14 August 2026 17:51
McLaren faced the challenge over following up its back-to-back world titles across an entirely different set of regulations. On paper, it felt like the Woking-based squad was well equipped to do so, but a combination of its 2025 title race hangover and its challenges exploiting Mercedes' power unit have put it on the back foot this year. But a typical, mid-season McLaren surge has salvaged a B- ...
14 August 2026 15:02
Mercedes technical director James Allison says the team's decision to keep developing its 2026 Formula 1 car late has put it "out of phase" with the other teams around it, causing a leapfrog effect as in-season updates produce large performance gains.
The W17 has been the class of the field so far, starting out the year with a 1-2 finish in Australia and going on to claim eight wins in the ...
14 August 2026 14:14
Formula E boss Jeff Dodds beamed with pride when several Formula 1 drivers attended the Monaco E-Prix, labelling their comments about Gen4 as his highlight of the 2025-26 season.
Reigning F1 world champion Lando Norris and several others attended Formula E’s Monaco weekend in May, which was rounds nine and 10 of the current campaign, respectively won by Nyck de Vries and Oliver ...
14 August 2026 13:37
Four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen has unveiled a special-edition helmet design ahead of what will be his final home race at the 2026 Dutch Grand Prix.
The Dutchman's home race helmet design abandons his standard 2026 design for a white and blue colourway inspired by the traditional Dutch Delftware ceramics.
The design incorporates intricate floral patterns and ornate blue detailing ...
14 August 2026 12:48
According to Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto, Alpine was overtaken by Racing Bulls in the final weeks before Formula 1's summer break.
Both drivers say it is simply a matter of car development – Red Bull's sister team has introduced more upgrades, and more effective ones, than the Enstone squad – which means Alpine is pinning a lot of hope on its upgrade package for Zandvoort.
On a ...
14 August 2026 11:52
The FIA has revised its emergency measures to lift restrictions on Russian and Belarusian drivers and no longer binds them to a commitment of 'neutrality', walking back on the measures placed on them following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the FIA introduced a series of sanctions against Russian and Belarusian organisations and drivers. No ...
14 August 2026 11:35
For long-time Audi stalwart and Le Mans winner Allan McNish, becoming Audi's first racing director in Formula 1 feels like the natural progression of his storied career on both sides of the pitwall.
After climbing the UK single-seater ladder in the late '80s and early '90s, McNish's road to the top took a number of strange turns, with a McLaren F1 test role that ultimately didn't lead to an F1 ...
13 August 2026 16:59
Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad says his maiden Formula 1 campaign is proving to be a "dream" as he evaluates an impressive first half of the 2026 season.
The 19-year-old started the year off strongly by reaching Q3 at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix and ultimately secured an eighth-place finish. He has since added seven further Q3 appearances and a streak of six consecutive ...
13 August 2026 16:56
Aston Martin Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll has been spotted around the streets of Monaco in an ultra-rare Aston Martin DBR22 speedster.
The Canadian was seen at the wheel of the open-cockpit V12 during the F1 summer break. Introduced in 2022 to celebrate a decade of the bespoke 'Q by Aston Martin' division, the DBR22 draws inspiration from the British marque's DBR1, which won the 1959 24 Hours ...
13 August 2026 15:15
Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner has admitted that he would be open to making a return to the championship, provided the opportunity is a genuine "project".
Steiner, who quickly became a fan-favourite personality through Netflix's Drive to Survive, was replaced as Haas team principal in January 2024. Since his exit, the 61-year-old has become a regular guest on The Red ...
13 August 2026 15:00
Halfway through the 2026 Formula 1 season, there is still talk about a Red Bull seat, but not the position that has come under the most pressure in recent years. And that is perhaps the biggest compliment Isack Hadjar could receive following his promotion to Red Bull.
Since Daniel Ricciardo's departure for Renault, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have all ...
13 August 2026 14:15
Ferrari Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc and his wife, Alexandra Leclerc, who married in a private Monaco ceremony earlier this year, are currently holidaying in Sardinia.
Recent photographs from their luxury yacht getaway have fuelled rumours that the couple are expecting their first child, with Alexandra appearing to show a baby bump.
While the couple have yet to officially announce the ...
13 August 2026 13:19
Cadillac Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas has already seen progress with the newly formed team in the first half of its maiden season in the championship.
Cadillac joined F1 in 2026 as its 11th team with the experienced driver line-up of former Mercedes driver Bottas and former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. While it is yet to score its first point in the series and has suffered reliability ...
