Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I’m still in awe of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the memory of walking into the Circuit de la Sarthe on Sunday morning, hearing a race I watched start some 14 hours ago previously still running.As I was finishing my report on Toyota’s sixth victory of the famous French endurance race, I saw Lewis Hamilton defeated the mighty 2026 Mercedes squad to become the first-non Mercedes Formula 1 winner this year and secure his first victory in Ferrari red.In an F1 season that was begging for more storylines beyond the baffling engines and George Russell’s many misfortunes (more on this to come), that result was welcomed.I’m Alex, and Madeline Coleman will be along later.(By the way, due to the U.S. holiday, we’ll have no PT this Friday. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Tuesday!)Barcelona-Catalunya GP: Hamilton highs and Russell lowsI really feel for Russell so far in 2026. Sure, he’s been a surprising step slower than F1 leader Kimi Antonelli many times, but he really should be closer to his F1-leading teammate in the drivers’ standings. Russell has 106 points to Antonelli’s 156.The Barcelona-Catalunya GP was Russell’s first bit of good fortune in quite a while in that it was Antonelli who suffered a Mercedes engine issue for a change. But before that happened, Hamilton gained significant distance with a final pit stop under the virtual safety car activation.I don’t know who Russell cursed on his way from winning in Melbourne to his first 2026 reliability drama the following week in China, but they sure have subsequently wreaked their vengeance.The other way of looking at this is that not only had Antonelli passed Russell for second place before his late failure last Sunday, but Hamilton’s upgraded Ferrari was seriously fast in Spain, as Madeline explained here.Short of mirroring his aggressive three-stop strategy — and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also hinted that not issuing team orders at the race’s halfway stage cost both silver cars time too, given their battle — there seemed to be little Russell could’ve done to stop Hamilton, his former teammate, from winning.The standings gap between Hamilton (115 points) and Russell has now increased to nine points. Hamilton also now trails Antonelli by 41, having arrived in Spain 66 points adrift.Quite frankly, both Mercedes drivers should be worried by Hamilton’s recent gains.Mercedes clearly has a severe reliability problem, as good as its engine package is overall (although, apparently, not Red Bull good). These things take time to fix, and as quickly as Russell’s gap ballooned around reliability misery, so too could Antonelli’s lead be wiped out.There are 15 races remaining, after all …Speaking of the rest of the 2026 calendar, I spoke with the president of Qatar’s motorsport organization at Le Mans (the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation joined forces with the Italian Iron Lynx team to field a Mercedes car in the GT3 class) about the possibility of dates moving late in the campaign to squeeze the canceled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races back in.