Welcome to your technical preview ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix!

It’s been forty years since F1 first raced at the Hungaroring in 1986 and, as has been the case for a number of those years, our visit this year marks the teams’ last chance to get points on the board before the summer shutdown.

The impact of that momentum swing towards a team on mood and morale before the three weeks away can’t be understated - everyone will come into this wanting one final good result on the board, and one final dose of understanding about their car, prior to leaving everything as is for two mandatory weeks away.

The Hungaroring is set to give us a different profile of understanding about the cars and these regulations than we’ve gained from the past few rounds from the Red Bull Ring, to Silverstone and then to Spa - all higher speed, more energy starved circuits. It’s a slower average speed lap, incredibly twisty and flowing, with a real premium placed on traction and grip through the numerous direction changes.

It could mean that, for once, the biggest conversation this weekend is not around deployment or recharging. If that’s the case, it’ll feel like a bit shift from how we left things off in Spa with teams and drivers alike re-questioning this regulation set.

Given its nickname ‘Monaco without the walls’ it’s maybe no surprise that the Hungaroring is expected to sit at the very lowest end of the energy sensitivity scale, second only to Monaco.

The corner-to-straight balance here is behind that as the main pit straight is the only point of the lap where the drivers reach speeds over 300km/h. Every other one of the straights are too short to allow for that - Leclerc only reached 290km/h on the run to turn 4 on his pole lap last year and 285km/h down to turn 12.

Accordingly, the FIA are allowing the full 9MJ recharge allowance here in qualifying, which will drop to 8.5MJ for racing laps with overtake not active.

That will make things significantly more straightforward for the teams and drivers than they’ll have become used to over the run of venues we’ve been on recently, and should open up the opportunity for other factors to become the main story once again.

Bolting on the Downforce

With energy management moved aside as the usual main character this weekend, the differentiating factor when it comes to performance is likely to be aerodynamic load and downforce. Again it’s the corner-to-straight ratio that means there’s much less of a balancing act at play, and the active aerodynamics will only exaggerate that compared to previous years.

Efficiency between downforce and drag is much less of a consideration here so instead the teams can afford to load up their cars to maximise performance through the quickfire direction changes, and reduce sliding to maintain tyre performance through to the final corners - the two tricky sustained hairpins, first to the left and then to the right.

We’ve see the team getting quite creative with how they add marginal gains at higher downforce venues so far this year, with Monaco seeing the advent of intricate, detailed rear wing devices that made use of the regulation box usually used for the active aero actuator, given that that wasn’t in play there. It is this time, but as we saw in Barcelona, some of that technology and design carried forward and it could make a comeback here too.

Opening up the cooling

The heat is going to be on this weekend - not only competitively, but literally too. The forecast suggests highs of 28°C and that would already push the teams into considering their cooling setups, but the lack of straights here and lower average speed will make it even more of a consideration.

Look for open louvres, driver inlets and larger rear outlets given that the drag penalty of these is a lot less impactful around this layout than it usually would be.

Pirelli have selected compounds from the softest end of their range for this one: the C5 as the soft, the C4 as the medium and the C3 as the hard. It’s a decision made with the traction and braking stability demands of this circuit in mind but also the grip levels here which are some of the lowest of the season, especially at the start of the weekend. Track evolution is therefore anticipated to be high as it cleans up as the sessions tick down, but before that, don’t rule out some graining appearing on Friday.

Subscribe now

The track surface here is a mixed bag - at points where it hasn’t been renewed it’s quite rough, abrasive, and bumpy but at others that have more recently been resurfaced, it’s more stable. It’s also very dark in colour which creates some of the highest track temperatures we see all year, usually in the 50°C region.

Alongside the high energy that’s exerted on the tyres here, which increases cumulatively over the grand prix as the 70 laps tick down, it creates a recipe for thermal degradation being the biggest driver of strategy come Sunday as the only real respite the tyres get is down the main straight, which itself is only just over 900m long. The rears are usually most vulnerable to this and can see high wear as a result.

However, it can also have an impact in qualifying, complicating tyre preparation over the short lap which will require the teams to carefully manage their out-laps and traffic over them too.

Strategy here is usually dominated by the two-stop, owing to that thermal degradation. But even making that work requires a high level of management and tyre saving which is usually most needed, and effective, through the middle sector where the narrow width means overtaking is tricky, or at least has been in the past without boost or overtake mode in play.

But even small changes in track temperature and condition can change that, as we saw last year. Things were much cooler on Sunday than they had been earlier in the weekend and although the two-stop was still the most run strategy, the gap between it and the one-stop closed down given the reduced thermal degradation. That allowed Lando Norris to run to the win with just a single stop to recover from finding himself down in fifth on the opening lap, as a first stint extension turned into it becoming a viable option.

Effectively he opted for a tyre life delta over those around him in the middle phase, which allowed him to turn an inherited lead as Leclerc, Piastri and Russell took their first stops into a net one as they took their second stops with how much time Norris was able to gain from lap 32, his out-lap on new hards, to around ten laps later.

It did put him at a disadvantage in terms of tyre age later on, which led to a battle with Piastri on 14-lap newer hards in the closing stages. Ultimately though closing in, and staying close enough in the middle sector to make an overtake possible by turn one again, is tough here and as Piastri found out, too tough even with that sizeable tyre life advantage.

"Getting to within 6-7 tenths is doable. But I’d have needed to have been on brand new softs to pass after that,” he said post-race.

It would be tempting to say we could see a team try and replicate Norris’ race this year, and it’s not out of the question, but it was unusual. It was the first time a one-stop had been the winning strategy here in at least six Hungarian grands prix, and the first time it had really proved to be viable, albeit under the right conditions and in a very limited way, since 2019.

It means coming into the weekend, all things being as predicted, we’re expecting a two-stop race mostly using the medium and hard, however all three compounds could come into play over the field. That could create interesting variation in stop windows and timing even around the same strategic structure. However, any drop in degradation, even a subtle one, could change things and we could see the one-stop come back to the fore.

Subscribe now

With the emphasis this circuit places on traction, kerb riding, direction changes and cornering generally, it could be one that favours Ferrari most strongly. They’ve been strong in those areas repeatedly over this first half of the season and while they have found ‘surprise’ strengths at the higher speed, more efficiency demanding circuits recently this could be one where we see that intrinsic strength over the Mercedes come out, especially as the impact of the silver arrows’ deployment/recharge advantage will be mitigated here.

But that said, it would be silly to rule Mercedes out as a leader of the field or a threat for that title, on Antonelli’s side at least. If Monaco was anything to go by, this will be one where he storms ahead again which could spell trouble for George Russell’s chances at bouncing back from the tougher run he’s had recently, which it’s safe to say bubbled over in Spa. Equally though, George’s troubles have been on the energy management side and without that playing such an integral role in extracting lap time this weekend, it could be one where he claims one last momentum swing back in his favour before the break. It’s also a circuit he’s been strong at in recent years - with one pole and two podiums going his way.

The battle to be the third fastest team between McLaren and Red Bull could be an interesting one to watch this weekend, especially as McLaren feel they left Spa with “a smaller points haul than our potential”, according to Andrea Stella.

It’s a race they’ve dominated in the past - they’re the team with the most wins, podiums, poles and points here - and that’s carried over to recent form at the track too, with Piastri winning in 2024 and Norris in 2025. To bolster their chances of doing the triple, they’re set to bring what the team says is a “valuable upgrade package” to increase their performance at higher downforce circuits, like this one.

Further back, in fact at the very back, there’s another team arriving with the hopes of improving not just their performance at higher downforce circuits, but all of them via a significant set of updates - Aston Martin. This is the race they’ve been anticipating since almost the very beginning of the season as they’ve followed a development trajectory that has put incremental improvements to one side in favour of, they hope, a significant jump in performance in one go. It’s a strategy that’s seen them, as Adrian Newey has put it, “stand still” relative to the field so far.

This ‘b-spec’ package however will be their first step forward. They’ve taken weight out of the chassis and gearbox architecture, revised the rear suspension, developed a new nose, and substantially changed the aerodynamic surfaces to bring them “very close to the weight limit”, in Newey’s words, and in doing so shed some lap time.

How much they can shed and where that will leave them relative to the field is what we’ll have to wait and see, especially given that this package does not include a power unit update which will instead come after the summer.

Looking to the midfield and we’ve seen some incredible battles play out there in recent weeks, specifically at the front between Racing Bulls and Alpine, the former of whom have been taking strides in their ability to close in and challenge Alpine who had been the points-leaders of the pack since Japan.

After Spa though they’re exactly even on points with Racing Bulls leaving a lot at stake championship, and momentum wise, here as a result. Complicating their ability to battle it out alone though are Audi, who’ve made steps up the competitive order since Austria and have been able to run to the points with Bortoleto at back-to-back rounds now. Whether they can make it three in a row will be something to watch for, as the competition level over those P8-10 places heats up.

This is set to be Alex Albon’s 100th Grand Prix with Williams, which will make him the first driver to ever reach that milestone with the team.

Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver at the Hungaroring and by a long way. He’s won there 8 times with the driver with the second most wins there, Michael Schumacher, only having half that number. It also makes it his own second most successful circuit, only behind Silverstone.

The Hungaroring was the site of three current drivers’ first Grand Prix wins - Fernando Alonso in 2003, Esteban Ocon in 2021, and Oscar Piastri in 2024.

Subscribe now

Fundamentally that’s because of where the Red Bull has been stronger versus weaker this weekend.

Reverting back to their pre-’Macarena’ concept rear wing looks to have left them down on straight line speed and efficiency - to their detriment in sector one especially, but to their strength in sector two. In fact, over all sessions so far this weekend, the Red Bull has averaged as quickest in the middle phase of the lap and alongside this potential aerodynamic reasoning, their deployment strategy has been markedly different, than Mercedes’ especially, through there too.

But given that Hadjar has been hit with a 30-place grid drop penalty as a result of the team fitting his car with a new ICE, new turbocharger and new exhaust set outside of his allowance for the season, it made sense for Red Bull to try and play the team game to overcome that efficiency deficit once Hadjar was into Q3 safely.

According to Verstappen in the post-session press conference, they decided to do that in sector three rather than sector one because there’s slightly less time spent in straight mode there, meaning it’s slightly draggier, and therefore that the impact of a tow to reduce that could be slightly more significant.

The rehearsal for it came with the first runs of Q3. They left the pit lane first of anyone and the onboards show Hadjar slowing significantly in sector 3 and waiting to pick Verstappen up from the exit of turn 15 before being told to go again as Verstappen got within around 5 seconds of him, and that resulted in quite a distant tow.

For the final lap of Q3 though, the one that really mattered, they were much, much closer. Hadjar waited at the exit of turn 15 again but seemed to make the call of when to go himself as his onboard shows him watching his right mirror for Verstappen to appear. He keeps watching his mirrors for almost the entire length of the tow, monitoring the gap to Verstappen behind for the perfect time to move aside, which came just after the board marking where straight mode deactivates before the braking zone for the bus stop chicane. But Hadjar also didn’t follow that board for where his straight mode deactivated because he looks to close it early, boosting the hole he’s punching through the air for Verstappen.

And the difference in that execution from run one to run two is apparent in the telemetry, in a measurable way.

Comparing Verstappen’s final lap of Q2, with no tow, to that first run of Q3 with the distant one and the final Q3 lap with the better one shows a clear difference in the speed he was carrying around that flat out run through Blanchimont - around 13km/h from the Q2 lap to the final Q3 one.

Share

It left his sector three time improving by 0.462s over his lap without a tow, and by 0.094s over his lap with the distant one earlier in the same part of qualifying. That meant that compared to a 0.332s deficit Verstappen had had to Antonelli in that part of the lap by the end of Q2, it shrunk to be just 0.043s.

While the comparison to Kimi Antonelli is a good measure of the difference the tow made in combatting the Red Bull’s deficit there against the driver who was strongest there, for assessing how Verstappen may have done without it, given the 0.317s deficit Max still had to Kimi even so, it may be better to look at the difference it made against the drivers he was more at risk of losing out to.

That includes Lando Norris, George Russell, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who were all within 0.217s of Verstappen’s lap time by the end of the session.

Max’s final Q3 sector three time was the strongest of any of these drivers, and by some way, whereas in Q2 it had been the second slowest, only with Norris’ being slower. If we then look at where a similar sector three time as Q2 would have left Max alongside his Q3 times through the first two sectors in an overall ‘mock lap time’, his comments about being P6 begin to make sense.

With the 0.462s increase in his lap time, it becomes a 1:45.140 instead of the 1:44.678 it was with the tow, leaving him right at the bottom of that group and even behind Piastri who ended P7 with a lap of 1:45.016.

Of course there are so many variables at play on every single lap, so this is far from a perfect measure of where he might have been at that point of the session had Hadjar not been there for the team to even consider the tow (in terms of track position, for example), but it does help illustrate the level of impact the team work had on Verstappen’s finishing position today.

Subscribe now

The big question now though is where effectively ‘hacking’ their straight line speed deficit will leave Verstappen tomorrow when there is no tow and he has a race start to handle around all of these cars he perhaps is much more on par with performance-wise than the final qualifying result showed.

Verstappen himself said, “for sure, tomorrow I think I’ll be looking in my mirrors with the people around me”, and the real worry for him holding position will be the over one kilometre long run down the Kemmel Straight into the braking zone of Les Combes, where the slipstream has historically been incredibly powerful.

This year that could either be replaced or compounded by the difference in deployment strategy up Eau Rouge and Raidillon and onto the Kemmel Straight, which is somewhere Verstappen was losing time against the other top four teams, based on their quickest drivers’ quickest qualifying laps.

That said, the general energy profile that’s appeared around the lap of Spa, where drivers are lacking through sector two and clipping despite being flat on the throttle, could give rise to more yo-yoing or genuine changes of position through there in racing conditions - and Red Bull’s deployment bias to the run exiting Pouhon may pay off in helping them defend or come back through there.

In reality though, these are all unknowns until the lights go out tomorrow when there will be very different stories playing out on either side of the Red Bull garage as Verstappen works to defend position and Hadjar goes on the attack from the back of the field.

Subscribe now

Welcome to your technical preview ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix!

We’ve come into every race this year talking about how much of a challenge the new regulations would make each circuit, but Spa could act as the biggest test of them yet, both metaphorically and literally.

It’s the longest circuit on the F1 calendar at 7.004km with the most elevation change at around 102 metres difference between its highest and lowest points. That sheer size already presents a unique task for the teams when it comes to their setup, and their approach to and strategy for just a single lap, nevermind 44 on a Sunday afternoon.

In 2026 though, we have to consider what the energy management factor will add to that existing headache, and already some drivers are skeptical about what it will do to the feel of one of F1’s most historic venues. Fernando Alonso has warned that this, like Silverstone last time out, will be an ‘energy thirsty’ layout, affecting different parts of the lap differently. That’s going to require the teams to rise to the balancing act challenge Spa already presents in a whole new way.

It also makes predicting future success from past performance tricky, but this is a circuit Lewis Hamilton has thrived at in the past. He has the all-time podium and pole position record here, and is the winningest active driver here too with five victories to his name. This weekend, should he turn that five into six, he’ll equal Michael Schumacher’s Spa win record.

Spa is expected to be in a similar region as Silverstone in terms of energy sensitivity, but perhaps to an even greater extent. The lack of slower speed running and braking zones at all at Silverstone made finding a balance between recharging and deployment to feed the flat out portion a real challenge, and we saw a split in approaches between teams in how they did it.

Earlier on in the weekend, Ferrari had biased their deployment to the run into Copse and then the third sector and specifically the Hangar straight, whereas Mercedes’ approach focused on pushing the deployment in the first part of the lap. That did even out more as the weekend progressed however.

In Spa though, that sector-by-sector split is going to have to be even more exaggerated, but also likely converged upon over the teams, owing to the way their characteristics vary already.