13 August 2026 13:01
Red Bull made an admirable start to life as a bona fide power unit manufacturer, but on the chassis side the team has been lagging behind its top rivals since day one. A late push towards the summer is salvaging a C- grade rather than a less satisfactory score.
The bad
Red Bull started 2026 as F1's fourth-fastest team in Melbourne. Initially, a lot of that deficit was attributed to the ...
13 August 2026 12:53
Former Ferrari Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley has argued that the structure of Haas will prevent it from becoming a frontrunning team in the championship.
The American outfit joined the F1 grid in 2016, relying heavily on a technical partnership with Ferrari. While the approach allowed Haas to enter the championship in a more cost-effective manner, it has often contributed to a mid-season ...
13 August 2026 11:30
Two-time Formula 1 champion Mika Hakkinen has opened up about working alongside David Coulthard at McLaren, explaining that a shared belief in the Woking outfit's future success prevented on-track collisions from affecting their working relationship.
Coulthard and Hakkinen reflected on their long stint as McLaren team-mates, which resulted in two drivers' titles for the Finnish driver and a ...
13 August 2026 10:43
Cadillac Formula 1 team CEO Dan Towriss has refuted reports that the team is looking at Formula 2 frontrunner Rafael Camara for 2027, albeit admitting that “things can always change”.
Motorsport revealed at the Hungarian Grand Prix that the Ferrari-powered outfit was tracking Camara with a view to make the Scuderia’s junior one of its race drivers for next season.
Read ...
13 August 2026 09:20
More than a week before the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, the Formula 1 world was abruptly awakened from its summer break.
At 3pm UK time, Cadillac decided the time was right to make a shock announcement: Graeme Lowdon had been replaced as team principal with immediate effect by Marcin Budkowski.
Two elements of that news are not particularly strange in themselves. For many in the paddock ...
12 August 2026 22:00
New Cadillac Formula 1 team boss Marcin Budkowski has praised Sergio Perez for his role in the 2026 campaign - denying any rumours linking him away from the debutant squad.
The 36-year-old joined the American outfit for its F1 debut in 2026 and although he is yet to score a point due to inferior machinery, Perez has still shown what he is capable of.
Perez leads team-mate Valtteri Bottas ...
12 August 2026 19:36
New Cadillac team principal Marcin Budkowski confirmed he’d held negotiations with “more than half” of the Formula 1 grid as he explained why he opted for the debutant outfit.
On Wednesday Cadillac made a shock announcement that Graeme Lowdon had been replaced by Budkowski as team principal during the summer shutdown of its rookie F1 campaign.
The American squad sits bottom of the ...
12 August 2026 19:08
The Cadillac Formula 1 outfit has confirmed that Graeme Lowdon’s dismissal as its team principal “wasn’t a mutual decision” - adding he was only told on the morning.
Cadillac made a shock announcement on Wednesday that Lowdon had been replaced by ex-Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski for the rest of the 2026 campaign and beyond.
It came during the summer shutdown of the ...
12 August 2026 16:24
The Cadillac Formula 1 outfit has hired a new team principal, appointing Marcin Budkowski to the position instead of Graeme Lowdon.
Budkowski, 49, has held a myriad of roles in the world championship over the past 25 years, working as an aerodynamicist at Prost, Ferrari and McLaren before heading the FIA’s F1 technical department.
Following his FIA stint, Budkowski joined the Renault ...
12 August 2026 15:14
The complaints have been rumbling since before the start of the Formula 1 season. Periodically they intensify, especially at so-called ‘energy-starved’ circuits where the ratio of corners to straights, and the type of corners, mitigate against the new-generation cars being able to recharge their batteries through the lap.
A tweak to the regulations implemented ahead of the Miami Grand Prix ...
12 August 2026 13:09
Racing Bulls equalled its best-ever result of sixth place in 2025, but started the new campaign with plenty of question marks. As one of F1's smaller teams, the huge regulation change was a big stress test and its closely-fought battle for sixth saw it start its 2026 car development later than several direct competitors.
Then there was the huge unknown of its brand-new power unit developed by ...
12 August 2026 11:05
Aston Martin Formula 1 driver ambassador Jessica Hawkins insists women have the physical strength required to race in F1, but suggests changes may be needed in junior categories such as Formula 2 and Formula 3 to ensure female and male drivers can compete on equal terms.
