Should Ferrari Make Hamilton Its No.1? Villeneuve Says Yes

Lewis Hamilton's maiden Ferrari victory in Barcelona did more than end his win drought. It handed Ferrari a problem it did not expect to be debating this soon: which of its two drivers should the team build a title bid around?

The numbers framing the question are stark. Hamilton's win lifted him to second in the standings, 41 points behind runaway leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Charles Leclerc, the man Ferrari re-signed only weeks ago on a long-term deal and has long treated as the cornerstone of its future, sits fourth, 40 points adrift of his own team-mate after back-to-back retirements in Monaco and Barcelona.

Jacques Villeneuve put the discomfort into words. Speaking to Sky Sports in Barcelona, the 1997 world champion argued Ferrari may have no choice but to pick a side. "Internally at Ferrari, they just re-signed Leclerc two races ago for the best contract ever, lifetime contract," Villeneuve said. "But who's actually getting the points, who's going to the front? Lewis. That will create a little bit of an issue internally as well. Lewis is in the hunt for the championship, Leclerc isn't, so will they need to start making decisions at some point? They will need to put everything in their bag if they want to fight for the championship."

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Not everyone is ready to crown Hamilton a contender on the strength of one Sunday. BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson urged caution, noting how many things had to align for the win. Mercedes compromised their own strategy by covering Hamilton's early stop, and a virtual safety car then gifted him a cheap pit-stop that preserved the lead. "It's too early to make any definitive judgements about Hamilton as a title contender," Benson wrote. "Hamilton's Spain win was enough to make the idea a reasonably logical conversation piece, but it will take more evidence from more races before anyone can say definitively he is a title contender."

There is a technical reason for the scepticism. Ferrari remain down on engine power, and the next three rounds, Austria, Britain and Belgium, are all power-sensitive circuits where, as things stand, beating Mercedes looks unlikely. Benson did flag one caveat: Ferrari are understood to have an engine upgrade coming, having been cleared to use two power units this season and next.

Leclerc's slump, meanwhile, is not purely psychological. He had been running different brake discs from Hamilton and struggling badly with them in Canada and Monaco, before switching to his team-mate's brake set-up for Spain. That detail complicates the tidy narrative that Hamilton has simply gotten inside Leclerc's head, even if the Monegasque's two scoreless weekends have done the standings damage on their own.

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The awkward part for Ferrari is timing. A team that has just committed its long-term future to Leclerc now finds its best results, and its only realistic line to Antonelli, coming from the 41-year-old in the other garage. Villeneuve's point stands either way: chase the title and Ferrari may have to formalise an order it spent the winter insisting it would never need. Austria, the first of those power tracks, will start to show whether Barcelona was a turning point or a one-off.

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*Originally published on [Newsformula One](https://newsformula.one/article/should-ferrari-make-hamilton-its-no-1-villeneuve-says-yes). Visit for full coverage.*

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