Sector one is by far the fastest, with the drivers only hitting the brake once over its full length, at turn one, as the quick sweeping run through Eau Rouge and Raidillon flows into the flat out Kemmel Straight. The second sector is much more technical with its largely medium speed corners, the majority of which are downhill on the run to sector three, where again the drivers are flat out for the majority - past Stavelot and Blanchimont before only braking for the Bus Stop chicane.

That split profile is anticipated to directly relay over into the energy discharging and recharging over the lap. The drivers are likely to exit turn one with a full battery before depleting it fully by turn 5, Les Combes, at the end of the Kemmel Straight. And that depletion is also likely to come before that point, which could mean the return of some significant tapering off of top speed and superclipping. By the exit of turn 14, at the end of sector two, the battery should be full again before depleting fully over sector three’s flat out running, leaving the drivers to use the Bus Stop chicane to recharge slightly for the final push to the line.

The way the teams optimise their deployment-recharge profiles will have to take how these differing characteristics impact the likelihood of wheel-to-wheel battle in each sector into account too. We usually see a lot of moves coming at the end of the 1km long run down the Kemmel Straight into Les Combes, and that overtake typically sticks throughout sector two as it, historically at least, has been tricky to get a move done to come back through there. What’s going to be interesting to watch this year though is whether the energy tools the drivers have available, namely the boost or overtake, change that typical profile and as a result, alter how they deploy/recharge.

Compromising on setup?

While this year we’re heading into Spa discussing how the sector split is going to impact energy management, those discussions used to be centred around how it affected downforce levels, setup compromises and wing changes as a result.

But the active aerodynamics have changed things in how setup is approached now. No longer do the teams have to work to find a true middle ground at a track like this, where lower drag and especially end-of-straight speed is vital for retaining position down the long straights, but cornering stability and speed is also critical for optimising lap time through sector two.

Being able to effectively run two setups at once via the cornering mode and straight mode should mean that balance is much easier for the teams to find, particularly given that we’ll have five straight mode zones this weekend. That will also help preserve top speed and prolong efficiency as the deployment tapers off, given that the zones cover almost every single flat out run around the track.

Subscribe now

Eau Rouge and elevation change

With a return to Spa comes a return to one of, if not the most, infamous corner sequences in motorsport - Eau Rouge and the run up to Raidillon - and with that, the challenges it imposes on the teams and drivers.

It’s a run downhill prior to the steep uphill one which puts a compression through the cars, tyres and even the driver too. Mercedes estimate that that amounts to around 3G of vertical force as the car is pushed into the ground through the quick, down-to-up change at high speed, which is really the factor that makes the elevation such a critical consideration here.

Now the cars are of course built to sustain these forces through their suspension, however it does impact on their front ride height setup and therefore also the likelihood of skid wear, and a potential technical infringement if you get it wrong. It’s why, as the practice sessions tick down, we see brown/black marks up the centre line of the track there - it’s the physical scraping of the plank at the bottom of the car onto the asphalt.

Unpredictable weather

We can’t come to Spa and not discuss the weather, because it’s often the main character here for a few reasons.

At this time of year, the weather in the Ardennes, where the circuit is located, is often quite volatile - it can be dry one minute and torrentially raining the next, and you never quite know what you’re going to get. But the circuit’s size also contributes to that unpredictability, or at least difficulty in addressing the weather through the run plan or tyres, because it can be both raining and sunny at the same time at opposite ends of the track.

When we do get a fully wet circuit it can take a while to dry out because of the low clouds that often hang and linger over the forest, even if the rain itself has stopped. And, again, that effect can be different at different points of the lap.

Together it all combines to create a real headache for engineers and strategists, especially because if you miss the window to box during the crossover you have an awfully long way to go back around to try again. All the while, your rival may have got the call right and is making up time as you lose it.

Pirelli are bringing a compound range to Spa that sits exactly in the middle of their range - the C2 will be the hard, the C3 the medium and the C4 the soft. Given that last year we had compound skipping here, where the hard was moved to be the C1 while the medium and soft were consistent with this year’s selection, effectively we have a hard tyre that’s a step softer.

And that’s notable because the compound skipping was a decision made to try and encourage strategic variation and push the teams into considering a two-stop using the softer two compounds effectively by making the hard too much of a step down to consider running it. Although that lack of hard use did play out, as just three drivers fitted it over the Grand Prix, it was more due to the wet-to-dry circumstances, and performance-wise the opposite of Pirelli’s expectations played out.

The C1 was more consistent than the C3 in how it degraded, even if it was slightly slower, and that allowed a driver on it to push more to the end versus the significant management that was being done by any of the drivers who’d fitted the medium as they came off the inter early on.

Subscribe now

Spa is a track that’s tough on tyres, not quite to the level of Suzuka or Silverstone, but still to a point where the load and force put through the tyres over a lap is significantly demanding, and that’s likely why the hard performed so well as it came up to temperature and the track rubbered in as it dried. So with it moving to be softer this year, alongside the higher temperatures we’re expecting, the two-stop could become a viable option, as it has been here in the past when this very compound range has been on offer.

Spa has historically been one of the easiest venues of the year for overtaking, and this year we’re probably going to see the frequency of overtaking increase - either with yo-yoing or genuine changes of position. The role battery management now plays in wheel to wheel battling means the teams are having to put less priority on single lap pace at venues like this, with solid energy strategy meaning a driver can recover places over the grand prix versus where they start it.

But race-long strategy here is complicated by the circuit’s size for a few reasons, including in how it interacts with any weather change or interventions. If a driver is over the other side of the track compared to the pit lane when either hit, they have a long way to go to make it into the box which can result in a significant time loss or even, in the case of VSCs, missing the chance to capitalise altogether. Even in green flag racing conditions, missing the optimal stop window can leave you losing time with another 7km to do before you have the chance to come in again.

What’s worked in the past?

Spa is never really a straightforward race, and so last year’s wet to dry one-stop for the majority of the field was something of an anomaly in how simple it was.

To find a true Spa strategic game play out we can therefore look to 2024, where again the C2, C3 and C4 were the selection.

The track had been fully resurfaced prior to the race weekend that year which resulted in a much different tyre behaviour profile to what had been seen just twelve months ago. The balance shifted towards the two-stop as the optimal strategy, but unusually that involved the C2 hard rather than the C4 soft - in direct contrast to how the 2023 Grand Prix played out where a soft-medium-soft strategy was the winning, and podium earning, option.

But right out front the battle between the one- and two-stop option played out between Russell and Hamilton. Russell had boxed on lap 10 to move from the medium to the hard, but as he said post-race, “as we went further, I became more and more convinced we could get to the end on them.”

It was a risk and one that looked to have paid off as he was able to hold Hamilton back to the end despite him being on the charge on fresher hards, until the scrutineering results came through. George’s car was under the required minimum weight by 1.5kg, which Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin, put down to, at least in part, the “loss of rubber from the one-stop”. It handed the victory down to Lewis who had been the fastest car on the two-stop strategy.

To that point though Pirelli’s prediction of the one-stop being not fast enough versus the two looked to have been disproved, which they assumed was down to the higher track temperature bringing the hard into a position where it suffered minimal graining. With the lessons from Mercedes and Russell’s situation learned, we may see teams trying to replicate the one-stop’s viability as an alternative strategy if the conditions allow. If that’s their plan, their strategic decision on race day will be whether to start on the medium or soft - and look out for clues from their allocation management as to which way they’re thinking.

This weekend is once again looking like one where the premium will be on straight line speed, specifically maintaining it for as long as possible to the end of a straight, and deployment strategy and how that feeds into it. Cornering in the middle sector will of course play a role in lap time optimisation, but when it comes to racing, we’ve classically seen those who can find efficiency rewarded in how they can pull away down the Kemmel Straight, get a move done to Les Combes, and hold that throughout the middle part of the lap.

With that in mind, it’s hard to see past Mercedes as the obvious favourites. The strength they’ve shown not only in straight line speed but also deployment strategy this year feeds into that, and we’ve seen it time and time again. If they do emerge as the leaders of the field once again, the intra-team driver differences are going to be fascinating to watch especially as George arrives here after having made a significant dent into Kimi’s championship lead at Silverstone, and Kimi arrives needing to bounce back from a run of bad luck.

But that said, Silverstone was perhaps a turning point for Ferrari in how closely they are able to challenge Mercedes in those areas. They found significant improvements, much to Hamilton’s surprise, in deployment and top speed in a way that seemingly allowed them to overcome the power deficit they used to have to Mercedes which left the two teams incredibly evenly matched in qualifying.

The drag vs. downforce setup trade off might be less impactful this year than it has been in the past, but there is probably still going to be an advantage for the team who can most efficiently trade off their straight mode and corner mode. That has been a sticking point, not necessarily in terms of performance but reliability, for Red Bull and Verstappen specifically over the last two race weekends. Some form of malfunctioning with his rear wing coming out of straight mode has compromised both his qualifying effort, in Austria, and his race result, in Silverstone, now and that’s going to have to be something the team address here. It’s going to be very interesting to see if that could involve a reversion to a pre-’Macarena’ specification.

Another point of interest this weekend will be at McLaren. They slipped back at Silverstone, dropping to be over 6 tenths off the pacesetters on race day and therefore comfortably the fourth quickest team. Quite simply they were down on performance, as Andrea Stella admitted, but their run so far this season on the whole has been stifled by some reliability issues.

This weekend they’ll both address them and pay the price for them. Norris will take what has been an option to him for a couple of races now - a reliability update from Mercedes HPP that other customers have already taken. McLaren have held off on it as it means he will incur a 10 place grid drop penalty as a result of the level of unreliability he’s already suffered and how its impacted his power unit allocation usage.

But with overtaking being easier in Spa than Hungary or Zandvoort coming up, they’ve opted to do it here. It will complicate his race on Sunday, but could make for a fascinating comeback drive if McLaren can find enough performance over the midfield cars to help him carve through, but after Silverstone that isn’t necessarily a given.

Spa may be the longest circuit on the current F1 calendar, but the 7.004km length is around half of what it used to be when the F1 championship first raced here in 1950. The drivers ran on a 14.120km circuit joining Spa with Malmedy and Stavelot, which made each lap over four and a half minutes long.

In 2021, the Belgian Grand Prix became the shortest F1 race ever run. It went for just 3 laps behind the safety car as the conditions in the wet were so terrible and the drivers were awarded half points.

It’s a classic fun fact for a Spa weekend - the circuits most well-known corner, Eau Rouge, gets its name from the ‘red water’ stream that runs under the circuit there, resulting from iron-oxide deposits.

Subscribe now

Welcome to your technical preview ahead of the British Grand Prix!

The British Grand Prix is a genuine classic, taking place where the F1 championship was born in 1950 - Silverstone Circuit. That storied history seeps through every part of the lap, but this year could be paired with a very new feeling as we get ready to witness how these most modern cars take on one of F1’s oldest venues.

Already we’ve had a warning from last year’s pole sitter here, Max Verstappen, about what that might look like. He said in the post-Austria press conference that he “just started laughing” when he tried Silverstone on the simulator in the 2026 car because “it just felt like a different track"!

And that change in track feel down to the intrinsic characteristics interacting with the systems of these new cars is something we’ve discussed over and over this season so far, practically at every venue. But, as Max says, it could be the most stark yet at this classic.

High Speed and High Loads Clipped?

The lap of Silverstone lacks heavy braking zones (the brake is only hit 7 times over the layout) and is instead known for its sweeping, flowing, high speed, high lateral load corners - some of which are infamous for their challenge and reputation. Maggots-Becketts-Chapel, for example, the left-right-left-right-left sequence that concludes the middle sector, is a true driver favourite - one that over last year’s pole lap was taken at an average speed of 261.5km/h with just two lifts off the throttle and a dab of the brake.

But that speed is likely to come down quite a bit this year. The reduced downforce of these cars versus their predecessors is one potential reason for that, especially compared to the ground effect era cars that were renowned for their high-speed cornering performance, but the power units and energy management requirements will be another.

While regeneration can be done under braking, equally it can be done on full throttle via ‘superclipping’ which will now, unlike the start of the season, harvest at 350kW rather than the 250kW it was set at. We’ve become used to discussing that phenomenon appearing and the end of long straights, which on the telemetry appears as the the vMax (peak velocity) consequently coming more in the middle of a flat-out run and the speed trace tapering off as the driver reaches the end.

But it also functions in high speed corners, as we first saw at turn 12 in Bahrain testing which saw a 20+ km/h speed reduction from the way it was approached in 2025.

Maybe most controversially so far though, it impacted the high speed, left-handed kink of 130R in Suzuka - a truly iconic corner. Instead of the drivers sustaining speeds of ~300km/h through, the clipping this year meant that while the apex speed was fairly similar, the run towards the final chicane out of 130R was taken at ever reducing speeds. Eventually, by the braking zone, the drivers were ~30km/h down compared to their entry speed in 2025.

Subscribe now

The sheer lack of heavy braking zones for regeneration over the latter part of the Silverstone lap, effectively from turn 8 and beyond, means superclipping is going to have to come into play in a way that could make Maggots and Becketts the latest corner sequence to be impacted. Equally though, to feed the run into it, the apex speed of Copse corner that comes before could change too as could the approach into Stowe that comes after.

The FIA have reduced the harvesting limits for the weekend in an effort to prevent the impact of these techniques being excessive through such sections, and to aid with driver workload, but we won’t know what that lower limit is nor its impact until we get into the weekend. The result though will be not only a lowered harvesting limit, but consequently a lower level of energy available for deployment - increasing overall energy sensitivity, and potentially increasing lap time.

Maintaining and Maximising Speed

With superclipping set to come back to the fore after a few weekends out of the spotlight, maximising and maintaining speed through these sequences but also to the very end of the straights is going to be critical.

Straight mode vs. corner mode will be key to that: minimising drag during the flat, straight runs but maximising stability through these aforementioned sequences. There will be four straight mode zones over the lap, in some pretty interesting places and with some interesting properties to them too.

The Hamilton Straight (past the pits) will only have straight mode to cover the run to the line and slightly beyond, not all the way down to turn 1 - presumably to ensure the cars arrive at the high speed corner with enough downforce bolted on to mean they don’t go sailing off track. From there, the Wellington Straight between T5-6 is almost entirely covered by straight mode.

Woodcote corner, or T8, is then also set to be taken with the wings open and down in dry conditions which may change it from being a corner that’s run flat out on the throttle to one where the drivers have a chance to lift slightly and recover some energy to take into Maggots and Becketts. It’s a similar story then on the run out of that sequence and down the straight towards Stowe (T15).

While it perhaps won’t help the spectacle of these corners and how they’re taken in a pure sense, it should help even out the average speed over the full lap to bring it more in line with what we’re used to.

Pirelli moved the compound range a step softer here last year compared to what it had been in the past, but this year we’re back at the hardest end of the range - the C1 will be the hard, the C2 the medium, and the C3 the soft.

The softer range in 2025 was decided upon with strategic variation in mind, which really was the central theme to a number of Pirelli’s decisions last season. But come race day, the weather meant we didn’t get to see how that would have played out.

This year though, Pirelli’s decision making is driven more by meeting the track characteristics once again. Silverstone’s high speed corners generate a huge amount of lateral force that the tyres are directly subjected to, at levels similar to those seen in Suzuka, where we also saw the hardest compounds in play, and Spa, where we head next. It’s the front axle that’s most heavily stressed, specifically the front left given that the corners are predominantly right-handers (10 right vs. 8 left).

The circuit’s surface is well rubbered in, given how much it’s used both over the year and over the Grand Prix weekend itself by the several support series, and it’s also rated medium-low in abrasiveness by Pirelli. Degradation here is therefore typically driven more by the lateral forces and the thermal loads those put through the tyres lap-after-lap come the Grand Prix, however we’re also anticipating fairly high ambient temperatures this weekend (25-27°C) which may exacerbate that. Wear can also play a role, as can graining, though Pirelli have noted that their more graining-resistant constructions have so far performed well this year in reducing the impact of the phenomenon on tyre life and performance.