Speaking on the Road to Success podcast, the Briton reflected on her test of the Aston Martin AMR21 in Hungary in 2023. When ...
12 August 2026 10:20
Few topics in the Formula 1 paddock have generated as much political debate during the first half of the season as ADUO, the Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities.
The system was introduced as a safety net for a manufacturer that falls behind, partly in response to Honda's situation under the previous regulations, but in practice it has turned into a political battleground.
Toto ...
11 August 2026 15:29
Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord has given several reasons behind Kimi Antonelli’s rise into a Formula 1 title contender this season.
Antonelli endured a tough rookie campaign last year as F1’s third-youngest driver in history, having bypassed F3 to spend just one year in F2 before joining one of the most successful teams in the world championship – courtesy of Lewis Hamilton ...
11 August 2026 13:46
From all the teams that wrote off 2025 or shifted focus to 2026 much earlier, Alpine is actually the squad that saw the biggest benefits from that approach. Powered by Mercedes engines, the squad enjoyed a strong start to the season. But Alpine's first half of the year has been slightly downgraded to a B- as it got caught by its rivals ahead of the summer break, ending the first half of the season ...
11 August 2026 10:52
McLaren says Ferrari's vast number of Formula1 car upgrades over the first half of the 2026 season is an "inspiration" as it aims to keep rolling out updates of its own.
The dawn of a new era of regulations triggered a huge development war over the first half of the 2026 campaign, with Ferrari and Red Bull in particular impressing rivals with the quantity of upgrades they have been able to ...
11 August 2026 09:59
While Aston Martin introduced its first major upgrade package for the AMR26 in Hungary, Honda will bring its first update of the 2026 Formula 1 season to Zandvoort.
With Adrian Newey’s first upgrade package of the year, the deficit on the chassis side has been reduced considerably. Aston Martin is still a long way from where it wants to be, but figures from Paceteq show that its deficit in ...
10 August 2026 17:36
Formula 1's official Grill The Grid series returned for its 10th anniversary, challenging the current drivers to identify racers based on their career progression charts.
The challenge proved remarkably tricky for the current grid, with multiple drivers getting stuck on four-time champion Max Verstappen's career path and several others. But it was Williams' Alex Albon's self-deprecating humour ...
10 August 2026 16:59
Cadillac Formula 1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has given an update on the outfit’s current infrastructure, which is still being developed.
F1’s newest squad operates from several locations, mainly its Silverstone hub in the United Kingdom, while it makes the most of General Motors facilities in North Carolina and Michigan, and uses Toyota’s wind tunnel in Cologne (Germany).
Cadillac ...
10 August 2026 14:00
Thanks to a strong start by Oliver Bearman, Haas enters the summer shutdown in seventh place in the constructors' standings. The team scored 21 points, which leaves it well adrift of Racing Bulls and Alpine, but ahead of Audi and Williams. However, a worrying decline in performance as Formula 1's development race heats up is taking its score down a notch to a C-.
The good
Haas is still ...
10 August 2026 13:00
Aston Martin driver ambassador and former W Series racer Jessica Hawkins believes a woman will race in Formula 1 within a "few years", backing the F1 Academy to develop talent capable of fighting for seats on the grand prix grid.
Hawkins, who became the first woman in nearly five years to test modern F1 machinery when she drove the Aston Martin AMR21 in Hungary in 2023, discussed the timeline ...
10 August 2026 11:30
McLaren Formula 1 tech director Neil Houldey admits the squad was "disappointed" not to pick up on the upside down rear wing concept as quickly as pioneering Ferrari, as the team continues developing its own version for adoption after the summer break.
Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes, as F1 teams sink their teeth into a brand-new rulebook in 2026. Some design interpretations are more ...
10 August 2026 10:10
Having started the 2026 season on the back foot, McLaren is showing signs of what made this iteration of the storied team so successful in the first place over the past two years.
True to its successful strike rate with in-season upgrades in 2024 and 2025, McLaren's latest upgrade package in Hungary, featuring a revised floor and the latest iteration of its front wing, was another significant ...
10 August 2026 00:40
Former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard has revealed he once offered his struggling south-west London pub to former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson free of charge in an attempt to salvage the venture.
Speaking during a drive-along interview with presenter Jodie Kidd, the former Williams, McLaren and Red Bull driver explained how he approached Clarkson when he couldn't get the pub, The Brown Dog ...
09 August 2026 18:34
Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russell has announced his engagement to his long-term partner Carmen Montero Mundt.
