Author Archives: PressBox

Oscar Piastri told the High Performance podcast that he and teammate Lando Norris deliberately protected the McLaren team environment during their heated 2025 intra-team title fight to avoid long-term damage. He described tense on-track incidents, including his surge in Saudi Arabia, team orders at the Italian Grand Prix asking him to give Norris second place, collisions in Canada, contact at the Singapore start, an incident in the United States Sprint and an on-track episode in Mexico. Piastri said those moments usually ended with cordial exchanges, private resolutions and a handshake. He warned that if the rivalry had turned ‘nasty’ it could have threatened one of them not wearing McLaren’s papaya orange in 2026.

Piastri credited McLaren’s culture of full data sharing and accountability with keeping tensions under control. He said drivers generally continued to cooperate and share information across the garage, and that openness and clear responsibility helped contain conflict through the season.

The title fight tested the team but held firm. Piastri led by 32 points into the summer break after a Zandvoort win, while Norris retired there and then mounted a late comeback that culminated in a decisive Abu Dhabi victory to take the 2025 Drivers’ Championship. Norris finished 13 points ahead of Piastri, with Max Verstappen between them, and McLaren placed third in the Constructors’ Championship.

Piastri said the episode showed future title fights will again test team harmony. He believes professionalism and pragmatic teamwork persisted into races such as Suzuka and when the season resumed in Miami.

Red Bull sporting boss Laurent Mekies said Max Verstappen’s decision will not be affected by recent staff departures and confirmed the driver is contracted through 2028. Mekies said he speaks with Verstappen daily and called him someone who “lives and breathes” the team. He answered “Absolutely not” when asked whether recent exits raise the chance Verstappen will leave, and he noted the driver has publicly expressed unhappiness with the new 2026 hybrid power unit and has signaled he is considering his F1 future. Mekies also reminded reporters that Verstappen’s deal contains performance clauses that could permit an earlier exit if he is not in the top two by the summer break.

Gianpiero Lambiase, Verstappen’s race engineer since May 2016, has agreed to join McLaren as chief racing officer by 2028, Red Bull said. Red Bull added Lambiase will remain at the team until the end of 2027, though media reports say McLaren is trying to secure him sooner. Mekies described the departures as routine evolution, said the leavers are a small portion of the workforce and called morale at Red Bull’s Milton Keynes base fantastic. He pointed to internal promotions and heavy recruiting, saying the team hired roughly 120 people this year and about 400 in the last nine months.

Mekies conceded the team has work to do after a difficult start to the season, with Verstappen ninth in the standings after three races and a best finish of sixth. He estimated Red Bull faced about a one-second-per-lap deficit to the front-runners and attributed roughly 0.3 seconds of that gap to Red Bull’s in-house power unit. Red Bull will bring a major upgrade to the Miami Grand Prix that Verstappen tested at Silverstone, targeting aerodynamic and chassis weaknesses. Formula 1 has adjusted power-unit rules in the five weeks since the Japan race, and Mekies said short-term tweaks ahead of Miami should help qualifying energy management and closing-speed differentials, while longer-term hardware changes such as increasing fuel flow toward a roughly 60:40 internal combustion to electrical split remain under consideration. The Miami Sprint weekend, featuring a 19-lap Sprint and a 57-lap Grand Prix, is being treated as an early test of whether the rule tweaks and upgrades help close the gap and influence Verstappen’s long-term decision.

Martin Brundle publicly backed Lewis Hamilton’s chances with Ferrari in 2026, saying Hamilton’s improved form, better adaptation to the 2026 regulations and a major upgrade package due at the Miami Grand Prix make him capable of winning races and mounting a title challenge. Brundle cited Hamilton’s stronger start to 2026, including his first Ferrari podium in China, and said the new car characteristics suit Hamilton better than last year’s machines. He described the Miami upgrade as a potential turning point for Ferrari.

Brundle contrasted that brighter start with Hamilton’s difficult 2025 debut at Ferrari. Hamilton finished sixth in the drivers’ standings and, for the first time in his career, failed to score a podium. Ferrari slipped from second to fourth in the 2025 constructors’ championship.

Teams began 2026 with Mercedes dominant in the opening races, Kimi Antonelli leading the drivers’ standings and George Russell close behind. Ferrari sit as Mercedes’ closest challengers, with Charles Leclerc third and Hamilton fourth, the latter running closer to Leclerc this year. Brundle said the Miami weekend felt like a ‘relaunch’ of the season after the development break, noting the Miami Sprint and Grand Prix points and the expected parts could reshuffle the pecking order and that rival upgrades might allow teams to leapfrog others. He warned Hamilton will still need to beat teammate Charles Leclerc consistently inside Ferrari to mount a genuine title bid and said the championship remained ‘totally wide open,’ framing his comments as an endorsement rather than a definitive prediction.

Honda’s trackside general manager Shintaro Orihara warned ahead of the Miami Grand Prix that upgrades due in Miami will not produce any major or visible improvements to Aston Martin’s engine performance. He said the 2026 Honda power unit has been underperforming and has suffered reliability problems and severe vibrations, issues that have disrupted performance and consistency. The AMR26 has managed just one finish in four events, including China’s Sprint.

Teams had hoped a five-week F1 break imposed after escalations in the Middle East would allow Honda to resolve the flaws, but work during that pause and countermeasures introduced before Suzuka produced only limited gains. Honda and Aston Martin carried out intensive collaboration, including static testing at Honda’s Sakura facility and work in Japan and the UK, and applied fixes that produced some progress. Expectations were high around Adrian Newey’s first Aston Martin design.

Orihara said further fixes will be applied in Miami and later in the season, but he does not expect a noticeable jump in power-unit performance at Miami. He pointed to Miami’s track profile, with long full-throttle sections, many slow-speed corners and high ambient temperatures, and to the Sprint weekend’s single 90-minute practice session as factors that complicate efforts to improve driveability, energy management and cooling. Under the new regulations Honda and Aston Martin are prioritizing driveability, energy management and cooling over headline power gains, meaning any recovery is likely to come through patient, incremental improvements rather than a sudden turnaround at Miami.

Cadillac unveiled a one-off “Stars and Stripes” livery and Miami-specific race suits for its maiden home appearance at the Miami Grand Prix. TWG AI presented the design; Chief Brand Advisor Cassidy Towriss called it “a natural extension” that “speaks without excess,” and Drew Cukor, president of TWG AI, described it as “a statement of identity and intent.” Cadillac described the look as “a subtle statement of pride.”

The one-off simplified the squad’s usual asymmetric livery into a largely monochrome scheme with red-and-white accents and explicit Americana touches. The car carried the letters “USA,” red-white-blue detailing on the rear wing, and a MAC-26 nameplate presented as a tribute to Mario Andretti. Cadillac said the deliberately recognizable design debuted during the extended 90-minute FP1 session at the Miami International Autodrome so fans could immediately identify the car.

Drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez were linked to Miami-specific race suits for the weekend. Some outlets reported both drivers wore matching special suits at the event, while Cadillac had not posted the suit designs on its social channels at the time of reporting; accounts therefore differ on whether the team publicly showed the suits. The Silverstone-based Cadillac F1 team, owned by TWG Motorsports, is three rounds into its inaugural campaign after debuting in Australia. Cadillac sat 10th of 11 in the constructors’ championship, with a season-best finish of 13th by Valtteri Bottas in China. The one-off livery and suits were presented as a temporary, celebratory promotional showcase tied to Cadillac’s first U.S. home race and an early public signal of the team’s branding and competitive ambitions in its maiden season.