It should be said too that weather is tough to predict here, because the circuit being on an old airfield means it tends to form its own microclimate so rain, cloud and sun can appear regardless of any forecast, at any time, at any part of the lap - complicating strategy.

That unpredictability in the weather has resulted in the last two British Grands Prix being affected, in one way or another, by rain and the use of the inters as a result. But looking back to 2024, the last race here to use the same hardest compounds that will be on offer to the teams this weekend, we can get some clues about what we might expect to see if things stay dry.

Subscribe now

Heading in, Pirelli anticipated that it a fully dry race would run as a one-stop given the relative durability of the tyres, however within that all three compounds were thought to be viable. Their director of motorsport at the time, Mario Isola, anticipated that the C3 soft would be the starting tyre for the quickest strategies, with the C2 medium as the second compound offering a marginally faster way to the line than a C1 hard stint.

However, on Sunday, the teams opted for strategic flexibility over pure pace and all but three of the twenty drivers started on the medium which went on to show impressive durability and competitiveness. The majority ran 26-28 lap stints on it, only boxing off it and onto an inter as the rain hit mid-race.

Once the track had dried around 10 laps later, the majority opted to fit the soft to the end despite the unknowns surrounding its durability, which is what prompted Red Bull to put Verstappen on the hard as he tried to chase down Hamilton for the victory. Ultimately though the soft held up even on a track that was green from the rain, which the teams may see as evidence for its use for a closing stint this year too in the event of a late neutralisation or weather.

However without either of those factors in play, Pirelli anticipate that this year’s race will a one-stop likely featuring the medium and hard compounds - the most mechanically consistent of the three on offer, as the C3 has shown graining here in the past.

Complicating their weekends though will be the teams’ allocation management given that the Sprint format reduces the total slick tyre sets per car from 13 to 12 via them having access to two fewer softs, yet one more medium. Pirelli have said that will likely push the teams into using the C1 hard in FP1 to try and retain as many softs and mediums as possible for the two qualifying sessions, and two races we have.

In the past, Silverstone has been a true test of a team’s aerodynamics through how well they can tackle its numerous, tough, high speed corners. But now, that test is set to shift to one of how they can best engineer their drivers around the lap, taking the harvesting vs. deployment balance into account.

And we head here with one team who’ve shown that one of their real advantages over the competition thus far has been in that area - Mercedes. Consistently, venue-to-venue they’ve been better at optimising the deployment strategy over a lap and managing to find higher top speed and maintaining it for longer down a straight as a result. Silverstone’s layout could well work to expose that disparity between the teams again.

However, we also saw others make clear steps last time out in Austria, namely Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen. The sizeable upgrade package they brought worked in closing down their average 0.9s race pace delta to the benchmark from Melbourne to Barcelona to sit at around 0.2s away (combined average between Verstappen and Hadjar), and put Verstappen alone as the quickest driver in the field (albeit by just 0.013s over Russell). It also looked to allow Verstappen an advantage over Austria’s higher speed corners in sector 2 of the lap, specifically the turns 6, 7, 8 sequence where he was consistently quicker than Russell on race day.

If that strength can come through again this weekend it could stand them in good stead, and potentially balance out more with the Mercedes’ straight line speed advantage, while also adding to the evidence of the package working to further their performance outside the specific context of the Red Bull Ring.

Those specifics - the high temperature, potentially the altitude, and the long straights - left another team, Ferrari, out of the mix last time out. The dip they suffered compared to the performance seen from the team, and especially Hamilton, in Barcelona to enable their first race win since 2024 was staggering.

Simply, it came down to degradation catching Ferrari out as they suffered at a level that couldn’t be combatted with a switch to the three-stop for either driver, unlike Barcelona. Silverstone may therefore be kinder to them with cooler temperatures predicted, but if they struggle here too it doesn’t bode well for their hopes of Hamilton or Leclerc battling Mercedes, or potentially Red Bull too, over a race distance at a few further tracks we have coming up.

Subscribe now

In many ways then, Silverstone may be a litmus test of the performance profile we’ve seen emerge in recent weeks as the teams begin developing these cars with real pace.

Silverstone stands as the fifth longest circuit on the current F1 calendar. At 5.891km it sits behind Spa (7.004km), Las Vegas (6.201km), Jeddah (6.174km) and Baku (6.003km).

Lewis Hamilton is set to contest his 21st Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend. He holds the record for the most wins here (9), the most podiums (15), the most poles (7) and the most points (345). But it’s Fernando Alonso who’s raced the most laps here of any current driver - 111 more than Lewis.

Five drivers will race under the British flag for their home race this weekend - the most Brits in the field at a British Grand Prix since 1996. That year, the race wasn’t won by a British driver, though three finished inside the top 10.

Now that wouldn’t be entirely fair, because George Russell set up his run to pole with the best sector 1 of the session, a personal best sector 2, and he was setting purple mini sectors before he hit what made said run so controversial…

Just as George was about to conclude the final two mini sectors of sector 2, at the other side of the lap, Max Verstappen lost the rear of his RB22 into turn 9 and consequently went spinning off sideways through the gravel and into the barrier. It meant that as George arrived at the end of the straight that leads into the penultimate corner, the LED panels on the side of the track were flashing yellow, but what kind of yellow is what matters.

As Russell opened sector 3, the live timing says there was only a single waved yellow active over the mini sector Verstappen had crashed in and just 22 seconds later, again according to the live race control feed, that upgraded to a double yellow, but by that point Russell was past Verstappen and into the 19th mini sector of the 21 that make up the lap (Verstappen’s crash was in sector 15).

Out on track though, the drivers don’t see this timing and instead rely on the LED panels and the marshals’ flags to tell them this information, alongside communication with their engineer, and these two distinct yellow flag types do display differently. A single waved yellow is shown on the LED panels as a full yellow rectangle that flashes whereas a double waved yellow is shown as a split diagonal yellow panel, where the top and bottom diagonal halves alternate as they flash.

(Warning: Flashing in the above video)

And knowledge of that distinction, and importantly noticing it while actively lapping, is what made the difference because they require very different reactions too.

Double vs. Single Waved Yellows

Article B1.8.4 of the F1 Sporting Regulations, but also Article 2.5.5b of Appendix H of the International Sporting Code, says that a driver passing through a single waved yellow marshalling sector must “reduce their speed and be prepared to change direction”. However, under a double waved yellow that elevates to the driver needing to “reduce speed significantly and be prepared to change direction or stop.”

And for the stewards to be satisfied that that requirement has been met, they want to see different things:

Single Waved Yellow Flag: the driver is expected to have “braked earlier and/or discernibly reduced speed in the relevant marshalling sector”.

Double Waved Yellow Flag: it must be clear that the driver “has not attempted to set a meaningful lap time on the relevant lap”.

So how did George manage to still find 0.163s on Leclerc in sector 3 alone, and satisfy that requirement to avoid a penalty?

Subscribe now

George’s reaction - according to the telemetry

To visualise how George’s approach to the final sector under the yellow flag was distinct, we can compare it to the first push lap he’d set in Q3 of 1:06.457, which was unaffected.

What becomes very clear very quickly is the magnitude of the lift compared to where he was lifting for turn 9 on an unaffected lap. He comes off the throttle just over 100 metres earlier than the lift point on his previous attempt and rides that through the full corner. He’s also takes longer to get back onto the throttle out of the corner.

But the result is an impact on his speed that is fairly minimal. Comparing the laps at the point at which he typically lifted, his speed under the yellow flag is 14.2km/h slower - 293.1km/h versus 307.3km/h. According to the stewards’ verdict therefore of there being no further investigation over the potential infringement they noted, that constitutes a “discernible” reduction. It meant that, by the chequered flag, George had found 0.344s on his previous lap time.

What matters in a competitive sense though ultimately is how Russell’s approach and reaction differed from the driver he was fighting for a chance at taking Leclerc’s provisional pole - his teammate, Kimi Antonelli.

How Antonelli’s reaction differed

Kimi Antonelli said post-session that he made a “mistake” that cost him a chance at not only pole, but a potential front row too, and it came down to his interpretation of the signals of the yellow flag. To that point, he was slower than George but only by 0.053s in sector 1 and just 0.046s in sector 2.

He said, “I thought I saw double yellows and instead it was a single, so I completely aborted the lap when I could have just done a lift like George did.” And that difference, and also its impact, is clear in the data.

Immediately we can see that Antonelli not only lifted, but ran through the full corner sequence of turn 9 and then turn 10 almost fully off throttle, and as a result lost 2.074s compared to his previous run through sector 3. Or, compared to his previous lap overall, 1.801s, which at the end stood as his final lap.

Subscribe now

Toto Wolff put the difference in reaction between his drivers down to experience, praising Russell for lifting “at the right time, the necessary amount” to secure pole position. Having the awareness of the type of yellow in play at that point, putting the argument over whether that was enough aside, is what allowed him to solidify the pole position, but what really made the difference was the performance he’d put in to that point.

George said he shifted to “driving instinctively” today, an attitude that contrasted the one he’d been taking in recent races which he admitted had a “factor” of overdriving to it. In the end, perhaps it was that move to a more feeling-based drive come Q3 that allowed him the mental bandwidth needed to make this call.

Welcome to your technical preview ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix!

This race is one of my personal favourites, not just for the beautiful setting of the Styrian mountains but how that contrasts with the tough, technical challenge the track poses to the teams, in some ways as a result of that very setting.

This year, as has been the case at every track we’ve been to, the inherent features of the track like its short lap, short lap-time, power sensitivity, altitude and elevation will interact with those of this new generation of car to give rise to some new quirks, new ways things have to be managed, and potentially a new competitive order.

We also arrive here this weekend off the back of seeing a new, yet old, winner on the top step last time out in Lewis Hamilton but with the backdrop of this being a track that Max Verstappen has classically dominated over every metric - wins, podiums, poles, points. That said, he hasn’t finished on the podium here, or won, since 2023 and instead it’s been McLaren and Mercedes who’ve won with Norris and Russell, respectively, and Ferrari who’ve had a driver on the podium in both of the past two years.

Past performance is rarely a predictor of future success, as we know, but that’s perhaps never been more true than this season.

Power sensitive but energy starved

The Red Bull Ring is only 4.326km long and has just 10 corners, two of which are usually flat, with the rest of the lap being covered in straights where getting the power down, but also sustained, is essential. A large proportion of the lap is spent at full throttle - 73.76% over Norris’ 2025 run to pole - but this year, that power sensitivity could be complicated by its energy profile.

While there are a couple of heavier braking zones, turns 3 and 4 for example, generally the circuit lacks the number necessary for the level of energy recovery needed to meet the maximum per-lap output figure of 9MJ. As a result, and to minimise the need for the drivers to be using techniques like li-co or superclipping excessively over the lap to meet an output of that level, the FIA have capped it at 6MJ in qualifying.

That should mean the picture of energy management is more conventional and there won’t really be the need for excessive regeneration techniques nor for unusual deployment patterns, but it still could have a few different impacts.

Finding Efficiency

For one, it’s going to push the teams to find an efficient balance between power and aerodynamics, which the four straight mode zones will help with. In fact, there isn’t going to be a straight that isn’t covered by one.

And this is actually the principal aim of straight mode - reduce the cars’ drag and help prolong top speed and performance even as deployment tapers off, which it could well do long before the end of a straight here.

Extracting the lowest drag profile from the straight mode configuration of the wings could therefore be a critical factor, and we already know that McLaren are planning on testing an “experimental rear wing” in free practice on Friday, based on their weekend preview. With the way Red Bull and Ferrari have taken their rear wings in employing the ‘macarena-style’ to maximise the gap between the elements when they open, McLaren’s experiment could be of their own, similarly styled solution.

Deployment Strategy

It could also mean that lap time optimisation comes down to getting the deployment strategy correct, and teams will likely have to balance preserving power down the straights and deploying to improve corner exits, which are a key part of extracting lap time here given the ‘stop-start’ nature of the layout. Mercedes have arguably been strongest at this side of the regulation set so far, though others like McLaren with their Mercedes power unit have been catching up to their software strength.

Subscribe now

Emphasising the ICE?

However, this reduced deployment limit may also shift a greater emphasis onto how the ICE side of the power unit impacts the resulting lap time, as it will solely provide the power at the points of the lap where deployment has ‘run out’. If the reports of Ferrari bringing their first ADUO upgrade to this event are true, that could be a pivotal factor for them.

What’s also important to consider in relation to the power unit performance and the ICE side especially is the impact of elevation change, which here happens largely in two halves. The first half of the lap is spent climbing uphill while the second is spent descending, to the tune of around 63m of change over the full lap.

That adds in a gravitational element, one that the power unit has to work harder to overcome in the first half of the lap as it works to ‘pull’ the car uphill, putting it under more load under acceleration, but one that helps over the second half of the lap. The impact of this on performance is typically minimal, but worth noting.

Higher Altitude = Power Problems?

While the Red Bull Ring is nowhere near the altitude of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City, or Interlagos in São Paulo, it being situated at 660 metres above sea-level does make it the third highest circuit F1 visits, and therefore our first bit of insight into how these cars function at a higher altitude.

At this height, the air is around 7-8% less dense which effectively means there is less air flowing over radiators for cooling, over wings for downforce, and circulating through the power unit. On the aerodynamic side, that means less grip, more sliding, but lower drag too. But it’s the impact on the power unit, specifically via the turbocharger, that could be something to really watch for this weekend.

With no MGU-H to keep the turbo spooled under this regulation set, turbo lag can already creep in and impact responsiveness off the line, as we’ve seen with race starts, or responsiveness out of lower speed corners as we saw impacting some teams at the Fairmont Hairpin in Monaco, for example. And at higher altitudes, that effect could be compounded by the turbocharger having to work harder to compensate for the for the lower levels of oxygen being fed into the ICE.

There is likely to be a disparity in how severely this impacts the teams, at least according to power unit manufacturer, as we know some have bigger turbos than others. Ferrari are believed to have the smallest in the field, and while that could mean they suffer less turbo lag, it could max out more rapidly and leave them down on power. Teams like Audi, on the other hand, are thought to have bigger turbos which could take more time to spool up, suffering more lag as a result, but once at their peak could offer a stronger power output.

How that feeds into lap time optimisation here will be something to watch for, as some may find their advantage by avoiding lag out of slower corner exits, like turn 3 particularly, whereas others may find theirs down the straights with stronger straight line speed, especially where deployment tapers. This could have knock-on effects on deployment strategy too, as they may have to balance whether to compensate and offset potential lag with deployment out of corners.

‘Warped’ corners?

You’ve heard of combined corner entries, where the driver is required to brake and turn at the same time, but in Austria there’s one particular corner that’s more of a ‘warped’ entry - turn 3.

It’s an uphill entry-to-exit, but the gradient of the track also changes left-to-right. That, along with the inside kerb, has a tendency to make the inside front wheel lift and imbalance the car as it does so. That can then compromise the driver’s exit and wash them wide which, in this case, means they’re hit with the sausage kerbs that line the exit kerb.

And that’s not all, because before the driver even hits that crest and its challenges, the uphill entry to the corner can encourage later braking, often meaning we see lock ups and wide runs from that factor alone.

Come race day though, and these features combine to make it a key overtaking point and a key battle ground as we’ve seen in the past - between Verstappen and Norris in 2025, Verstappen and Leclerc in 2019, and Hamilton and Rosberg in 2016.

Pirelli have selected the softest compounds in the range for the weekend - the C5 will be the soft, the C4 the medium, and the C3 the hard.

The Red Bull Ring is a low lateral density circuit, or in other words one that doesn’t exert high levels of lateral forces through the tyres, given that it has few corners, even if some are higher speed and higher energy. But grip through those is generally good as the track is well used throughout the year by various motorsport events, and it does still evolve and ramp up over the weekend.