Revealing the news in a sweet social media post, with a simple caption of a ring and a white heart, Russell shared photos from the occasion. Judging from the photos, the Briton popped the question at an intimate, candlelit dinner on a beach.
Russell and Montero Mundt began ...
09 August 2026 14:46
Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has advised Ferrari management against calling Charles Leclerc in for a formal mid-season sit-down, insisting the Maranello outfit should "leave him alone" as he works through a challenging period alongside Lewis Hamilton.
Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast alongside former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley and host Jake Humphrey ...
09 August 2026 13:32
Two-time Formula 1 champion Mika Hakkinen has warned McLaren against pursuing Max Verstappen, advising his former team to protect its internal team spirit and avoid "rocking the boat" amid midseason driver market speculation.
Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast alongside his former McLaren team-mate David Coulthard, the Finnish legend addressed the ongoing F1 'silly season' and persistent ...
09 August 2026 13:09
Mercedes Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff has opened up about finding the balance between his son Jack's enjoyment and ambition after the nine-year-old's latest karting victory in Italy.
Competing in the IAME Karting Series, Jack Wolff recently secured a race win that elevates him to the top of the championship standings ahead of the season finale.
Speaking at the circuit, the Mercedes ...
09 August 2026 13:04
When Audi presented its F1 project in Berlin last winter, it set an explicit goal of winning world championships by 2030. The German giant is used to success in any motorsport discipline it enters, whether that be endurance or the Dakar Rally, but it also acknowledged the long road it would have to walk to get there.
Audi heads into the summer break eighth in the standings on 12 points after ...
09 August 2026 12:12
Haas Formula 1 driver Oliver Bearman has revealed he has opened a bike shop and cafe above Monaco alongside a group of friends.
During an appearance on the F1 Beyond The Grid podcast, the 21-year-old Briton discussed his growing passion for cycling. Having integrated the sport heavily into his training for his 2026 F1 campaign, Bearman has now turned that interest into a business venture ...
09 August 2026 10:06
Gabriel Bortoleto has strongly argued that Formula 1 drivers “should be able to adapt” to any machinery, refuting the idea that the 2026 cars are clashing with driving styles.
This year has seen a switch to more electrical machinery with a 47-53 split against the internal combustion engine, causing a different style of racing as battery management is key.
Terms like superclipping have ...
08 August 2026 16:27
Seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton has shared his first photos with the newest member of his family, a golden retriever puppy named Halo.
After a demanding first half of the 2026 season, in which Hamilton secured his maiden grand prix victory with Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix and a string of podiums, the Briton is taking the opportunity to rest and recharge with a new ...
08 August 2026 15:47
Isack Hadjar has described his graduation from Racing Bulls to the senior Red Bull team as a "culture shock", though the 21-year-old insists his years in the junior programme made the transition feel natural.
Hadjar stepped up to partner four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen at Red Bull for the 2026 season following his rookie year with Racing Bulls. While both operations fall under the ...
08 August 2026 14:47
Haas Formula 1 driver Oliver Bearman has opened up on his deeply emotional experience driving Ayrton Senna's 1985 race-winning Lotus, admitting the moment moved him to tears.
In a recent appearance on the F1 Beyond The Grid podcast, Bearman detailed his unforgettable run in Senna's iconic Lotus 97T at Silverstone. The 21-year-old Briton drove the exact chassis in which the three-time champion ...
08 August 2026 13:11
After an extremely difficult 2025 season, Alpine is once again fighting for the 'best of the rest' title this year – in other words, to lead Formula 1's midfield behind the four top teams. But the Enstone-based team's ambitions go further than that, and that is certainly true of Flavio Briatore, the flamboyant executive advisor effectively running the outfit.
As is well known, the now ...
08 August 2026 12:38
Williams team principal James Vowles has revealed that Formula 1's financial cost cap is forcing the Grove outfit to divert resources away from current car development to urgently modernise its outdated facilities.
Following a bruising start to the 2026 campaign, compromised by an overweight and delayed car over the winter, Vowles admitted the team was "very exposed" by underlying ...
08 August 2026 12:23
Otmar Szafnauer has revealed the fascinating origin story behind Formula 1's famous pink livery, sharing that Best Water Technology (BWT) initially approached Mercedes for a sponsorship deal before being turned away by the Brackley outfit's board.
The former team boss, who oversaw the Silverstone-based Force India and, later, Racing Point squads during their vibrant pink era, shed light on the ...
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