After a poor 2025 season, Ferrari and Hamilton will look to start fresh in 2026. Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Ferrari announced the name of the car Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will drive in the 2026 Formula One season on social media Friday. The racing team’s post reads, “A new era begins, with the SF-26.” Ferrari plans to unveil the new car at its headquarters in Maranello, Italy, on Jan. 23.

The SF-26 could represent the 41-year-old Hamilton’s final chance to win an eighth world championship and pass Michael Schumacher in the record books. The two drivers are tied for the most individual world titles in F1 history, with seven apiece.

Ferrari will begin this year still searching for answers after a brutal 2025 campaign. The team finished last season in fourth place in the constructors’ standings and failed to win a single Grand Prix. After leaving Mercedes to drive for Ferrari in 2025, Hamilton completed an F1 season without any podium finishes for the first time in his 19-year career. Leclerc made it to the podium seven times last year, but never as the winner.

For the upcoming season, Ferrari shifted its focus toward optimizing the new car for sweeping changes to F1 regulations in 2026 that will require teams to create new car designs and power units. Under the new regulations, cars will weigh slightly less and be narrower than those used in recent years, and they will rely on 50 percent electrical power, compared to 20 percent in previous seasons. Cars must also run on fully sustainable fuels in 2026.

The SF-25 car that Hamilton and Leclerc drove last year will have little in common with the new model Ferrari plans to launch later this month. That’s a major opportunity for the team after a 2025 season plagued by design issues that left Hamilton and Leclerc racing in a vehicle that just couldn’t compete with other teams’ cars. Hamilton at times described the year as a “nightmare” and an “emotional rollercoaster,” and by the end of April Ferrari had decided to cease aerodynamic development for the 2025 model and instead focus its engineering resources on designing the best possible car for 2026.

Leclerc expressed optimism for the upcoming season in a December Instagram post: “A very difficult year on the track. Thank you so much to all of you that follows and supports me throughout the ups and downs. Count on me to give absolutely everything for 2026 for us to have more wins and success on the track.”