The decision to go for the softest range here is also driven by the warm-up difficulties that the teams can encounter with the front tyres especially, largely because of them maximising brake cooling to meet the demands of the tricky up and downhill corner entries and braking zones. It’s likely we’ll see build laps come into play as a result, as we did in Canada, which shouldn’t be too impactful on run plans given the short lap.

Subscribe now

Degradation here is most often driven by thermal factors over and above actual wear, for a few reasons.

First, the track surface itself is several years old and has high levels of both macro- and micro-roughness to bring it to a medium level of abrasion, which generates heat in the tyres.

The altitude also means the cars have reduced downforce, from an already reduced baseline this year, and that can bring about an increase in tyre slip and sliding, again generating heat through the tyres.

Temperatures will also play a role in exacerbating that heat generation this year as the forecast is set to be between 27-32°C each day of the weekend, and that could mean we see the previous track temperature record here of 55.1°C met or exceeded. Pirelli have noted that they expect the temperatures could approach ‘Barcelona levels’, and that could make the lessons learned there about degradation, and especially via thermal factors, important for performance this weekend.

Unlike Barcelona however, where the front axle is more limited, here it’s the rear tyres that are more prone to degradation as they’re placed under increased stress in the traction zones. The front does come into play during the downhill braking zones though, and we could see lockups resulting from the increased torque generated by the 2026 power units.

In the past, Austria has classically been a two-stop race but we have seen all three compounds be viable racing ones within that structure. Last year, the medium did 53% of racing laps and it was the most commonly chosen starting tyre, however five drivers opted to begin on the C5 soft, which went on to complete 14% of racing laps.

Those who finished on the podium, namely Norris, Piastri and Leclerc, ran their middle stint on the hard tyre and completed between 32 and 24 laps on it before moving back to the medium for a final stint.

But even with track temperatures hovering between 52 and 55°C during the Grand Prix last year, the one-stop was a viable alternative strategy - so much so that Lawson and Alonso were able to run it to finish inside the top 10, starting on a used medium and finishing on a hard. To facilitate that, they ran each tyre for nearly exactly half the race, which in Alonso’s case constituted the longest stint done on the medium by anyone (33 laps).

As Pirelli noted, that was evidence for the hard and the medium proving to be quite similar, which we also observed last weekend with the new 2026 tyre range in Barcelona. When that is the case, it tends to open up more strategic freedom and bring alternative strategies into play, which teams can induce by opting for different allocation management strategies from Friday onwards. Even so, expect most teams to hold onto two mediums for Sunday.

Above all else, this is likely to be a weekend where the power units are tested and exposed, in terms of performance but also strength in reliability terms. So far this year, it’s Mercedes who’ve had the upper hand over deployment strategy, though their initial advantage there does seem to have shrunk as others have caught on, alongside strong straight line speed, but their reliability has let them, and their customer teams, down on several occasions.

And that’s where Ferrari have picked up the slack, and it’s been a genuine strength of theirs, which if the smaller turbo comes to the fore as the most advantageous at altitude could genuinely put them in the mix for a second win on the bounce. But what made that first win possible - decisive strategy - is what could make or break whether that second is possible, over and above the technical factors. Whether Ferrari can commit to a decisive, commanding strategic approach again will be fascinating to see and could reinforce the idea that they have made true change.

But with the power unit being so critical, and with the potential for the ICE to be vital to meeting this circuit’s power sensitivity in the absence of deployment, it’s hard to discount the team with what’s reportedly, based on what we’ve heard of the ADUO verdict, the best ICE in the paddock. Red Bull Racing, but specifically Verstappen, have past form around here but that’s faded away more in recent years as McLaren have come to the front instead. But both teams arrive here with upgrades this weekend, Red Bull with a weight reducing package according to reports and McLaren with an “experimental rear wing” to test. There are genuine unknowns as to the impact of either, but as they have generally battled over being the third fastest team so far this year, it could be a decisive factor.

Over the full field though, expect whoever can balance the need for efficiency and power the best to fare the best as that is what will be at the heart of extracting optimal performance.

Niki Lauda is the only Austrian driver to have won the Austrian Grand Prix to this day. He took victory of this race in 1984.

Despite it returning to the calendar in 2014, Red Bull didn’t win at the Red Bull Ring until 2018 with Verstappen.

The Red Bull Ring is not the shortest lap of the season, but it produces the quickest lap times of the year with an average speed of over 240km/h (243.448km/h over Norris’ 2025 pole lap)!

Welcome to our first written version of Race Trace, where we review how pivotal races played out according to the data! Who else’s race in Barcelona could this edition focus on than Lewis Hamilton’s, not only because of his own magic, ‘vintage Hamilton’ performance, but because of Ferrari’s too.

Yes, that’s right, Ferrari’s strategy and handling of that race deserves recognition because, quite simply, it was impressive but also quite different for them in its level of initiative and aggression right from the off.

It’s rare to say, but they were the ones calling the strategic shots and leaving other teams to respond to them rather than the opposite that has so often been true. And that’s why it’s worth exploring how Lewis’ race played out in more, data-backed detail.

Lewis came into the race with exactly the same allocation as every other car starting in the top 5, except for Verstappen. He had two new sets of hards, one new medium and three used softs available, but the way Ferrari used them over the race was different and set up by the starting compound choice they made, a used soft.

That was in direct contrast again with every car starting around him except for Verstappen, and near committed Hamilton to the three-stop right there and then because he would have to come in to box before the medium-starters and potentially force their hand - sign one of Ferrari taking strategic control.

And that’s exactly how it played out.

George Russell was able to stick ahead from the start despite running a harder tyre than Lewis, but even with that medium tyre’s longer lifespan, Mercedes really had no choice but to respond when Lewis boxed for the first time on lap 12. That came down to the strength and potency of the undercut.

Where degradation is so high and so strong, as it proved to be yesterday on the soft and medium especially, the undercut becomes more powerful and the rival car has no real choice but to cover off the stop. Without doing so, the pace of the car that’s boxed first onto fresher tyres will be superior over its out-lap to the rival who’s remained on the older tyres.

George boxed on lap 13, one lap later, and was able to retain his net lead over Lewis by doing so. Norris followed suit a lap after that, and Antonelli then covered him off on lap 15 - putting all four of the net top four cars onto the hard tyre.

That second stint was more about management - all four of the top four drivers were split by less than three tenths per lap on average.

But Ferrari ended that stint on the hard early for Lewis, pushing him firmly into following the three-stop given that he boxed for mediums on lap 28. This stage of the race is where we saw the strategic split happen as Mercedes opted to leave their drivers out, following their planned two-stop.

As it turned out, this was one of the most formative parts of Lewis’ race.

His pace on the new medium was staggering: from laps 29 to 34 he was an average of 2.1s per lap quicker than Russell or Antonelli! Meanwhile, Mercedes’ decision fed directly into their two drivers being free to battle on their older hards, and as Toto Wolff spoke to post-race, that was influential in Hamilton’s ability to close down the gap not only to them, but inherently therefore the race lead too.

While Russell and Antonelli were within a second of each other until they followed Norris into the pits from lap 37 onwards, as they battled, Hamilton closed down his deficit to Russell’s lead from over 22 seconds to 5.4 seconds. It meant that after the two Mercedes and Norris had boxed, Lewis had created a huge 12.5 second lead over his own teammate Leclerc, or a 17 second net lead over the closest Mercedes of Russell.

The one pinch point of Ferrari’s plan was really the need for Lewis to stop one final time, given that he was on 10 lap old mediums at that point that simply could not do another 29 laps to the end from there.

Subscribe now

It meant his mission over the next few laps was to continue to extend the lead as far as possible and create a margin to box into, which was compromised slightly by the pace the Mercedes duo, and Russell especially, were displaying on the new hards. In fact, over the two laps after his stop, George was over 0.65s quicker per lap than Lewis.

However, the pinch point was pretty quickly and fortuitously resolved as Lewis’ old rival, Fernando Alonso, parked up on the grass with a battery issue triggering a yellow flag and then an all important VSC. That allowed Lewis to come in at the end of lap 41, take his third and final stop at a reduced cost, come out ahead of Russell by the control line with a <2s margin, and be on five lap younger hards for the remainder.

But that luck of the VSC timing has meant that the big question hanging over Lewis’ race is whether he could have won without it, and while we’ll never truly know, the gaps he had prior to its deployment and the pace he showed suggest it was likely.

Without the VSC?

If Lewis had boxed on lap 41 regardless of the VSC, and a stop would have had to come around that phase of the race given the pace drop off he was experiencing on the medium, he likely would have emerged after Norris or in P5 (based on gaps before VSC deployed on lap 40) but critically still with that 5-lap tyre life advantage over those ahead.

That, coupled with the pace he showed over the final stint as a result and there being 26 laps remaining point to there being a case for Lewis being able to fight back through to the lead.

And it’s important to look at that pace he showed post-green flag racing resumption, not only for that argument but also for understanding how central it was to him securing the victory as he did.

Sealing the deal…

Over the next phase, from lap 43 to 61 before the VSC was deployed for Antonelli’s stoppage, Lewis was an average of 0.835s quicker per lap than his closest rival for the lead in Russell. It’s pace that made the extension of his lead post-stop possible and prior to the VSC, it sat at 19.3 seconds from the under two it had been by that control line.

With two more racing laps at the end, Lewis saw the chequered flag a huge 19.5 seconds before George Russell, and 23.7 seconds before Lando Norris who rounded out the podium.

The Verdict

It’s a victory that in and of itself was a milestone one for Lewis, both personally and professionally, but it also had the feeling of being a milestone moment for the Lewis-Ferrari relationship.

He spoke post-qualifying in Barcelona about his own comfort level and confidence, and I don’t think we can underestimate how vital and central that has been to his return to the top. Not only has that been on a personal level again, but also, and importantly, a professional one in how he’s embedded within the team and built his side of the garage around him.

It’s been building steadily and evidenced in the results he had leading up to this win and what he’s credited for those along the way, most notably in Canada where he finished P2 and praised the team for “moving mountains” for him to “enable this sort of performance” - a message he echoed yesterday.

And that references a few things: a change of brake setup that he requested from the team, their accommodation of his decision to move away from the simulator when preparing his weekends, a complete revamp of his engineering team including a new race engineer, Carlo Santi, and, at a more global level, influence over the design direction of their 2026 car and its development trajectory.

All of those have directly fed into that comfort and confidence for Lewis, but clearly have also had an impact on the team and how they look to be tackling races now - willing to take the aggressive approach, willing to make the strategic calls first, and able to put all the pieces together on a Sunday afternoon one-by-one to reap the rewards from the clearly strong car pace they have.

Making a win like this happen is a true team effort, as Fred Vasseur highlighted by saying, “if we are getting results it’s because collectively we are doing a good job”, and the real test of whether this is the sign of a permanent shift in how that collective works will come in Austria, Silverstone and then Belgium.

Subscribe now

Lewis Hamilton will start tomorrow’s race from the front row, and it will be the first time he does so since Silverstone 2024, and we all know how that ended! But it was the lap he put in right at the very end of Q3 to take the P2 place, and a specific part of it, that caught my interest because it furthered a pattern that had been developing, but mainly for the pole-man.

Read more

Lando Norris ended FP2 as the quickest driver on track, but only with a 0.009s advantage over his closest competition from the Mercedes of Russell. Although it’s only a small difference in the grand scheme of things, it drove me to look into why McLaren have been able to out-do Mercedes here specifically and the data reveals it could actually be something that makes them more vulnerable on Sunday.

Read more

The race was part of the first World Championship in 1950, and while a lot has changed about the way F1 goes racing since then, very little has actually changed about the streets it goes racing on. In fact, the only changes made to the lap since that first edition of the race, won by Juan Manuel Fangio, have been the addition of the swimming pool chicanes, the creation of the final two corners (La Rascasse and Anthony Noghes), and the modification of the original port chicane into the Nouvelle Chicane.

The result is a 3.337km long, 19-turned lap that, aside from a few months of the year, is simply just part of the road infrastructure of the world’s second smallest country. But even within those racing months where it plays host to the Historic Grand Prix, Formula E, and then F1 in quick succession, one of the quirks of Monaco as the original, and a true street track is that the lap opens overnight, everyday to the public and road cars.

That creates some technical challenges for the drivers and teams to deal with, as the picture they create of the lap and leave on one day can be quite different by the time they get back on track the next day, and with the walls being so close and the consequences big for even small errors, adaptability and confidence are key.

Historically, it’s McLaren drivers who’ve harnessed that best - they’ve earned 16 victories with a line up of winners including Ayrton Senna, the winningest driver here, Alain Prost, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and, their most recent Monaco winner, Lando Norris. He makes up one of just 6 winners from the 38 all-time ones here who are still on the grid!

Characteristic Considerations

Braking and traction

Monaco is the circuit on the calendar with the lowest average speed - 171.73km/h over Norris’ pole lap last year - a statistic that’s driven both by the lack of long straights and therefore chances for the drivers to reach peak speed, but also the huge number of braking zones.

Over a typical lap, the driver hits the brakes 13 times with the most braking coming in quick succession through the turns 5-6-7-8 sequence, or in other words, from Mirabeau Haute, through Mirabeau Bas, the Fairmont Hairpin and down to Portier. In contrast, there are only three areas of sustained throttle application.

That puts the teams’ priority for this event onto braking performance but also performance under traction to ensure the drivers can arrive at, apex, and exit a corner sequence efficiently and with stability.

Down on power

For this year’s race there are a few additional quirks added into the usual mix, given that it’s the first time the 2026 cars, and regulations, are racing in Monaco. One of those is the FIA’s decision to lower the limit at which they receive full deployment from the MGU-K.

Given how rapidly the cars ramp up to top speed in the acceleration phase with the 350kW MGU-K, and how little space there is in Monaco to allow for that, the cars will be running a race-specific engine map called ‘Rev1’ which alters the MGU-K power curve.

Essentially, instead of the motor deploying at the full 350kW up to 290km/h as it does usually before ramping down eventually to be 0kW at 345km/h, this weekend clipping will kick in at 200km/h and the ramp down is also less gradual.

The impact of that isn’t just over a standard lap either, as come the Grand Prix, it will also alter how overtake mode functions for a driver one second behind another at the detection point. Instead of overtake mode providing a driver the chance to deploy at 350kW to a higher speed, ‘Rev1’ simply allows that following driver a reduced ramp down rate once the 200km/h limit is reached.

So, for instance, if a driver is running up to around 290km/h, as Norris did last year down the main straight before braking for Sainte Devote on his pole lap, they will be deploying at under 50kW. A driver with overtake mode doing the same speed into that braking zone will be deploying around 100kW more.

With how harvest-rich Monaco is anticipated to be, this change appears to be safety focused and aimed at preventing the drivers from arriving at corners with excessive speed after the runs where they’re flat.

No straight mode?

A change that’s been made with a similar aim in mind, albeit via a different mechanism, is the removal of any straight mode zones from the track map for this weekend.

The five circuits we’ve visited so far this year have had at least two but as many as five ‘straight mode zones’ where the active aerodynamic system can be activated, opening up the rear and front wings simultaneously to reduce a car’s drag and increase its efficiency.

But to choose where those have been, it’s reported that the FIA have been using a ‘three second rule’, meaning the wings have to be open for three seconds or more to make opening them in the first place worth it technically speaking and to ensure the driver’s workload is not unnecessarily high.

Subscribe now

In Monaco, there are only three areas that could be considered ‘flat’ and ‘straight’ and none of them really meet that criteria without putting the cars at risk of lacking the necessary grip or stability, nor of arriving at the following corner with excessive speed.

Given the safety concerns, and simply that there would be very little to gain from straight mode here as it’s not an overtaking aid as DRS was but is instead focused on increasing the efficiency of the cars as they deploy, the FIA have opted out of allowing it to be used this weekend.

