Temporada F1 2026 🏎

[LaraCroft]

Un artículo muy interesante socia, gracias 🥰 🥰 

[llumia]

Un artículo muy interesante socia, gracias 🥰 🥰

De nada. Parece que Mercedes y Red Bull pillan todos los trucos, el resto de motoristas, a verlas venir 

[llumia]

F1's plan for immediate F1 rule tweaks after key summit - what we know

Formula 1 teams and the FIA have committed to making necessary changes to address concerns about the 2026 rules following a first technical meeting on Thursday to discuss potential tweaks.

Amid a consensus in the paddock that improvements can be made to the current F1 regulations to resolve some concerns about safety and the qualifying spectacle in particular, a first gathering of technical experts took place on April 9 to run through ideas.

A statement issued by the FIA afterwards made clear that the focus of debate was not about changes to improve the racing, but more about the energy starvation problems that have triggered wider issues.

While there is a sense that opinions may not necessarily be aligned in terms of what needs to change and how it should be changed, there does appear to be consensus that some form of action needs to be taken.

The FIA said: "It was generally agreed that although the events to date have provided exciting racing, there was a commitment to making tweaks to some aspects of the regulations in the area of energy management.

"There was constructive dialogue on difficult topics especially when considering the competitive nature of the stakeholders."

The meeting on Thursday is the first in a series of get togethers that are planned over the next few weeks to try to get rule tweaks in place for the Miami Grand Prix.

The FIA has laid out the framework for the process that will now take place before the next race.

A sporting regulations meeting is scheduled for April 15 to discuss any elements that are linked to that section of the rule book that would need to be altered to accommodate revised technical modifications.

Then a further session of technical experts has been lined up for the following day, April 16, to follow up discussions from today's initial meeting as well as air any fresh topics that come up as a consequence of further evaluation.

After that, team bosses will meet with senior figures from F1 and the FIA on April 20 to evaluate any agreed proposals with a view to getting them voted through the F1 Commission.

Any changes agreed at that meeting will then need to go through the FIA's World Motor Sport Council for final ratification before Miami.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/f1-commits-to-making-2026-rule-changes-after-difficult-talks/

[llumia]

Verstappen's race engineer to make shock McLaren switch

Max Verstappen's long-serving race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, is to leave Red Bull and make a shock switch to McLaren.

Lambiase's future had been the subject of speculation over the winter, as rival teams targeted the British-Italian engineer who had been pondering his long-term options.

Aston Martin had targeted him as a potential team principal, while there were rumours that Williams was also interested.

However, behind the scenes McLaren also entered the frame and became the preferred option as it made a bold bid to secure him in a senior management position.

As first reported in Dutch media, including De Telegraaf, and confirmed by sources with good knowledge of the situation, a deal is now in place for Lambiase to join McLaren when his current contract with Red Bull ends next year.

No official announcement has been made, and there has been no comment from either McLaren nor Red Bull about the situation, but sources have indicated the plan will be for him to work alongside and help support current team principal Andrea Stella.

It is understood that Lambiase's chief focus will be in taking on some of the in-weekend racing responsibilities that Stella currently has under his umbrella.

The growing complexity of F1 operations means that the role of team principal can now no longer cover everything, and McLaren has felt that bringing in someone with Lambiase's experience and talent will be a big help.

The move will take place at the start of 2028 unless an agreement is reached between McLaren and Red Bull for it to happen earlier.

Lambiase's planned move away from Red Bull comes at a pivotal time for both the team and Verstappen – who is pondering his own future.

He and Verstappen have built up a super close bond together that has carried them to four world championships.

After last year's title defeat in Abu Dhabi, Verstappen praised Lambiase following some emotional scenes on the pit wall.

Verstappen said: "It's been an emotional year. Forget about the results this year.

"I also don't want to go too much into detail, but it's been tough. But I'm very happy to be able to work with someone that passionate."

Lambiase moving on also comes against the backdrop of Verstappen having lost several close allies in recent years, including Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko , chief mechanic Matt Caller, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley and and Ole Schack, who was a long-serving front end mechanic for Verstappen.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/max-verstappen-race-engineer-shock-mclaren-switch/

[llumia]

What losing key Red Bull confidant means for Verstappen

News of Gianpiero Lambiase's planned switch from Red Bull to its Formula 1 rival McLaren will not have come out of the blue for Max Verstappen, as he will have known about the deal being in place for several weeks.

But, at a time when Verstappen is pondering what exactly he does with his F1 future, the significance of the looming loss of perhaps his closest remaining ally at Red Bull should not be played down.

While Verstappen's decision about what happens next for him rests on a host of factors, the most significant of which is his dislike of the 2026 regulations, there are extra elements feeding into things.

Red Bull's competitive situation will not be helping (even though Verstappen denies this is a factor), but it's the guaranteed ending now of a partnership with Lambiase that began from Verstappen's very first race (and win) with the senior team that could sway things on a more personal level.

Lambiase's call to switch teams means that whatever Verstappen does, a life change is coming which means race weekends are going to be very different whether he stays in F1 or not.

Lambiase and Verstappen have formed a formidable partnership - in fact an iconic driver/engineer pairing - ever since the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.

They have a bond that has often been likened to being an old married couple, owing to the many years they have worked together and the bickering nature of their dynamic at times.

But this should not be viewed as a criticism of their partnership. It is in fact a strength of an enduring relationship for a pair who have fought, argued, cried, and cheered together, experiencing every possible emotion alongside the many wins and four F1 drivers' championship titles.

Lambiase has a direct line to Verstappen, and vice versa, and uses that to good effect.

He has consistently been the only person in the paddock who can give Verstappen as good as he gets - and this has to be seen as a positive for Red Bull in getting the very best out of Verstappen too.

There is a bluntness that all drivers need at some point, but sometimes it is not easy for team members to rein in a driver who is put up on a pedestal.

One of Lambiase's big strengths was that he was never cowered by his driver, often giving as good as he got over team radio but without that, then leading to lingering tensions afterwards.

Sure, there have been flashpoints, and the need for post-event discussions, but the pair always knew where they stood with each other and why these challenging moments were needed if they were going to deliver the best in F1.

It would be wrong, though, to suggest that without Lambiase there is zero future for Verstappen at Red Bull. Life in F1 moves on very quickly when staff depart.

Over the years, Verstappen has already had some exposure to working with others within the Red Bull organisation, whether through different voices being brought in for certain sessions, or when other engineers have covered races where Lambiase was absent for personal reasons.

But there is a significant difference between an interim solution that works around someone's entirely understandable personal commitments and accepting a lesser arrangement on a permanent basis.

The strong bonds that are essential for a driver/engineer relationship to reach its potential take time; and starting again with someone at this stage of his career may be something that Verstappen does not want to do right now.

It is also worth stressing that Verstappen will understand why this decision has been made and what has prompted Lambiase to seek pastures new.

Verstappen was entirely empathetic towards Lambiase's situation last year and he will know this decision has not been taken lightly.

But there is a big difference between understanding someone's decision and being immune from the consequences of it.

Lambiase's exit from Red Bull, whether it has to wait until 2028 or an agreement can be reached for it to happen earlier, will surely therefore not help Red Bull's chances of retaining Verstappen long term.

This is especially true given he is already weighing up a sabbatical driven by his general dislike of the current regulations.

Verstappen has always said enjoyment is his number-one priority, with competitiveness coming after. But losing people he likes, trusts, and respects impacts both his enjoyment and the likelihood of success.

There may well come a point, if it has not already, where Verstappen looks around the garage, the place he speaks of so warmly as his second family, and thinks that while he is not surrounded by strangers, it is not the same team and family that he fought so hard for, and that has fought so hard for him.

And it is against that backdrop that the decision on his F1 future, and by implication what Red Bull's next few years look like, will hang.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what-losing-key-red-bull-confidant-means-for-verstappen/

[llumia]

Our verdict on Verstappen's race engineer's bombshell McLaren switch

There are few race engineers in Formula 1 history with quite as much instant recognition as Gianpiero Lambiase, who is set for a shock switch away from Red Bull and Max Verstappen's stable to join rival McLaren when his contract expires next year.

The departure of any such senior figure would be a blow to any F1 team; but how badly will it rock a Red Bull team that has lost so much of its senior leadership team these past two years?

Perhaps more importantly, how will it affect Verstappen - who was understood to already have been seriously considering his future in F1?

Here's our team's reaction:

'New' Red Bull hasn't stopped the rot

Lambiase is the latest in a very long line of departures over recent years since the passing of Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz in 2022.

Christian Horner was sacked last year, and Helmut Marko moved aside. Before that, design legend Adrian Newey had left, so too sporting director Jonathan Wheatley. Rob Marshall joined McLaren, where he is now chief designer, and Lambiase will reunite with Red Bull's former strategy chief Will Courtenay at McLaren too.

Other exits have followed in recent months: chief designer Craig Skinner and Verstappen's chief mechanic Matt Caller left over the winter, and long-serving front-end mechanic Ole Schack will leave too.

These are just a small number of people within an organisation that spans more than a thousand, and there will be others who have left that are not as high profile. But these are the people who set the direction, established the culture, made the key decisions, had a tonne of experience and were absolutely core to the team's rise and success.

They are material losses in terms of their expertise, experience, and place within the organisation, and they represent a serious blow to the new Red Bull era - led ostensibly by Laurent Mekies, but ultimately reporting to the Austrian corporate side of Red Bull under Oliver Mintzlaff.

Such a steady stream of departures shows that Red Bull's problems run much deeper than whatever issues existed under Horner's leadership - and there were issues. But the 'new' Red Bull has not been able to stop the rot off track.

It risks being something of a sinking ship, especially as on track the performance is extremely disappointing in early 2026, with question marks over the technical leadership and the direction the team has taken over the last couple of years.

We need to acknowledge - and respect - there is likely a significant personal factor in Lambiase's decision. So in isolation it could mean nothing more than a person doing what is best for them and their family.

However that does not change the move being part of a wider trend of Red Bull losing its most influential personnel.

Red Bull needs to get back on the front foot

Adrian Newey. Jonathan Wheatley. Now Gianpiero Lambiase. Max Verstappen soon? It feels like big names have only left Red Bull, rather than joined it, over the last two years.

And while there's plenty of great talent still there, I can't help but feel it needs to make go on an aggressive senior recruitment drive of its own.

After all, at its best, this is still a frontrunning F1 team, one that had the best car at stages last year.

It's done a perfectly solid job with its first-ever F1 power unit, too. Everyone expected that to be Red Bull's main 2026 deficit, but it's actually been the car.

So it still has a nice bit of pulling power. Why not use it and make sure you're attracting new pillars of the team, not just losing them?

Something akin to its big swoops for Adrian Newey and Peter Prodromou from McLaren and Rob Marshall from world champion Renault in the mid-2000s feels sorely needed now.

A troubling end of an era for Red Bull and Verstappen

McLaren's success in singing Gianpiero Lambiase - both convincing him to leave Red Bull and beating rivals including Aston Martin to his signature - is a big coup.

But the loss is even greater for Red Bull, as it has an impact not only on the senior management operations at the team but it also has to influence any decision Max Verstappen makes on his future.

Lambiase has been a stalwart for both Red Bull and Verstappen, and someone so central to the success that they have all achieved together. Replacing someone of his calibre and experience will not be easy.

Losing him is the end of an era for Verstappen too; and will almost certainly serve to increase the four-time champion's viewpoint that now could be the time to take that sabbatical and think about where he goes with his life longer term.

From Red Bull's perspective, off the back of a challenging start to the year, the loss of Lambiase is a further sign of the one-way revolving door that has led to a host of senior staff exits - pointing to a cyclical change in a team that came so close to winning the world championship last year but now appears to be heading for more challenging times.

Red Bull's fight or flight moment

All empires fall, and this news definitely feels like another blow for the previously mighty Red Bull regime.

Helmut Marko, Matt Caller, Jonathan Wheatley, Ole Schack; the list of big Red Bull exits goes on.

Mercedes went through a similar haemorrhaging of staff as part of its era of turbo-hybrid rules success. It's natural that all teams go through it. Good people become very attractive to other teams.

You can choose to view this in a few ways. The pessimistic outlook says this is the end of Red Bull's F1 success for at least the near future, and that if most of the people involved in Verstappen's success have gone, that's one thing fewer keeping him there.

But you could also choose to view this in an optimistic way. Laurent Mekies is still new in the job and while less able to make sweeping changes than Christian Horner would have been, he's still tasked with building this new version of Red Bull. And he's shown a lot of promise he can manage this team effectively.

Replacing champions is sometimes impossible. But in F1, replacing champions is always inevitable. It's fight or flight time for Red Bull.

Verstappen sabbatical only feels more likely

This news will undoubtedly feed into the yin and yang of Verstappen's upcoming career decision, and I tend to think it will push him even closer to potentially taking a sabbatical.

At 28, he's young enough to have one, especially when you consider that Alain Prost's in 1992 was taken when the also four-time world champion was 37!

I've seen in Formula E, a discipline Verstappen kind of passively aggressively spewed forth a few months ago, that the driver-engineer dynamic is absolutely crucial. The new skills of lift and coast and managing battery energy extract much more from an engaged driver and replicating that almost sixth-sense skill, while simultaneously racing wheel-to-wheel, should not be underestimated. There is a reason that Formula E drivers and engineers have very long lead times together and endure.

Verstappen is showing classic signs of not enjoying being an underdog in F1 now and this transitional phase for Red Bull will likely go on for a while. The question then is does the recapturing of the joy, something that has been eviscerated with the new regulations, occur before he has to make his next big career decision, whether it be in F1 or in another sphere?

If you roll in the fact Verstappen will have to develop a new relationship with a new engineer, something which will take time in terms of pure assimilation on many levels, then the evidence starts to point more starkly at a sabbatical period.

On Wednesday, Verstappen was at Paul Ricard checking out the GT World Challenge Europe paddock (where Lance Stroll is also racing this weekend).

It's clear that he is mulling over his next moves, while knowing that a future re-entry into F1 after a sabbatical, while not easy, would be his for the taking should he wish to go that route.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mclaren-snatches-verstappen-f1-engineer-lambiase-our-verdict/