Oscar Piastri turned 25 on April 6 as one of the most talked-about drivers in Formula 1, not because he leads the championship but because of a calamitous start to the season that has left a title contender playing catch-up in a year when McLaren expected to be fighting at the front. Three rounds in,
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Helmut Marko, the former Red Bull Formula One advisor who worked alongside Adrian Newey for nearly two decades, has confirmed that his former colleague is struggling both professionally and personally as Aston Martin’s nightmare 2026 season continues to unfold. “I had contact with him. He is not doing well,” Marko said, before adding the even
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Max Verstappen is eighth in the Formula 1 drivers’ championship after two races, level on eight points with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. He has not been this low in the standings at this stage of a season since 2018. He is also the most vocal critic in the paddock of the regulations that got him
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Lance Stroll’s Chinese Grand Prix ended at Turn 1 on the ninth lap when his Aston Martin suddenly lost all power, bringing out the race’s only safety car and reshaping the strategic picture for almost every team on the grid. The retirement was attributed to a suspected battery issue within the Honda power unit, which
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Max Verstappen retired from sixth place in Shanghai with an ERS cooling failure and immediately used the post-race pen to deliver his most savage verdict yet on the 2026 regulatory framework. He has been openly critical of the new rules since pre-season testing, but the language that emerged on Sunday afternoon felt like a significant
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Formula 1 has not seen anything quite like what McLaren endured in Shanghai before lights out on Sunday. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to start the Chinese Grand Prix, each struck by separate and unrelated electrical issues on their respective power units, leaving two of the sport’s fastest cars silent in the garage
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The cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix is about more than two missing entries on a calendar. For F1 teams, the decision is triggering a cascade of problems that reach into upgrade planning, engine development rules, and a long-running political dispute over car performance. The first problem is upgrades. Under the 2026
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The Chinese Grand Prix weekend is turning into an extended exercise in damage limitation for Red Bull. Max Verstappen qualified eighth for Saturday’s sprint, over a second behind pole-sitter George Russell, and finished ninth in the race itself — one position outside the points. The sprint result followed a dismal Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne
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Zak Brown, McLaren’s CEO, is approaching Formula 1’s technical overhaul in 2026 with excitement rather than frustration. After four years of the ground-effect era, which spanned from 2022 to 2025, McLaren claimed a remarkable double. Lando Norris won the Drivers’ Championship, while teammate Oscar Piastri helped the team secure the Constructors’ title, a first since
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The FIA has issued a formal statement condemning the online harassment aimed at Mercedes F1 rookie Kimi Antonelli following the Qatar Grand Prix. The 19-year-old faced a wave of abuse after comments from Red Bull personnel suggested he had deliberately allowed Lando Norris to overtake him during the closing laps. Antonelli had been defending fourth
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