F1 2026 - Watchalong Thread

[Brazilianadventure]

Happy New Year.

This is going to be an interesting year with the regulation change.

Rumours are Mercedes and RB engines are exploiting a loophole and so may have the most powerful engines.

AM will have a car with significant input from Adrian Newey.

Sauber becomes Audi and we have an 11th team, Cadillac.

Christian Horner seems very keen to get back into F1, preferably Alpine with Flávio - they deserve each other.

There is closed door testing in Barcelona then open testing from 11 February at Sakhir.

Edited for typo and thread title.

It related to Indycar

Reflecting back on Silverstone there were a lots of snippets of info from Ferrari about their set up.

Lewis said the SIM indicated a 0.6s deficit on the straights. Lewis trusted his own instincts for set up, Charles went with the SIM. After the Sprint, Charles changed to Lewis’ set up and improved to end up winning.

Ferrari’s SIM is not as accurate as Lewis’s experience - they need to poach Ant Davison to help them recalibrate the SIM. Ant did a huge amount of SIM work for Mercedes which helped Lewis to his many WDC. Mercedes SIM technicians have praised Ant’s recall and ability. I also think he has helped calibrate SIM games for major games companies.

Happy for Leclerc who won his first race of this seson this past weekend.

I just had a quick look at the WDC points at various points last year. Really don’t know why I was so confident about Oscar most of the year! It’s actually really interesting to look at how the point changed over the year in hindsight.

I’ll admit at the time I really didn’t want Lando to win as Oscar’s team mate and therefore biggest rival. I’m actually quite fond of 2026 Lando though.

I think I’ve said it before on this thread Lando seems more comfortable with himself, like winning the WDC means he has achieved his goal and boosted his confidence. It’s lovely to see.

I think it's easy to forget just how young some of these drivers are and how they were thrust into all this and under public scrutiny from such a young age and they essentially lost their childhood. Drivers like Max and George were put under intense pressure by their fathers. In Max's case living up to his father's ambitions. In George's case knowig his families finances were being put on the line for him and never receiving praise, always you can do better (George's Dad lied about lap times to make him think he had done worse and Max's dad wouldn't speak to him if he lost a race.)

I think Max is a very different Dad to Lily and bonus Dad to P. He seems lovely with them both and that is why I can see him leaving F1 to be at home more.

He does seem as if he wants to be a very different kind of father and family matters a lot to him.

That was Max's comment after Monaco. "At least I was home early".
He's growing on me these days.

I agree, he seems much more laid back this year.

Lando can be relaxed this year and enjoy himself. The car isn’t competitive so there is a lot less pressure on him and he is doing better than Oscar which puts to bed all those comments.

Both Max and Lando are growing on me this year