- Ferrari let Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc run its official Instagram for twenty minutes over the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with chaotic results.
- An F1 insider says Leclerc privately refuses to accept finishing behind Hamilton, who leads him by 14 points with five races left.
- Leclerc has actually beaten Hamilton in six of the last nine Grands Prix, narrowing the gap in exactly the stretch that counts most.
A Prank That Could Not Quite Hide the Real Rivalry
Lewis Hamilton has not personally posted on social media in so long that when Ferrari handed him the keys to its official accounts, he had to admit he had forgotten how the apps work. “It’s been so long since I personally posted something that I don’t even know how to use the app anymore,” Hamilton said, caught on camera in a prank Ferrari filmed over the Singapore Grand Prix weekend and released on October 16. For twenty minutes, Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc had the login details to Ferrari’s real Instagram and the freedom to post whatever they liked. What followed was pure chaos: an extreme close up selfie that briefly replaced the team’s account photo, an improvised tour of Ferrari’s hospitality suite, Leclerc riding around on Hamilton’s scooter, interrupted meetings, filtered photos, and a livestream that cut to a black screen while Leclerc’s voice kept going in the background, joking about calling his wife. Leclerc even polled fans on his hair. Ferrari posted a tongue in cheek statement the next day claiming “two people within the organisation had gained unauthorised access” to its accounts, before confirming the culprits had been found and control restored. It is the kind of video a title winning team releases when everything is fine. The trouble for Ferrari is that, underneath the laughter, almost nothing about its 2026 season is fine, and the two men clowning around on a scooter happen to be locked in the most consequential rivalry on the grid. The timing was not an accident. Singapore is a street circuit that punishes mistakes and rewards calm nerves, exactly the kind of weekend where a team under pressure wants its drivers distracted for twenty harmless minutes rather than stewing over strategy calls and lap times. Ferrari got its lighthearted video. It also got a weekend where the gap between its two drivers moved in a direction team management almost certainly did not want.What the Insiders Are Actually Saying
Ferrari insiders have a name for what has been building between Hamilton and Leclerc all season, and it isn’t friendship. Italian F1 commentator Giorgio Terruzzi, writing for Corriere della Sera, described Leclerc as a driver who has “maintained his smile” through a complicated rivalry “all in the name of harmony within the team,” while privately refusing to accept being overshadowed. Terruzzi’s read is blunt: Leclerc “cannot bear the thought of also losing his internal battle to an old hand of the racetrack.” That old hand is Hamilton, 41 years old and in his second season at Ferrari after leaving Mercedes at the end of a career that produced seven world championships. Hamilton currently sits third in the 2026 drivers’ standings with 229 points, 14 ahead of Leclerc in fifth with 215. Both are a distant way behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who has built a 340 point cushion that has turned Ferrari’s title hopes into an afterthought. With the constructors’ fight effectively over, the only contest left inside the team is the one between its own two drivers, and that is precisely the contest Leclerc has reportedly accepted he cannot lose.The Numbers Tell a Different Story Than the Standings
Hamilton’s points lead over his teammate looks comfortable on paper. The recent form says otherwise. Leclerc has beaten Hamilton in six of the last nine Grands Prix, clawing back ground in exactly the stretch of the season where a driver fighting for standing inside his own team needs to make his move. At the Singapore Grand Prix itself, the swing was obvious: Leclerc finished second while Hamilton dropped from third to sixth after a strategy error cost him positions he had earned on track. Hamilton’s season has carried other complications that have nothing to do with pace. The FIA issued Hamilton and Ferrari a 30 place grid penalty on October 3, and he was taken for a medical check after the Singapore Grand Prix, which meant he missed his media obligations that weekend too. Reports have also suggested his newly assigned race engineer had not started the job seven months after being announced for the role. None of it has derailed Hamilton’s championship position entirely, but all of it has given Leclerc an opening, and recent results suggest he has taken it.How Hamilton Got to Ferrari in the First Place
Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was never a quiet transition. He left Mercedes, the team that delivered six of his seven titles, to join the sport’s most storied constructor for the 2025 season, a decision he has said he personally pushed for inside his own camp. Ferrari halted development of its 2025 car that April to focus entirely on new regulations arriving in 2026, a gamble that cost the team any realistic shot at wins that year. Hamilton’s only victory in 2025 came in a sprint race in China. He has been candid about how that first season felt. “Did I know at the end of the year we’ll be where we are? No. We anticipated it, but it felt worse, naturally,” Hamilton said at the time, while insisting the struggles never shook him personally. He described already working on the 2026 car in the simulator before the season had even finished, calling it the shortest off season break of his career. That early investment appears to have paid off in part: Hamilton is a genuine points contender in 2026, though a seven time champion finishing third behind a 20 year old in his first title fight was not the outcome anyone at Ferrari expected when they signed him.A Team Trying to Manage Two Fires at Once
Ferrari’s season has involved more than managing Hamilton and Leclerc. Speculation about team principal Fred Vasseur’s own position grew loud enough this year that Ferrari held an emergency media call specifically to back him, a sign of how much pressure has built around every level of the operation. A team dealing with questions about its leadership, a championship that slipped away early, and two drivers locked in an increasingly personal fight for internal supremacy had every reason to want a break from the tension. A twenty minute Instagram takeover, filtered selfies and all, gave them exactly that, for one afternoon in Singapore.The Rivalry Does Not Take a Day Off
Leclerc joined Ferrari’s junior program as a teenager and made his Formula 1 debut with the team’s backing in 2019, carrying the kind of expectation that comes with being groomed by a manufacturer for a decade before he ever got the car capable of winning a title. He has finished second in the drivers’ standings twice without ever lifting the championship itself, a record that already invited comparisons to other talented Ferrari drivers who came agonizingly close and left empty handed. Hamilton’s arrival, fresh off seven championships somewhere else, was never going to be read inside that garage as a neutral event. It was always going to be read as a referendum on whether Leclerc was the right man to finally end Ferrari’s title drought, or merely the driver keeping the seat warm until someone more decorated arrived. What makes the Ferrari prank worth remembering past this week is the contrast it accidentally captured. Two teammates can share a scooter, joke about each other’s hair, and nearly break their own team’s social media accounts in the same season where one of them is quietly determined not to finish behind the other again. Leclerc has spent years as the face of Ferrari’s future, the home grown talent expected to deliver the team’s first championship in decades. Watching a seven time champion arrive and immediately become the measure he is judged against was never going to sit comfortably, no matter how many fan polls about his hair he hosts in between. Five races remain in the 2026 season. Antonelli’s title is effectively decided. What is not decided is whether Hamilton holds his 14 point edge over Leclerc through the finish, or whether the driver who has won six of the last nine races between them closes the gap and settles, at least for one season, who the better Ferrari driver really is. Whatever happens, both men now know Ferrari has the footage to make them laugh about it afterward either way.Sources:
