2026 F1 General Discussion Thread

Honestly, if they upped the power from the ICE to about 750hp, these things would be insane.

What a selfish thing to say.

You will have 4 weeks to watch it. So what if you miss one race live. Its bound to happen at least once now as there is almost a race every other weekend and people who have a life well then its enevitable that your going to miss a race or 2 maybe even 3 or 4.

Watching the highlights of FP1. I don't think this race is going to be boring . Anything but.

The f1 Japanese thread is open, so ye all know.

How long was George Russells new contract for?

I'd imagine Mercedes could sweeten a deal for Max with some commitment to help out with the GT3 side of it. Maybe back him to get a team of his own up and running once his contract runs out

I don't see Max moving to Merc. Unless theres changes I think hes more likely to do a Montoya and leave F1 mid 2026

they already do that - Verstappen has a fully fledged team of his own ‘Verstappen Racing’, and they use a Mercedes amg gt3 car

I am fairly new to f1 only in the last 2 years.

I know about the rule changes but why is the bearman crash such a big deal?

also what is 130R?

Hard to know, but I don't think so.

Kimi had serious pace in clear air. I think he averaged half a second on Piastri every lap. With that kind of pace advantage, it's hard to see how Oscar could have held him back. (Obviously he lucked out to get there, but them's the breaks.)

Palmer said on F1TV that he would have loved to have seen how the race played out without the safety car, and I fully agree.

George was not representative of Mercedes car performance today. I've seen some discussion online that other teams have caught up. The first two rounds, and his teammate's performance, give me no comfort that that is the case.

No matter how good you are, you need luck to win a championship and Antonelli's putting himself in the position to get the rub of the green at the moment.

I've seen a few drivers mention this over the weekend, Norris, Lawson and I think Max.

Is the boost done without their input?

I remember in testing there was some talk of it, along with the active aero, but I kinda forgot about it until this weekend

A safety car coming out at an opportune time is luck every day of the week.

Yes, Bearman crashed for reasons. Yes, where a car is at a given point is not luck. How those two variables intersect, is luck. Kimi didn't chose to stay out until Bearman crashed.

How that impacted any given driver, as it was a situation that was entirely out of their control, was luck. If the same crash happens lap ealier, the impact is different per driver. And the race scenario completely changing in, or out of, your favour when you had no impact on the reasons for it, it luck.