However, it’s important to note that the cars will be running the wings that have these systems and their actuators equipped as there doesn’t appear to be provision in the regulations for a second, ‘active aero-less’ set of wings.

Track evolution & uncertainty = High

Unlike these new challenges, a classic challenge of Monaco has been track evolution and managing how it impacts grip and tyre performance not only over the weekend as a whole, but also within a single day. That’s because of key feature of this race weekend - the track reopening overnight not only to pedestrians or cars, but also for parties largely at Rascasse and under the pit lane.

The high footfall and cars driving works away at the black line of rubber that the cars from not only F1, but the numerous support series that run over the weekend, have laid down meaning that each day is a true reset of the track conditions.

It leaves the drivers needing to start from zero again in assessing and building up their feel of the circuit as a new session gets underway, because it could be very different to how they left it the day before. Managing that uncertainty while building the confidence necessary for finding and pushing the limits of the track in preparation for qualifying, arguably the most critical part of the weekend’s running, is key.

The Compounds

That brings us to the tyres that will be laying down that rubber, and for this event Pirelli are bringing the softest end of the range, as they have done since the hard-medium-soft system was introduced in 2019. Given the lack of C6 in this year’s range, the C5 will be the soft, the C4 will be the medium, and the C3 will be the hard.

Monaco subjects the tyres to some of the lowest forces they experience all season, given the low average speed, and the often incredibly low cornering speed (down to 50km/h at the hairpin!). However, over the Grand Prix where the forces are compounded lap after lap for 78 laps, the phenomenons that lead to altered tyre behaviour are compounded too.

Given the high level of track evolution here, it’s not unusual to see graining over the first few sessions, however Pirelli’s 2026 compound range has been designed to be more resistant to that phenomenon, but degradation is typically minimal as a result of the very smooth asphalt surface.

Subscribe now

Strategy Corner

Last year’s strategy in Monaco was dominated by the discussion of the mandatory two-stop regulation that was introduced to try and increase strategic variation and racing action, something that’s typically lacking on Sunday here.

Even looking to 2024, the opening lap crash between Sergio Perez and the two Haas cars and subsequent red flag that brought everyone into the pit lane dominated the strategy. Every single driver, except Logan Sergeant, completed their mandatory compound switch during that stoppage which largely left them running to the chequered flag on a single set.

2023 and even 2022 are also unusual cases given that they were rain affected and as a result, every single compound on offer saw racing action at both grands prix.

Typically however, Monaco is anticipated to be a one-stop race, usually featuring the medium and hard tyres and waiting for a neutralisation to open the pit stop window is also usually the favoured strategic move here, given how common they are.

Fast Facts

There have only been three Monegasque Formula 1 drivers who have turned a lap in a Grand Prix - Louis Chiron, Olivier Beretta, and Charles Leclerc. Leclerc’s home victory here in 2024 made him the first Monegasque winner of a race in Monaco since Chiron in 1931.

The Monaco Grand Prix is the only race on the calendar that runs for less than 300km, as per the sporting regulations. Instead, it runs to 260km.

As of last year’s qualifying session and his achievement of pole position, Lando Norris currently holds the all-time lap record of Monaco: 1:09.954.

The Monaco Grand Prix kicks off with free practice one at 13:30 track time on Friday June 5th. Here’s how the rest of the weekend shapes up, with all times in local:

• Practice 1 - June 5th - 13:30-14:30

• Practice 2 - June 5th - 17:00-18:00

• Practice 3 - June 6th - 12:30-13:30

• Qualifying - June 6th - 16:00-17:00

• Monaco Grand Prix - June 7th - 15:00

Subscribe now

It’s that park setting that makes this a street track given that for the majority of the year, aside from the setup, race itself, and pack down phases, it can be walked, cycled, run or even driven around by the public! While that offers fans a unique opportunity to get up close with an F1 track, it does create some technical challenges for the teams to contend with, namely in how it impacts track evolution and tyre behaviour.

It also means that, as with the majority of street or semi-permanent circuits, the walls are close, the straights are long and here they’re also separated by heavy braking zones into chicanes. Equally though, there are a number of grass runoffs here through those chicanes which can raise their own issues in the wet especially.

Historically, Ferrari have harnessed those challenges best - taking 11 wins from the 44 past grands prix here, six of which were with Michael Schumacher. But since his last Canadian win in 2004, a Ferrari driver has only stood on the top step of the podium here once (Sebastian Vettel in 2018) and in the same time frame Mercedes have claimed five wins, four of which are Lewis Hamilton’s.

And this weekend, for the first time in Canada, there’s the chance for a driver to add two wins to their record as it’s a Sprint event. While a Sprint win perhaps doesn’t carry as much weight as a Grand Prix victory, the opportunity for the teams to go racing, and qualifying, here twice could prove invaluable as they gauge how the challenge the track poses has changed under this regulation set.

Characteristic Considerations

Heavy braking, fast straights

The track layout here is distinct in that it is made up of two main features - long runs flat on the throttle and chicanes - a combination that means it’s often referred to as a ‘stop-start’ circuit. In fact, over the 4.361km lap there are five chicanes that make up ten of the fourteen corners the drivers encounter, or 71%.

Technically, that creates challenges in two main areas - the tyre behaviour and the braking itself. The long straights give the tyres and brakes a chance to cool down significantly such that by the time the driver has to brake heavily for the next chicane, they are at risk of locking up or running deep. Come qualifying, it also makes getting sufficient temperatures into the tyre difficult, particularly at the front. It may mean we see teams completing preparation laps, so that where they might typically have followed cool-push run plan, they could do a cool-prep-push sequence instead.

Subscribe now

That very specific layout balance also poses a challenge for car setup, as while power unit performance and aerodynamic efficiency are key, so is having strong braking stability and maximising traction performance to ensure the driver can get on the power quickly out of the slower sections.

Sector differences = energy challenges

A new factor for the teams to consider this year will be the impact not only of the track layout on energy management, but the way that impact changes over the lap, sector-to-sector.

Sector one is much twistier than the two that follow which will render it a low-energy demand zone, particularly compared to how much the drivers will need to be using to efficiently get through sectors two and three. But of consideration this weekend after its introduction in Miami will not only be the effect of the reduced 6MJ harvest limit in qualifying, down from 8MJ, but also that of the increased harvesting ‘power’ of superclipping.

The regulation changes the FIA introduced prior to the last race weekend saw that increase from 250kW to 350kW, and we’re much more likely to see superclipping come into play as a major harvesting technique here than we were in Miami. Sectors two and three could be major areas for that.

Taking the kerbs

Given that the chicanes here are effectively ‘interrupting’ each of the straights, making it through each of them efficiently is key to maximising lap time, and that means riding the kerbs. While braking stability into them is critical, of equal importance is the handling of the car through them and its ability to aggressively ride over them. That’s especially the case at turns 3-4 but also in turns 8-9, where bumps in the track can create a similar challenge.

The Compounds

In line with their strategy since 2019, when the soft-medium-hard arrangement was introduced, Pirelli are bringing the softest compounds to Canada again this year. However, that does represent a move harder versus last year given the removal of the C6 from the range. It means the C5 will be the soft instead, with the C4 as the medium, and C3 as the hard.

The reasoning for this soft selection is two-fold. The circuit evolution here is incredibly high given that this weekend is the only racing action the track sees all year, making it very ‘green’ when F1 first gets out there in FP1. However, the track surface is also smooth and low in abrasiveness following its resurfacing in 2024.

Subscribe now

As a result of these two factors, combined with the potential for colder weather as the race is a few weeks earlier in the calendar this year than it has been in the past, graining is an incredibly common phenomenon here.

Graining: Graining occurs in low track temperatures, or where the tyres are outside of their optimal operating window. It’s a phenomenon that happens on the surface of the tyres, where the compound breaks up forming micro cracks in the surface, making it irregular and reducing the grip it can provide.

However, Pirelli’s 2026 range has been designed to be more resistant to graining and as such the manufacturer believes that, combined with track evolution and the age of the surface at this point, it could mean the phenomenon may disappear as early as Friday.

Strategy Corner

Where Canadian Grands Prix haven’t been rain affected, since F1 returned to Montreal in 2022 strategy has been dominated by the two-stop using the medium and hard.

In 2025, the use of the C6 in the range meant the hard was the C4 and that pushed it into being the most effective compound of the three under the demands of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Pirelli’s Director of Motorsport at the time, Mario Isola, noted that had the C6 not been there, it would likely have created a more linear, one-stop dominant race - making it a success in their quest for strategic variation.

Whether that will be the case this year in the absence of the C6 remains to be seen of course, but the one-stop has been a viable alternative strategy in the dry in past years here, even if it hasn’t been the most common choice.

In 2023, Leclerc, Sainz and Perez (aside from a stop for softs for a fastest lap attempt with two laps to go) ran the one-stop to P4, P5 and P6 respectively. Sainz and Leclerc also both ran the medium for 38-39 laps, with its low degradation in the low temperatures making that possible. In 2025 it was a similar story for the hard - Ocon and Sainz each ran it for 57 lap long stints.

Fast Facts

There have only been 18 Canadian drivers in F1’s history, the most experienced of which is Lance Stroll (193 grands prix contested) who will take part in his 8th home race this weekend. His average result at home is P10.17, and he’s finished in the points there every year except 2018 and 2025.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was host to the longest race in F1 history in 2011, where the Grand Prix ran to 4 hours, 4 minutes and 39 seconds.

George Russell and Max Verstappen set the exact same time in Q3 here in 2024 - a lap of 1:12.000. As Russell had set his first, pole position went his way.

The Canadian Grand Prix kicks off with free practice one at 12:30pm track time on Friday 22nd May. Here’s how the rest of the weekend shapes up, with all times in local:

• Practice 1 - May 22nd - 12:30-13:30

• Sprint Qualifying - May 22nd - 16:30-17:14

• Sprint - May 23rd - 12:00-13:00

• Qualifying - May 23rd - 16:00-17:00

• Canadian Grand Prix - May 24th - 16:00

Subscribe now

That aside, the challenge posed by the Miami International Autodrome is the same, at least on paper. It’s a 5.421km, 19-turned track that winds its way around the carparks and roads that outline the iconic Hard Rock Stadium, and F1 is about to visit for the fifth time.

Despite its reputation as a ‘street’ or ‘temporary’ circuit, that’s one that arises from its characteristics more than its actual status. The permanent asphalt is built within the parking areas around the stadium and doesn’t actually have public roads integrated into its layout, though it does cross some public roads in places and runs close to Florida’s Turnpike road at points of sectors 2 and 3. But that asphalt is worked into a layout that has twists and turns taken at high speeds, long straights and close barriers - giving that street circuit feel.

Navigating those under the new regulations could get chaotic, especially early on over the weekend, which incidentally is also following the Sprint format: compressing the little time teams already have to adjust their setups and get to grips with things. That said, the FIA have extended FP1 to 90 minutes rather than the usual 60 to account for the time since the last race and the regulation changes that have been introduced.

Characteristic Considerations

Smooth asphalt & high evolution

With the Miami circuit being used only for F1 (barriers and surrounding infrastructure are taken down after the race) and also made of a special, low roughness and low abrasion asphalt, the grip has typically started out low before ramping up quickly and significantly as the sessions tick down.

In year one, 2022, the circuit was so low in grip, especially off line, that it prompted comments from drivers like Fernando Alonso that it was “not F1 standard” and led to the organisers re-surfacing into year two, 2023.

Since then, the evolution has come into play more - bringing the grip up - but it remains a low abrasion surface that puts relatively low levels of stress through the tyres which does limit degradation. An additional quirk of that surface, as we saw last year during the wet Sprint, is that it dries out very quickly. It prompted the drivers to come in to switch from the intermediates they’d started the 19-laps on to slicks, which isn’t something typically seen in these much shorter races.

Subscribe now

Thermal degradation

The main factor driving degradation is therefore the temperature. Track temperatures regularly exceed 50°C which can cause overheating of the rears particularly, and that has to be carefully managed and considered given that Pirelli are running the softest compounds in the range here once again.

That’s particularly the case through the middle, slower-speed section but the final sector with its long straight can help mitigate that effect over the race distance, even if it does make preparation of the tyres trickier on a warm-up lap in qualifying.

What’s also important to consider is how the dark colour of the track surface can lead to changes in the pattern of degradation over the day - during the afternoon, as the sun moves to be more indirect, there can be bigger drops in temperature impacting performance and degradation levels.

Good on the brakes & riding the kerbs

The track layout is one that emphasises the need for heavy braking at several points. Turns 11 and 17 are prime examples as they come at the end of very long straights where the tyres but also brakes have had an opportunity to cool. This year, they’re also the end points of two of the three straight mode zones.

It makes them key overtaking opportunities over the Sprint and Grand Prix, similarly to turn 1, but come qualifying they’re also places where things can potentially go wrong with a lock-up, which was a key feature of these cars into similarly heavy braking events over Bahrain testing, for example.

Another key consideration for the teams in setting up their cars will be the degree to which kerbs need to be ridden around the lap, specifically through the uphill, turns 14-15 ‘mistake generator’ chicane. It’s also a factor through the early corners, and while it may be less critical for these cars versus their stiffer, ground-effect predecessors, narrowing in on the right setup with them in mind will be important and will have to be done quickly.

Subscribe now

‘Harvest rich’

Given its heavier braking zones and slower latter part of sector two, even if there are long straights and quick corners, Miami is expected to sit on the more ‘harvest rich’ end of the scale. That will be a positive for teams and perhaps also for the level of performance we can expect to see, as there’s less likely to be the extensive super clipping or li-coing that we’ve seen at Australia or Japan so far, for example.

But that may make it a less than ideal test venue for F1’s new regulatory tweaks - including in assessing how well the increased power of superclipping (350kW versus the old 250kW) works at reducing driver workload on energy management, and how well reducing the overall level of recharge from 8 to 7MJ impacts the need for excessive harvesting techniques.

But what will be able to be assessed even so are the changes targeted at improving safety via reducing the speed differential between cars harvesting, cars boosting, and cars deploying.

What will also be made clear, as a result of the changes and the harvest-rich layout interacting, is whether qualifying is now a more conventional, ‘flat-out’ demonstration than it has been so far this year. With there being plenty of chances for the drivers to recharge, the need for extreme, strange tactics will already be mitigated. This, coupled with the reduced, more uniform deployment over the field over a single lap could mean we see these cars behave at their most ‘typical’ yet.

The Compounds

After taking the compound range softer for a number of races last year, including Miami, Pirelli have opted to keep that selection for this year. The C5 will be the soft, the C4 will be the medium, and the C3 will be the hard.

Strategy Corner

Strategy in Miami is straight-forward on paper, yet in reality, that plan can go awry very quickly due to the high likelihood of neutralisations here. However, what a straightforward race looks like was demonstrated last year as Oscar Piastri ran the one-stop to victory and, overall, the race was entirely a one-stop.

That was the case despite Pirelli’s decision to make the compound range softer than it had been there in the past; a decision made with strategic variation in mind. However, both the C3 and C4 showed limited degradation, with the latter, acting as the medium, showing “even less than expected” in the words of the then-director of motorsport for Pirelli, Mario Isola.

It meant drivers who had started on the medium could extend as far into the race as those on the hards to open the opportunity of boxing under the virtual safety car on lap 29, which included all three of the podium sitters.

A well-timed VSC or even full safety car could be pivotal in influencing race strategy again this year, and statistically they are not unlikely here - 50% of the four Miami Grands Prix have seen a full safety car.

Equally, race strategy could be heavily influenced by even a small increase or deviation in the expected low tyre degradation heading in. Should the medium prove to be less durable than it was last year, for example, then we could see a shift to two-stop strategies.

Assessing the likelihood of that over the Sprint will be critical for the teams, not only in deciding their strategic plans pre-grand prix, but also in how they manage their tyre allocation in light of what they find, which is already reduced by one set with the Sprint format.

