. The honest reading sits between Ferrari’s defensive framing and the more cynical suggestion that the stewards have it in for him: this looks like the natural friction of a champion adapting to a new team, amplified by a policy of letting two title-calibre drivers race each other freely. Ferrari’s refusal to impose team orders is defensible as a philosophy, but it is not without cost, and Hungary suggests that cost may increasingly be paid by Hamilton specifically. The team’s next real test isn’t managing the stewards — it’s deciding how much racing freedom it can afford to give two drivers who keep finding themselves in the same piece of tarmac at the same time.