Author Archives: PressBox

Audi confirmed that 22-year-old Estonian Paul Aron will drive in FP1 at the Spanish and Austrian Grands Prix. Aron, Alpine’s reserve driver, will replace Nico Hülkenberg for FP1 in Barcelona and stand in for Gabriel Bortoleto in Austria. Audi described the outings as short-term practice swaps to give Aron exposure to Audi machinery and to contribute to the team’s wider 2026 programme.

Aron’s Barcelona FP1 will be his sixth F1 practice outing. He made his FP1 debut at Silverstone in 2025 for the Hinwil-based Sauber and later completed additional FP1 runs for Alpine. He is scheduled to get his first running in Audi’s R26 in Barcelona.

Audi and Alpine said the arrangement also helps meet mandatory rookie practice-run requirements and lets teams evaluate drivers under race-weekend conditions. After the Audi FP1 outings, Aron will return to his regular programme with Alpine for the remainder of the season. Other rookies expected in Barcelona FP1 include Luke Browning, Leonardo Fornaroli and Colton Herta.

FP1 for the Barcelona weekend begins at 9:30 p.m. AEST on Friday.

The Formula 1 season returns to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, scheduled for June 12–14, with the race on Sunday, June 14 at 15:00 local (14:00 BST). The weekend will follow the traditional format, with practice and qualifying on June 12–13; teams completed a private shakedown ahead of the event. This is round seven of the season at the 4.657 km Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

In the U.K., Sky Sports F1 will show every session, streamable via Sky Go and NowTV (subscriptions from £22/month); Channel 4 will air highlights. In the U.S. the race will be available on Apple TV. F1 TV Pro and F1 TV Premium will stream in selected countries, offering onboard cameras, multi-language commentary and 4K/HDR where available; apps are provided for Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV/Google TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku. Live timing and telemetry will be available on F1.com and the F1 app, and Crash.net will carry live text updates.

Teams are set to bring significant upgrades for the technical Barcelona layout that could reshuffle the running order and strategies. Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli arrives in strong form after five consecutive wins and is the pre-race favourite; reports put his championship lead at roughly 66–68 points over teammate George Russell, who failed to score in Monaco. Lewis Hamilton has recorded back-to-back second-place finishes for Ferrari and is still searching for a first win since joining the team.

Reliability and consistency are under scrutiny after Monaco: both Lando Norris and Max Verstappen retired there — Verstappen following an opening-lap failure — while Isack Hadjar produced a surprise podium. Ferrari has raised brake concerns after Charles Leclerc’s crash in Monaco, and McLaren see Barcelona as a likely recovery venue for the MCL40. Oscar Piastri was the Barcelona winner last year.

Published session times list FP1 13:30 and FP2 17:00 on Friday; FP3 12:30 and Qualifying 16:00 on Saturday; and the Grand Prix at 15:00 local (14:00 BST) on Sunday. Support series (F2 and F3) will run sessions across the weekend. Weather forecasts point to warm, sunny conditions with race-day highs in the high 20s to around 30°C and no rain expected.

Williams confirmed that 24-year-old Luke Browning will run Free Practice 1 at the Barcelona-Catalunya and Austrian Grands Prix as part of his development pathway, taking over from Alex Albon in Spain and Carlos Sainz in Austria. The team designated Browning for two of the mandatory rookie FP1 sessions, which count toward the four compulsory rookie outings under current regulations, and said the back-to-back runs will give him extra exposure to the FW48 and the Formula 1 weekend environment. Williams also described the sessions as opportunities to evaluate Browning’s progress in real-world running.

Browning, a Briton in his fourth year with the Williams Driver Academy and appointed Williams reserve driver at the start of 2026, said he felt fit and ready after moving to Super Formula with Team Kondo and that simulator work had kept him race-fit and helped him understand the car’s development direction. He finished fourth in the 2025 Formula 2 championship with nine podiums, including a Feature Race win at Monza, and has prior FP1 and young-driver test experience from 2024 and 2025. Browning called the FP1 appearances an audition, said he was eager to get seat time and thanked Williams for the opportunity and support.

Team figures framed the outings as an important step in Browning’s pathway toward a potential race seat, with Sporting Director Sven Smeets praising his simulator work and on-track performances. Browning praised Williams’ off-track strengths, including its garage position next to Ferrari, historical development work and marketing, and expressed confidence in team leadership and prospects for improvement by the end of the year after a difficult start caused by an overweight FW48 chassis and regulation changes. The Spanish and Austrian FP1 runs will be Browning’s first sessions in the new-regulation cars and will take place during a break in his Super Formula schedule.

Andrea Stella said McLaren felt being a Mercedes customer put the team “on the back foot” in the 2026 Formula 1 season, blaming the customer-supplier arrangement for operational and integration limits that have compounded reliability problems. He said the new 2026 power units remain largely unknown and teams are still learning how to run them session by session. As a customer, McLaren has had fewer opportunities to align timelines with Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, to run joint experiments or to pair chassis tests with extended power-unit running in the way a works team can, Stella said, and that constrained McLaren’s development and response this season.

The limits of that arrangement showed up across race weekends. McLaren, the defending world champion, produced a double-podium in Miami but then endured disrupted events in Montreal and Monaco. Lando Norris retired in Montreal with a gearbox failure after a strategic gamble on intermediate tyres, and he was forced to retire in Monaco with a power-unit problem. McLaren also recorded a rare double did-not-start in China and has faced a difficult opening stretch to the year. Stella accepted that some failures, including the Canadian gearbox issue, were McLaren’s responsibility.

McLaren and Mercedes HPP are conducting a wide-ranging, ongoing review of individual items and broader factory-to-track processes to improve meetings, information sharing and reliability. Stella stressed Mercedes HPP was not deprioritising McLaren and said the relationship remains strong, but he warned that fixes will take time. McLaren’s leadership is also weighing strategic alternatives, with CEO Zak Brown saying the team could consider building its own power unit in future if it proved financially viable. The season marks the first time McLaren has publicly said its customer status produced these kinds of downsides.

Nico Hülkenberg’s contact with Carlos Sainz at the Monaco Grand Prix restart forced Sainz to retire, earned Hülkenberg a post-race 10-second penalty and provoked strong criticism of restart driving. Sainz called the manoeuvre “stupid” and described the late-race contacts as “borderline unacceptable.” Hülkenberg defended his actions, saying he had to take evasive action to avoid Esteban Ocon, was pushed onto the inside kerb and did not accept full blame for the collision.

The incidents unfolded at the Lap 70 restart with seven laps remaining, as the pack bunched up. Hülkenberg, who had taken the restart in 12th, attempted an inside move on Ocon at the Loews Hairpin (Fairmont Hotel Hairpin) and clipped Sainz’s left rear. Sainz, who had been running 10th, limped on to Portier before being struck again by Franco Colapinto and retiring with terminal damage to his Williams. Race stewards ruled that Hülkenberg “turned into Car 55 in Turn 8 causing a collision,” reviewed both the hairpin and Portier incidents, issued Hülkenberg a 10-second penalty for the hairpin contact and took no further action over the Portier contact after concluding Sainz had tried to move off the racing line following damage.

The penalty dropped Hülkenberg from ninth across the line to 13th in the final classification and directly affected lower points positions, denying Williams a potential double-points result. The sequence and the stewards’ interpretation heightened debate about restart dynamics and on-track behaviour, with contrasting accounts from the drivers involved.