Subscribe now

Fast Facts

Max Verstappen has 1.7x the points total in Miami of his closest rival on the points tally - 90 versus Charles Leclerc’s 52. It’s owing to his two wins here, the most of any driver, and 75% podium rate here, also the highest of any driver.

Of the four grands prix held in Miami so far, none have been won from pole position. That’s not the case for the two Sprints held here - the first was won by Verstappen from pole, even though the second was won by a non-polesitter, Lando Norris.

Miami remains one of very few tracks Lewis Hamilton has raced at, but is yet to win at. In fact, there are just five - Las Vegas, Magny-Cours, Miami, New Delhi, and Valencia - only two of which are on the current calendar.

The Miami Grand Prix kicks off with free practice one at 12:00pm track time on Friday 1st May. Here’s how the rest of the weekend shapes up, with all times in local:

• Practice 1 - May 1st - 12:00-13:30

• Sprint Qualifying - May 1st - 16:30-17:14

• Sprint - May 2nd - 12:00-13:00

• Qualifying - May 2nd - 16:00-17:00

• Miami Grand Prix - May 3rd - 16:00

This year, the five week gap in the calendar and the mixed success for some teams under the new regulations is bringing the phenomenon back, which not only gives us racing action to enjoy in F1’s absence but a chance to deep dive how others who’ve raced elsewhere before have fared…

Lance Stroll - GT3, Daytona

Lance Stroll is set to use this break in the calendar to contest the first race of the GT World Challenge Europe season at Paul Ricard from April 11th-13th, but it actually won’t be the first time he’s run in a different category during an F1 season.

Back in January 2018 when he was set to begin a second season at Williams, Stroll ran in the 24 hours of Daytona for the second time. With Jackie Chan DCR JOTA alongside Rosenqvist, Juncadella (now Verstappen’s 24h Nurburgring teammate!) and Frijns in an Oreca 07-Gibson, he finished 15th overall and 11th in the prototype class.

The aim of that outing was to, in his words, “step back and do something that’s a bit less high pressure” which is remarkably similar to his reasoning for entering into the GT World Challenge Europe race this year.

“I get to share the car with friends, so we laugh outside the car, enjoy ourselves inside the car, and the team is really great,” he told the series.

Equally though, with Aston Martin languishing at the rear of the F1 field at the moment, Stroll believes there’s an opportunity to win out over the “very competitive field” “even if it’s our first time and we lack experience” - something that isn’t really possible in F1.

“That’s also a big motivation for me to be here."

He’ll run an Aston Martin Vantage alongside Roberto Merhi and Mari Boya, which he tested for the first time at the Nurburgring last week.

Max Verstappen - GT3

Max Verstappen could perhaps be credited with bringing the potential for competing in other series during an active F1 season back to the forefront of the drivers’ minds. He’s always had an interest in racing beyond F1 which he fulfils with his Verstappen.com Racing and Verstappen Sim Racing teams, and last year that offered him the opportunity to contest his first GT3 race.

To earn his Permit A for the Nordschleife, Verstappen ran in the seventh round of the NLS season in a horsepower-restricted, ‘Permit B spec’, Porsche Cayman GT4. It was a race entry that came after ‘Franz Hermann’ had taken to the Nordschleife for a test earlier that year.

With that all important permit secured, Verstappen was able to make his GT3 debut later that month in a Ferrari 296 alongside Chris Lulham. They qualified third and ran to a victory on debut, with a 24 second margin back to P2.

The goal however remained to contest the 24h Nurburgring event which is something he’s set to achieve this year, and in preparation Verstappen contested the NLS2 race last month. With Verstappen Racing now a Mercedes-AMG customer, he team ran in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo alongside Juncadella and Gounon to a pole position in qualifying and win on track.

They were later stripped of the victory and disqualified for a technical infringement relating to their tyre use in qualifying which saw them use seven sets on race day as opposed to the permitted six.

Nevertheless, he and his teammates will return to the Nordschleife on April 18th-19th to run in the qualifiers for the 24-hour race before contesting it in May.

Fernando Alonso - IndyCar, Le Mans, IMSA, Dakar Rally

It’s well known that Fernando Alonso’s long F1 career has been broken up by a stint away from it in 2019 and 2020 to allow him to explore other series. But even before then, he had competed in IndyCar, Le Mans and IMSA.

His 2017 entry into the Indianapolis 500 was the first of these, coming during his F1 season with McLaren and actually on the weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix. Running a Honda engine in the back of his No. 29 McLaren-Honda-Andretti Dallara DW12 went about as well as his time running a McLaren-Honda combination in F1 had at that time, with a failure forcing his retirement with 21 laps to go after having led for a total of 27 laps to that point.

During his 2018 F1 season, which was his final with McLaren, he began a World Endurance Championship campaign with Toyota alongside ex-F1 drivers Buemi and Nakajima. The team entered all rounds that didn’t class with F1 weekends which saw them claim victory at the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and then the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The campaign continued in 2019 during the first of his two seasons away from F1, and they claimed a second consecutive victory of Le Mans before ultimately winning the 2018-19 LMP1 Drivers’ Championship with five victories and seven podiums from eight entries.

Over the rest of his F1 hiatus, Alonso went on to run in the Dakar Rally, the Indy 500 again, and won the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona. It’s a career outside of F1 that’s largely been driven by his ambition to complete the triple crown - Monaco Grand Prix victory, 24 Hours of Le Mans victory and the Indy 500 victory - with the Indy 500 still being the final piece of the puzzle Alonso needs for the accolade.

Nico Hulkenberg - Le Mans

Nico Hulkenberg is another driver who’s tried his hand, very successfully, at the World Endurance Championship during an active F1 season.

In 2015, he ran in two rounds with Porsche - the 6 Hours of Spa and the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans. Driving alongside his teammates Tandy and Bamber in the latter, he took Porsche’s first victory in the event since 1998.

Lando Norris - Daytona

Norris trying his hand at another series didn’t exactly come during an F1 season, but just slightly before his maiden one.

In 2018 he ran in the 24 Hours of Daytona in a United Autosports Ligier JS P217 alongside none other than Fernando Alonso and Will Owen. It’s a race that largely goes under the radar alongside his achievements in F1, but one that earned him credibility and confirmed his potential at an elite level as he managed worsening, wet conditions overnight to take them to the lead over his stint.

While they eventually dropped to 38th overall and 13th in class, Norris proved he could match the pace and ability of his more experienced teammates over the outing, which Zak Brown has said was a key part of the decision making process in putting him up into an F1 seat at McLaren.

Bonus: Kimi Raikkonen - WRC

He may not be on the grid anymore, but we can’t look at F1 drivers racing elsewhere without mentioning the Iceman, Kimi Räikkönen. It’s a nickname that came from his cool, calm, quiet personality rather than his racing record necessarily, but in 2009 the Iceman took to racing on ice for real.

He ran in the World Rally Championship from 2009 to 2011 in a total of 21 rounds, making his debut at his home rally in Finland in 2009. While he ran to 15th overall, it prompted a full move away from F1 and to the championship for 2010 with the Citroen Junior Team. In 2011, he took part with his own team, ICE 1 Racing, earning 10th in the standings by the end of the season.

Did we miss your favourite F1 driver to other series story?

Leave a comment and let us know!

Leave a comment

What’s not changed?

There’s been an obvious static feature race-to-race at this stage of the year - Mercedes’ advantage. It’s ranged from as little as 0.115s over Ferrari in Melbourne to as much as 0.563s the Scuderia again in Shanghai, but at all three races they’ve led the pack.

At the back of the field there’s also been some consistency, mainly in the teams who are the backmarkers at this stage of the season. Cadillac and Aston Martin have consistently been over 3.5% off the pace of Mercedes’ at each grand prix, but Cadillac have hugely cut into their deficit to the benchmark as the weeks have gone on.

From race one in Melbourne to race three in Suzuka, they’ve progressed up from being 4.6% off the pace to that 3.5% position, moving them ahead of Aston Martin at the most recent two of the three races.

Again, in a similar story to the backmarkers, Williams’ position relative to the rest of the field hasn’t changed. They have however made small steps to find pace compared to Mercedes as the weeks have gone on, moving to be from 2.4% off to now 2.1%.

Subscribe now

What’s changed?

As usual, there’s more that has changed than hasn’t.

The pattern of competition out front has shifted quite significantly from race one to race three, moving from a clearer group of top four teams with a rift then back to the midfield in Melbourne, to a top group of just three teams by Suzuka.

That’s come about partly as a result of McLaren taking a step into being the second quickest team in Japan from having been third quickest in Melbourne (and not raced in Shanghai), but also from Red Bull dropping back. They began the season within 0.737s or 0.864% of Mercedes, but as of Suzuka, sat 1.258s or 1.338% away. As a result, and as played out on track versus Alpine in Japan, Red Bull’s battle has moved into being at the front of the midfield.

Who’s at the front of that midfield group has also changed. In Melbourne, Audi began their first season under the marque as the fifth fastest team, within 1.4s or 1.7% of Mercedes. But by Shanghai and then into Suzuka, Alpine held that role.

They were more heavily contested for it in Shanghai, with Haas, Audi and then Racing Bulls all within 0.479s of the Enstone team’s pace. The Japanese Grand Prix however, saw those three teams branch off into their own more tightly contested group with 0.329s between Alpine and Racing Bulls alone. Interestingly though, they’ve all sat within a fairly consistent range of Mercedes week-on-week - between 1.7 and 2.0% - despite the intra-group team order changing.

What might change?

What’s for near certain is that this competitive order will not be the same when F1 returns in Miami, not only because of the circuit difference, but because of what the teams will have been up to over this break.

Unlike the summer or winter breaks, there’s no regulation enforced downtime over this period given that it’s an absence of races rather than time off for the teams. That means that, again unlike those breaks, they won’t stand still and can work on upgrades, reliability fixes or operational factors to improve their position, and to build advantages or extend them. Every team and driver up and down the grid highlighted areas they wish to improve on over the break post-Japan, and their progress over this initial stage of the year, or lack of, will likely inform those.

Subscribe now

As Piastri said on the radio post-race, “turns out when we start these things, we’re pretty good”.

How one moment changed the picture out front…

But arguably the pivotal moment in taking that shot away from Piastri and moving it to be in the hands of the Mercedes of Antonelli was the safety car which emerged on lap 22 in response to Ollie Bearman’s heavy shunt into the tyre barrier at the entry to Spoon curve.

The incident is widely acknowledged to have been caused by the speed differential between himself and Colapinto ahead into the corner; a dangerous quirk of this regulation set in its current state. Thankfully, Bearman walked away from the 50G crash and was checked over at the medical centre before returning to the garage and his team, but it was an incident that created the pivotal reactionary moment of the race.

For some, like George Russell especially, it couldn’t have come at a worse time as he’d exited the pits less than a minute before the safety car did, but for others, like his teammate Kimi Antonelli, it was dream timing. He was in the lead and able to retain it through a ~10s pit loss compared to the typical ~22s under green flag conditions that Russell and Piastri had suffered.

For others though like Oscar Piastri, it sat somewhere in the middle. He’d boxed on lap 18 as McLaren felt it was necessary to bring him in and cover off any threat of an undercut from Russell particularly, but just Mercedes more generally. But that wasn’t a decision that had been prompted by a drop in pace or tyre performance for him, and so could have actually been unnecessary in the bigger picture.

What it did do was sacrifice his track position, which had been the lead of the race and with clean air, and effectively hand that advantage to Antonelli as Mercedes hadn’t blinked to bring him in to cover off the stops of Norris or Leclerc further back. It meant that, as mentioned earlier, Antonelli held the net lead he’d gained over the pitstop phase under the safety car.

Whether Piastri would have been able to hold the lead, had McLaren opted to prioritise track position and wait, over the full second phase of the race versus the Mercedes is, of course, an unknown.

Based on pace alone on the hard tyre, it looks doubtful, as Antonelli lapped an average of 0.493s quicker than Piastri from the end of the safety car period to the chequered flag. However, that has to be tempered with the fact that he had clean air, which he would not have had had he been behind Piastri, and its clear that the Mercedes W17 strongly benefits pace-wise from that factor.

George Russell’s average pace over the same phase of the race shows the impact of that. He was within a second of either Leclerc or Hamilton for the majority of it as they battled for the final podium place, and as a result was 0.553s slower per lap than his teammate.

So although the Mercedes have the lead for race pace once again this week, as they have done over every race so far, the field tightening up in Suzuka and both McLaren and Ferrari being in positions to more closely challenge them meant that lead was not as big as it has been, and seemed more sensitive to additional variables, like that clean air effect.

Race Pace

At a team-level, Mercedes sat just 0.216s clear of their closest rival, which this weekend had switched from Ferrari to McLaren - largely driven by Piastri’s pace given that Norris was 0.241s slower than him at a driver-level. However, Ferrari were not far off and sat 0.340s back from Mercedes’ benchmark average with Leclerc more able to utilise it than Hamilton who felt he “simply didn’t have the pace to compete”.

It’s a promising sign of the level of competition we might expect from here, with three teams in the fight out front more consistently. But what prevented that in the first place remains perhaps the biggest threat to it moving forwards - reliability.

Dropping back…

It’s getting to grips with the regulations and their impact on performance beyond reliability that’s preventing one team specifically from getting in that mix - Red Bull. It’s safe to say a huge rift appeared in Suzuka between their average pace and that of the teams in the front group. Verstappen and Hadjar’s combined average left them over 1.2s back from the benchmark, but the majority of that delta came from them to Ferrari in P3, at 0.918s.

In fact, Red Bull’s pace was much more closely matched with Alpine and that was both a consequence and cause of the battle that played out between Gasly and Verstappen, which saw Gasly finish P7 to Verstappen’s P8 with just 0.337s between them at the line. At a driver-level, Gasly’s own pace was very marginally quicker than Verstappen’s.

On Hadjar’s side, he also suffered from the safety car timing by boxing the lap before it came out which initially left him behind Hulkenberg’s Audi at the restart, and then Bortoleto’s further into the stint, before he was able to get by before losing out again to Hulkenberg in the closing stages, who had taken an extra set of hard tyres. “I had a good fight with the Audis”, he said, “but didn't have the pace to get passed [sic] them”.

It’s not “really where [they] want to fight”, as Verstappen said, but getting involved in these close battles will have allowed Red Bull to assess and gather data about how their car performs in them which will inform how they move forward from here in improving not only flat out performance, but raceability too.

A tightly packed midfield…

Perhaps as a result of the safety car condensing the field in the mid-phase of the race, but also of all but five drivers following the same medium>hard one-stop strategy, just over half a second (0.539s) split Red Bull at the front of the midfield group from Haas at the rear, whose average is somewhat compromised by Bearman’s DNF.

There were some drivers in this group, as there were out front, who benefited from the safety car timing and others who lost out, meaning that their result wasn’t necessarily a result of their pace potential.

Franco Colapinto was one of the latter, saying post-race that “those I was fighting with at the time ended in the points” while he finished P16. Arvid Lindblad was another who’d been running in the points over the first phase before losing out (P14), while his teammate Liam Lawson had the opposite experience - a tough first half with fortunate safety car timing promoting him to the points positions (P9).

At a driver level in the race pace that contrasting experience shows - less so for Racing Bulls where Lawson and Lindblad were split by 0.117, but more so at Alpine where Colapinto was 0.993s slower than Gasly as a result of spending the majority of his race following.

At Audi however it was a different story. The safety car worked in favour of Gabriel Bortoleto and Audi’s decision to hold him out for longer to avoid getting stuck behind cars on harder tyres. But while he initially stuck around P10 as the race restarted, he then lost out to Ocon, Hadjar, and his teammate Hulkenberg as his pace was 0.135s to 0.354s slower than those cars.

Nevertheless, in just their third race, getting two cars to the finish, one of which was inside the points with generally “encouraging pace”, as Mattia Binotto said, has to be taken as a positive for Audi.

