Hamilton crashes on second day of private Ferrari Barcelona F1 test

Lewis Hamilton has crashed on the second of his three days of private Formula 1 testing with his new Ferrari squad, which is taking place at the Barcelona circuit this week, Autosport understands.

Hamilton is understood to be unharmed in the incident, which occurred as he was traversing the third sector of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya at around 11am local time.

The seven-time world champion hit the barriers with a modified version of Ferrari’s 2023 challenger – the SF-23 – which sustained damage to its suspension and aerodynamic bodywork pieces.

Hamilton climbed from the car that was then brought back to the pits where Ferrari is analysing the cause of the incident.

Charles Leclerc was due to take over driving duties in what is a Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) session, which counts towards the four days and 1,000km totals each F1 team can use in cars that are two years old or more, each season, if their squads are running such programmes.

Leclerc’s run on Wednesday has been delayed while Ferrari fixes the SF-23 it had been fielding – a variant of the machine that secured just a single win via Hamilton’s predecessor, Carlos Sainz, in the 2023 season.

Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari Test Barcelona

Photo by: Ferrari

Ferrari’s TPC team, which is working under the supervision of ex-F1 racer and deputy team principal Jerome D'Ambrosio, plus its new technical director Loic Serra, will at least be able to swap in Leclerc’s seat, pedals, steering wheel and other personal cockpit parts as it makes the repairs to avoid losing any more time.

The test is scheduled to run until Thursday and follows both Hamilton and Leclerc driving at Ferrari’s Fiorano home test track last week.

That outing also counted towards each team's TPC allowance for 2025, with Hamilton understood to have used only 89 of his 1,000km during his first time behind the wheel of a Ferrari F1 car, with six-season Scuderia stalwart Leclerc completing 42.

The Barcelona test had been scheduled to take advantage of better weather compared to the cold and wet conditions at Fiorano last week.