Williams in ‘no man’s land’…

Between the midfield and the backmarkers we find Williams, who simply lacked pace both outright and as a result of their switching the race into a test session for Alex Albon. His pace, as a result, was almost three tenths slower than Carlos Sainz’s who was himself still over 2 seconds off the benchmark despite feeling he’d maximised the car.

“Realistically we are achieving what we can achieve and executing our races as best as we can”, Albon said post-race, “but we just need to get on top of some issues and get a bit more speed in the car.”

Vowles echoed that sentiment, saying “these next five weeks will be some of the hardest for us, purposefully so, as we dig deep and make sure that we come back with a car in Miami that is worthy of scoring points.” Even without points-scoring in mind, Williams’ aim has to be to close down to the midfield pack which currently sits over 4 tenths away to the rear or over 8 tenths to the front.

Three of four backmarkers finish

While it is still Cadillac and Aston Martin who bring up the rear of the field for pace, Cadillac are again out-ranking Aston Martin but this time not just as a result of neither Aston Martin seeing the chequered flag.

For the first time this year, Fernando Alonso finished a race and while Lance Stroll did DNF, that marks a big milestone for the team with Mike Krack, their Chief Trackside Officer, calling it ”a significant moment for the team and our technical partner, Honda, at their home race.”

But with reliability issues slowly being resolved, even if “the water pressure issue on the ICE of Lance’s car shows there is still much work to be done”, as Krack said, their inherent lack of performance is now being exposed.

It comes as Cadillac enjoyed their “strongest race so far this year”, in Sergio Perez’s opinion which was reinforced by Graeme Lowdon’s comments about them taking “another significant step forward” in terms of “execution and reliability” to allow both cars to finish for the second consecutive race.

Tyre Performance

As had been anticipated heading in, the one-stop medium>hard strategy prevailed over the field with all but five drivers following it and only Bottas opting to start on the hard instead of the medium.

While Pirelli had predicted that the soft tyre could have been used for a starting stint to capitalise on its grip advantage off the line or for a shorter closing stint, no team saw that as worthwhile. Alex Albon was the only driver to run it during the Grand Prix, but only as part of the testing he was conducting, not as part of his strategy.

Its use could have been viable though given how low degradation remained on Sunday, as it had been on Friday and Saturday. Neither the medium nor hard suffered estimated degradation loss of over 0.04s per lap - with the average sitting at 0.035s a lap for the medium and -0.009s for the hard.

The majority of drivers ran the medium tyre only up until the safety car, where if they hadn’t already boxed they then did, but given that Bottas had started on the hard and Alonso opted to move to a medium>hard>medium strategy, we can observe a spike in the fuel-corrected lap times where only their pace is feeding into the averages as the only two drivers to push the C2’s life beyond lap 22.

The hard tyre in contrast was able to run for the remainder of the race, again in the majority of cases from around lap 22 to the final lap 53 with very little, if any, pace drop off. While last year the same observation had resulted in a ‘processional’ race, this year the additional factors of energy management, overtake mode, and the differentials in those car-to-car kept that possibility at bay.

Subscribe now

That was also a result of the newly laid, smoother surface in sector one which this year has been extended into the second and third sectors and so far has helped keep tyre degradation under control. Where there has been graining, it’s not had a significant impact.

With that in mind, the optimal strategy this year remains that one-stop, but if the ability to push on the C1 is as high as it was last year even to the closing stages, with the smaller, more nimble cars but also power discrepancies car-to-car, that could give rise to more action and changes of positions than it did before.

One-stop options

Pirelli predict that the fastest strategies are one-stops but they could make use of all three compounds - with starting stints either on the medium, which is perhaps the more robust, conservative option, or the soft, offering a grip advantage off the line but a shorter, less flexible opening stint.

In the latter scenario, the pit window would open between laps 13 and 19, two laps sooner than those who pick the medium to start - which Pirelli feel will be the majority. But starting on the medium and running longer does keep the option of reacting to a neutralisation for the sole pitstop open.

Unlike last year, Pirelli don’t anticipate that drivers will choose to start on the hard tyre, even if they are out of position, as it sits at the very hardest end of their range and the grip it offers off the line is much poorer than the medium/soft.

There is a third one-stop option, but according to Pirelli’s simulations, it runs around ten seconds slower than the options involving the hard, given the consistency of pace that’s been observed on the C1 so far this weekend as it interacts with the grippier, yet smooth new surface. It involves using the soft and the medium, which offers the chance to use the grip advantage offered by the C3 to start but does come with the limitation of needing to manage the medium carefully to the end after boxing from lap 18 to 24. That could come at the expense of performance.

A two-stop option?

There is an opportunity for the undercut to be effective in Suzuka under a few conditions, including a clean out-lap into clean air and energy being managed efficiently over that. Pirelli see that that could be enacted by drivers running outside the points or out of position looking to bring forward their switch from the soft, if they’ve started on it, to move onto the hard sooner but then box again for a final set of C3s to carve through the traffic they got out of later on.

That’s a riskier option, but could come into play if a safety car period occurs as it has done at 50% of the last six races, or even a VSC which has been seen at 33% of the last six races.

What tyres do the drivers have left?

A few drivers are in a position to make use of that two-stop strategy with double new soft stints, should the opportunity arise - Bearman, Perez, and Verstappen. Given that the majority of drivers have a remaining allocation made up of one set of hards and between one and two new medium sets, plus a range of used softs, we’re most likely to see the medium-hard one-stop play out over the field.

But those who have an extra set of new mediums, including the Mercedes, Ferraris, Aston Martins, Cadillacs, and Alex Albon have more options open to them to box a second time, if needed, under neutralisations. The McLaren pair are in a similar situation, yet with an extra hard set over the field.

Will the weather play a role?

In short no, it’s expected to be warm, cloudy yet dry with a high of 22°C. Wind gusts are expected of up to 26km/h, and so far the wind has been impacting the balance of a number of cars this weekend. The cloud cover could work to keep degradation lower even in moderate temperatures.

Subscribe now

Mercedes’ long run strength appears again…

Andrew Shovlin’s assessment of Mercedes’ day being “fairly straightforward” might be an understatement, at least where their long run pace is concerned. After having gone 1-2 in the times in FP1 they were behind Piastri by the end of FP2 for single lap pace. But they had not only set an average pace over long runs in that session that was 0.749s clear of Ferrari as their closest competitor, they’d also done longer runs on all three compounds over the full day of running.

It indicates that while they admitted to having struggled more with the challenge Suzuka poses from an energy point of view over a qualifying simulation, that may have been less of a difficulty for them lap-after-lap. Although, looking at their lap times graphed, there were some fairly large jumps in pace over the stints on the mediums by Russell and Antonelli.

Overall however, Andrew Shovlin, the team’s Trackside Engineering Director, concluded that “we are in a reasonable place” in terms of pace, though he did acknowledge that “McLaren and Ferrari have posted impressive times during the day so we're not taking anything for granted.”

Ferrari versus McLaren?

A level of inconsistency of lap time over a stint was something seen elsewhere - Oscar Piastri particularly looked to struggle with it over his seven laps on the medium. As the only McLaren to do a longer run, he was left 0.095s adrift of Ferrari’s average pace over stints by Leclerc and Hamilton, indicating that the battle may have moved from Mercedes versus Ferrari, as we’ve seen so far this year, to Ferrari versus McLaren, at least for P2.

McLaren moving to have at least one car in the top four places in both sessions was a result of them “working hard to extract the maximum from the package,” according to their Senior Director of Racing, Randy Singh. He emphasised that they remain “realistic” however, even if George Russell did admit that there’s “no reason not to believe that [McLaren’s pace] isn’t genuine”.

But, at least at a driver level, Leclerc was Antonelli and Russell’s closest rival - his average time was 0.422s off Russell’s. Unlike Hamilton who only managed four laps in pace range, Leclerc was able to log seven, allowing him to conclude that “our race pace seems to be good so far”. They did struggle more for balance and stability over single laps which may leave them compromised in qualifying, yet more able to hold off a potential challenge from McLaren come Sunday.

Red Bull join the midfield?

With an average time of 1:36.138 over the 17 laps completed on the hard tyre by Hadjar and Verstappen, Red Bull are left over 1.2s adrift of Mercedes’ benchmark and, as such, closer to the midfield than the top three.

That may be a function of that hard tyre use versus the mediums that were run by the top three teams, but that wouldn’t entirely explain the almost four tenth gap to McLaren as the slowest of that top three. Instead, it appears to be arising from an overall tricky day for the team as both drivers struggled with balance - Verstappen only just scraped into the top ten in FP2 with his quickest lap, and Hadjar was left in 15th.

Their Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan said, “you can see from our pace that the car isn’t performing to the usual standards that we set ourselves and the overall lap time is not good.”

“It has been quite challenging, but we’ve identified some things that are wrong with the car and we particularly need to work to correct the balance and the grip.”

Red Bull have arrived in Suzuka with a “quite big” suite of upgrades, as Monaghan himself put it, yet he also said “these are working” and the issues they’re suffering are coming from “other aspects of the car”.

They’re known for their trademark Friday to Saturday turnarounds, and after the promise of one of those fell flat in Shanghai, they’ll be hoping they can make a return.

Less than 0.35s splits the midfield…

If we’re including Red Bull in that midfield group given that their deficit to Mercedes was 0.076s off Haas’ behind but 0.393s off McLaren’s ahead, then just shy of 0.35s splits the group of four teams within around a second and a half of the pace.

Aside from Red Bull, it’s Haas who lead that group after Ocon and Bearman logged the most joint laps of anyone with their race simulations at 20, all on the medium. Their intra-team race pace delta was as tight as their single lap delta by the end of FP2, with the former sitting at 0.045s and the latter at 0.034s.

But given that that leaves them within three tenths of the pace of both Alpine and Audi, Ollie Bearman felt that their goal overnight had to be “to find some lap time” and increase that gap given that overtaking is “very tough” here, or at least was last year.

Alpine, on the other hand, find themselves in that group after a much trickier day than Haas - both drivers found themselves involved in incidents over FP2, but overall Colapinto’s inexperience at the circuit showed to leave him 0.71s adrift of Gasly’s pace, who also felt the “feeling in the car is still not where I want it to be”.

“If we can make some small improvements, I think it will have a big impact to our end result,” he said, and he’s perhaps not wrong with how tight the field is.

Audi’s average time here is shaped by Hulkenberg alone as Bortoleto had to have a gearbox change, compromising his ability to complete a long run. Nevertheless, Hulkenberg’s pace over the 6 laps he did on the hard tyre was relatively strong, leaving them with a “positive starting point”, as he said.

Struggling with long runs, quicker on single laps…

Racing Bulls have found themselves in a similar position pace-wise to where they were during the Chinese Grand Prix, slightly adrift of the main midfield group, but ahead of Williams, Cadillac and Aston Martin. This time, it’s a result of Lawson’s pace alone as Lindblad was unable to complete a longer run, or much running at all, in the representative FP2 session as a result of a gearbox issue.

Lawson ran the medium tyre for 7 intermittent laps and the result is long run pace that doesn’t quite represent the qualifying pace he showed, which ranked him inside the top 12 over both sessions, with Lindblad also finishing P10 in FP1. That’s perhaps what’s behind Alan Permane’s, their team principal, comments about them being “right in the thick of the midfield battle”, as the race pace alone doesn’t quite suggest that.

It’s no secret that Williams’ start to 2026 hasn’t quite gone to plan and the team are contending with a number of issues, not least their car’s weight, and that reflects in their long run pace, which was on average 2.353s off Mercedes’.

Despite that however, and a slightly messier day all round, Albon ended FP2 in P8 with Sainz in P13 - both in that midfield mix over a single lap.

Carlos Sainz reflected that “we’re struggling with race pace in the high fuel runs”, yet Albon was positive that “the car is feeling better” so there’s perhaps opportunity for that to begin to reflect in the long-run pace as it has in the single lap pace.

The back markers…

Right at the back of the field, both over 3 seconds off the benchmark pace, are Cadillac and Aston Martin. Unlike Aston Martin, whose pace here is only represented by four laps on the soft by Alonso, Cadillac actually completed 16 laps in total with Perez on the hard tyre and Bottas on the medium.

As the line graph indicates, they were also consistent, especially with Bottas. After the session he said “we’ve gained a bit of load and stability with the upgrades this week, which gives me confidence that we’re going to see progress”.

Ultimately though, their sole source of competition at this stage remains Aston Martin, who had quite a strange day of running. Jak Crawford took over Alonso’s car for a rookie FP1 session, but as Fernando got behind the wheel in the afternoon, he spent the whole session evaluating the soft tyre - perhaps as its the compound they’re likely to have excess of come Sunday if they exit qualifying early again.

It leaves their true race pace as something of an unknown, but their aim for the weekend has to be to get both cars to the finish regardless of pace to ensure that their learnings and evaluations of the power unit reliability fixes they’re bringing week-on-week are maximised.

More recently though, it’s been Max Verstappen’s playground. He has dominated here for four consecutive years, claiming four consecutive pole positions and converting those to four consecutive wins - including one that was enough to earn him his second world title in 2022. Perhaps it’s that success that’s why he says it’s “one of my favourite tracks to race at”, or perhaps it’s because it’s traditionally been a track that rewards the ‘pure’ driving Verstappen enjoys most, and drivers who push their cars to their limits.

Heading into this year, how much the heavily increased emphasis on energy management under these new regulations will dilute that challenge is an unknown. It may mean we see the challenge change to one of finding the right balance and maximising the harvesting and deployment over the lap, lap after lap come the grand prix, particularly because this is set to be a more ‘energy poor’ circuit than Shanghai was last time out.

Nevertheless, the legendary corners that Sebastian Vettel famously said “must have been designed by the gods” remain - the esses, the Degners, Spoon Curve and 130R, to name a few - and attacking them in these more nimble, lower downforce machines in what are set to be lower grip, cooler conditions could create some real moments.

Characteristic Considerations

Lateral Loads

It’s those very corners, the continuous changes of direction they create over the lap, and the fact that only the hairpin (turn 11) and the final chicane (turns 16-18) are taken at speeds under 140km/h that mean the drivers, cars, and critically the tyres are subjected to high lateral loads here.

These loads and demands make Suzuka one of the toughest tracks on tyres on the entire calendar. In fact, Pirelli rank it 5/5 on their scale for lateral forces and 5/5 for tyre stress too, which is why they bring the hardest compounds here year after year.

The first sector is particularly demanding, with mechanical grip vital for navigating the esses and critically the lateral G-forces they exert as the driver, at least last year, takes them at a minimum speed of 200km/h. But they’re also sustained at corners like Dunlop (turn 7) as a long, flat-out left hander, the quick right hander that feeds into the slower 90-degree one during the Degners (turns 9-10), or Spoon Curve (turns 13-14) again as a long left-hander, double apex sequence. That feeds into the infamous 130R, a left-hander kink taken with the foot flat on the throttle and thus at speeds of 300km/h.

Impact on degradation…

Typically, high energy being exerted through the tyres would result in increased thermal degradation, which is something that’s been observed in Suzuka before and has previously influenced strategy here.

This year though, the impact of the new narrower width tyres on that has to be considered, as does the higher level of load already going through the rear axle due to the increased MGU-K deployment. But equally, straight mode zones are going to pull load off the cars, and therefore also the tyres, over two stretches of the lap.

Engine braking being much more powerful also means the rear brake discs and callipers are running cooler, transferring less heat into the rear tyres and therefore generating less thermal degradation on the rear axle.

All of these new-for-2026 factors combine to mean the challenge facing the tyres is changed, and that may mean a different strategic picture again too. But the true cumulative effect of them won’t become clear until some running, especially longer running, has been done over Friday practice.

Straight Mode Zones

Unlike the two races we’ve seen so far under these regulations, this event will only see two straight mode, lower-drag, zones implemented over the lap. The first will come down the main straight with the second coming on the run out of Spoon Curve towards 130R, but critically not through the high speed corner.

It’s quite a conservative approach to SM-zone use by the FIA but they will help mitigate the impact of the super clipping or lift and coast that is expected to be more prevalent here, to a level perhaps similar to that of Melbourne. But the lack of zones in other areas of the track and into key corners like Spoon Curve (T13) or on the run out of 130R to the chicane (T16-18) mean the teams have noted that front ride height and its impact on front floor legality could become a key consideration.

Tough to overtake…

Overtaking is infamously tricky in Suzuka, given that turns 1-2 are not the slow, heavy braking events they are at some other tracks and are also narrow. But, they are one of the only sequences that will offer a chance for a following driver within one second of the car in front to access overtake mode into them, as the main straight is one of the only runs where the 290km/h threshold is met. Getting a move done into the first corners is advantageous to a driver’s chances of sticking ahead given that they’re followed by the esses, which have to be taken single-file.

The other place where overtake mode is likely to be available is the run through and out of 130R. Although we have seen moves there before, given how narrow the track is and how close the armco barriers are it’s not a favoured place for overtaking. The chance of moves there could increase this year though, especially if it becomes a place where some drivers/teams are opting to superclip to harvest in preparation for the chicane that follows, which can be a key overtaking place. With it also being the detection point for overtake mode this year, we might expect to see drivers holding off more to have access to that for the next lap.

As we saw last time out in China though, moves are not only done where overtake mode is deployed, they can also come in key traction zones as they always have which could keep the hairpin as a prime, yet somewhat risky given the camber, spot for a move.

Back to super clipping?

Super clipping is likely to be back as a key buzzword this weekend after a week off from it being in the vernacular in Shanghai. With just five braking events over the lap of Suzuka, only one of which is truly heavy (the hairpin), energy recovery is going to have to come in a different way to feed deployment to maximise approach through the numerous higher speed sections.

That will likely include super clipping, the phenomenon of the MGU-K switching from deploying to harvesting while the throttle is still fully applied and thus ‘clipping’ the top speed, perhaps around Dunlop, the run from turn 12 to 13, then the long run out of Spoon (exit of T14) through 130R before the chicane. The esses may also provide an opportunity for harvesting, which could mean the speeds and approaches we’re used to seeing through these corners become more compromised versus previous years.

That may be a negative point come qualifying, but where approaches differ, it could generate some power discrepancies car-to-car during the Grand Prix which may offer up some more racing opportunities.

Note: As of 26/03, the FIA, the power unit manufacturers, and the teams have decided to reduce the maximum energy recharge per lap in qualifying only from 9MJ to 8MJ, to prevent the use of excessive clipping or lift and coast and maintain qualifying “as a performance challenge”.

The Compounds

Due to all of the demands and factors already mentioned here, Pirelli are bringing, as they always have done to Suzuka, the hardest compounds in the range - the C1 will be the hard, C2 the medium and C3 the soft, with the C1 actually making its 2026 debut this weekend.

Even with the intense demands placed on the tyres here, the first sector being resurfaced ahead of last year’s event meant graining was seen on the front axle, but that diminished progressively as the weekend went on and as track evolution ramped up.

This year, the resurfacing work has been continued with the final two sectors (from turns 7 to 17) now also having new asphalt. Pirelli expect this to be smooth, dirty and relatively low grip early on which could mean a similar graining versus track evolution profile to last year’s as the weekend progresses, but with the potential for it being more impactful on degradation this year given that the majority of the lap is affected now.

Pirelli have also highlighted the hardest and softest compounds as ones to watch this weekend as potentially the most influential in shaping what strategies are possible on race day. If the C1 hard offers good grip levels even on the smoother surface, and if the C3 is as consistent as it was last time in China, Pirelli believe that all three compounds could be viable race options.

Strategy Corner

Beyond the impact of the 2026-specific factors on degradation likelihood, temperature is still going to be an important one too, particularly when it comes to determining strategy. Last year, the cool temperatures combined with the new surface that gripped up by the race, even just in sector one, to create something of a tyre delta stalemate where pace simply didn’t fade off as their life extended. In fact, 14 of the 20 drivers put their fastest lap of the race on the board in the final 5 laps - demonstrating just how little the tyres’ ages impacted performance.

It led to very few changes of position over the field, but especially out front, as the hard tyre proved to be quick and suffer very little degradation. It also created a situation where the two-stop wasn’t even a consideration, with the laps teams pitted on also aligning to limit the potential for a tyre life offset.

Fifteen cars started on the medium, with two opting for the soft and three choosing to go for the hard. For the majority of the medium-starters, their one and only pitstop came from lap 19-24, but others like Sainz and Lawson were able to extend it to lap 33 to finish their race with a 20-lap soft stint. The top five finishers though opted for the medium-hard one-stop, and just 0.298s separated their race pace.

Fast Facts

After winning this race last year, Max Verstappen became the only driver to have ever won four times consecutively in Japan. If he gets a fifth in a row this year, he would also become the second-winningest driver in Japan - one win behind Michael Schumacher who sits on 6.

Pole position has played a vital role in Suzuka in the past, with 54.29% of race wins coming as pole conversions. The latest of these, again, was Verstappen in 2025.

Due to its traditional late-calendar slot, Suzuka Circuit and the Japanese Grand Prix are the venue/event that have seen the most world champions crowned - with 12 coming in Suzuka, and 13 in Japan (1 at Fuji Speedway in 1976 when James Hunt won).

The Japanese Grand Prix kicks off with free practice one at 11:30am track time on Friday March 27th. Here’s how the rest of the weekend shapes up, with all times in local:

• Practice 1 - March 27th - 11:30-12:30

• Practice 2 - March 27th - 15:00-16:00

• Practice 3 - March 28th - 11:30-12:30

• Qualifying - March 28th - 15:00-16:00

• Japanese Grand Prix - March 29th - 14:00

Since that first victory, his Verstappen Racing team has become a Mercedes-AMG Motorsport customer for their Nurburgring programme this year which includes NLS outings and entry into the Nurburgring 24 hours in May. That’s seen the Ferrari 296 GT3 he and Lulham drove switch for a Mercedes AMG GT3, and three new teammates join him - Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon, and (for the 24 hour race) Lucas Auer.

The first race of that programme was this weekend, the NLS2 - what would have been the second race of this year’s NLS had the first one not been cancelled due to adverse weather.

136 cars entered over around 20 different classes, with Verstappen’s Car #3 part of the top class, SP9, alongside 25 other cars and 71 other drivers. Come qualifying and they’d proven to be the top of that class, and the whole field. It was Verstappen’s lap that set their quickest, and therefore final time for the team as he found a window with minimal traffic and no code 60 - lapping the 24.358km layout in 7:51.751s, or 1.974s quicker than P2.

Race Report

Verstappen took the first stint as well and held the lead at the start before losing out to the veteran Audi GT3 driver Christopher Haase on the first lap, and he then spent most of his opening stint looking for a way to regain the lead. The gap hovered anywhere from within a few tenths to a few seconds over that period, with Verstappen eventually finding a way back to P1 just before the pair came in for their first stops.

The Audi came back up to the top spot over the pit phase, before Juncadella was around the car, now driven by Haase’s teammate Nico Hantke, as he opened his stint post-driver swap. From there, he extended their lead while running a longer stint than their competitors, and as that concluded, it was Gounon’s turn to get behind the wheel.

His stint saw him battle with the BMW of Dan Harper, who did briefly get ahead before clattering into the side of a Porsche Cayman to earn himself a penalty lap - allowing Gounon to break away and continue building their lead.

Going for longer middle stints allowed Verstappen’s final stint, and final pitstop minimum time to be shorter, as he switched with Gounon to get back on track for the final 45 minutes. Over that time he build the margin over P2 up to the over one minute it stood at as he took the chequered flag for the team in first place.

While the main goal of the outing had been to prepare and practice key parts of the race like pitstops and driver changes while getting to grips with the car and gaining valuable track time, Verstappen couldn’t help but find it “super enjoyable”.

“The team also prepared the car really well, so we could do some decent testing. They made me feel really comfortable with the car,” he said, “so yeah, really good experience for me.”

Gounon added that “it feels amazing”, before going on to praise his team. “The story is exceptional, my two teammates were exceptional, and the team also. So it feels great, honestly. Max is just so amazing, so humble. I just feel like I have a top teammate next to me.”

Juncadella reflected on the win as a “great start from Max in this project, and me also to be back with Mercedes-AMG in a very competitive car... Yeah, it’s great."

Things take a turn…

However, two hours after the race and about two further hours before the news broke publicly, the technical commission conducted its routine review of the ‘Tyre App’ or log of tyre use over the race and weekend. It was found that the #3 entry with Verstappen Racing had used seven sets of tyres on race day, which is one more than the allowed six.

Technical infringements in the NLS are black and white issues, and as such, the stewards disqualified the team with the BMW M4 GT3 of Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper inheriting the win instead.

Team Principal of Winward Racing, who ran the Verstappen entry, Christian Hohenadel said, “The disqualification hurts. Unfortunately, a mistake was made within the team that forced race control to retroactively disqualify the winning car.”

“I would like to apologise to everyone who was rooting for us. We will now thoroughly analyse the day, meticulously prepare for the remaining races, and work toward the ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring with full concentration.”

Stefan Wendl, Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing, explained further, saying that the error had come about during qualifying, “when multiple driver and tyre changes were practiced”.

Despite them leaving without the win, Verstappen and his team have gained valuable preparation, understanding, and track time ahead of that critical bigger race in May - something Verstappen emphasised repeatedly over the day as their principal aim of participating.

There is also an opportunity for that preparation to continue ahead of the 24h. With the break coming up in the Formula 1 calendar with the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix not taking place in April, Verstappen is “looking into” whether he, and his team, could partake in NLS3 on April 11th and look to put things right.

Race Pace

Haas and Alpine move up…

While the Mercedes and Ferraris finished 1-2 and 3-4 in the Grand Prix, with Antonelli getting the best of Russell to claim his maiden grand prix win and Hamilton finishing ahead of Leclerc to take his maiden podium in red, behind them were Bearman and Gasly in P5 and P6, respectively.

The delta between the top two teams out front did grow, from the 0.115s average per lap it had been in Melbourne to 0.563s per lap in Shanghai. But with neither McLarens in play as separate issues with their power units prevented them getting to the grid and Red Bull suffering a “disaster” of a weekend in Verstappen’s words, that saw him retire later in the race, it was Gasly and Bearman who were their closest ‘rivals’ for pace.

They were between 1.260s and 1.361s a lap off Antonelli’s benchmark, which at a team level with Colapinto and Ocon in the mix put both Alpine and Haas within just over 1.6s of Mercedes, but even with that relatively sizeable delta, it demonstrates something bigger in the picture of the season.

Just being in the race is critical at this stage of this new regulation overhaul, the scale of which is causing teething problems and making reliability much more of a defining factor than it has been in recent years. That will change as the year progresses, but at this point, it’s rewarding teams and drivers who can get to the grid, keep things clean and see the flag - so much so, that Bearman and Gasly now rank in the top seven of the driver’s standings.

It’s a factor Haas team principal, Ayao Komatsu, spoke to after the race, emphasising that being able to do so is not a fluke: “We’ve always said, in Melbourne as well, keep it simple. We need to focus on our own race and get the best out of it in case something happens in front, and that’s exactly what we did.”

“I really believe we got that P5 absolutely on merit, and that doesn’t happen overnight. That’s an accumulation of effort from previous years, the parallel development of cars last year, hitting shakedown, and we’re learning every day.”

It may have been Bearman and Gasly grabbing the top results, but Colapinto was also in the points with Alpine for the first time too, with a P10 finish after fighting back from contact with Ocon. Ocon himself missed out, ending in P14, but Haas felt that was down to being “unlucky” with an error from the team during the pitstop putting him “in a position that he shouldn’t have been in,” according to Komatsu. Even so, his pace was less promising than Bearman’s - ranking him 12th fastest, just over 2s off the benchmark and almost seven tenths slower than his teammate’s average.

One car in the fight…

Again, reliability became a theme within the midfield too, as had been the case in Melbourne. Audi and Williams were two teams to have just one driver in the mix over the Grand Prix, with a “technical issue” preventing Bortoleto from seeing the start and a hydraulics problem costing Albon the same opportunity.

That left Hulkenberg as the only representative of Audi’s pace, which looked similar to Bortoleto’s in Melbourne in how it compared to the front runners - at 1.811s per lap off Antonelli. Sainz also left Williams in a similar window to where his and Albon’s joint pace had been the week prior - at 2.4s slower than the benchmark.

It’s not where either team wants to be, though Audi look to be in an overall better position for pace even if various issues prevented a points-finish for Hulkenberg in Shanghai, while Sainz claimed Williams’ first of the year. He suffered a poorer start, something his team principal Jonathan Wheatley highlighted as a key area of improvement for them, but also a 16-second pitstop which was what ultimately took him out of contention in the end.

On the other hand, Sainz’s result was enabled by, in his words, “a strong start, effective tyre management and good defending at the end of the race against Colapinto.” Williams have acknowledged that for points finishes to come at this stage, they’re going to need the stars to align over the race and earn them through a drive given that “we’re not in a position to score points on pure pace at this point in the season”, as Sainz concluded.

Racing Bulls hot on the top team’s heels…

Red Bull’s woes in Shanghai were somewhat masked on race day by Hadjar earning a P8 finish and his first points for the team. He felt it was a “shame” that he hadn’t been able to bring home more than the four he did as he’d put in a fighting race: coming back through the pack after a rear snap send him spinning by getting in some good overtakes. Even with that, his pace was slower than Verstappen’s who ran around ten fewer laps given that he didn’t see the chequered flag.

Interestingly though, Hadjar’s pace sat within 0.038s of Liam Lawson’s as the lead car from the sister team. Lawson actually finished one place ahead of Hadjar, in P7, and felt his pace was “strong towards the end” on the hard tyre. It paints an interesting picture of how the two teams are adapting to this new regulation set, even if they share a number of commonalities technically, including their RBPT power units.

Tyre Performance

The Sprint the day before the Grand Prix had shown the medium tyre to be suffering from quite severe graining and pace drop off, although for some cars more than others. Even with that in mind, Pirelli predicted a one-stop race as the optimal given that the hard tyre was believed to be much more stable.

That’s exactly what came to fruition, with almost all cars starting on the medium before moving to the hard for a long final stint. The length of that hard stint was extended by the timing of the safety car for Stroll’s stoppage on track, which simply pulled most medium-starters in to box sooner than they’d planned for their only stop.

The hard tyre was remarkably consistent even with the additional ten or so laps on top of what Pirelli had felt would be the optimal stint length for it. Degradation estimates based on fuel corrected lap time averages indicate that it was getting 0.01s quicker per lap, while the medium was dropping off by 0.086s, just slightly more than the soft which was only run by two drivers and sat at 0.076s of deg per lap. It meant that while some teams may have been prepared to switch to the two-stop race and were waiting for a drop off from the hard to trigger that, it never came and so the stint kept extending.

In terms of pace, the medium was slower than the hard - by around four tenths per lap, and while the soft was quickest, its heavier degradation and shorter lifespan as a result made it less favourable.

Graphing these figures really demonstrates the compound differences well - the line for the hard tyre is almost flat, even as the stint reaches 47 laps. Pace on the medium, in contrast, quickly ramps up.

Although the majority of drivers benefitted from the stability of the hard tyre for their final stints, there were a few who opted to start on it and stay out over the safety car period, going longer into the race. Colapinto, Ocon and Lindblad were three of these who benefitted the most, at least initially, rising up the order to be splitting the Mercedes and Ferrari cars out front. However, even with the pace consistency of the C2, a tyre life offset did make a difference and allowed those on a newer hard to come past (although the impact of that delta was likely compounded by the inherent pace differences of the cars).