The 2026 season

New Rules and a Very Young Leader

The story so far: under sweeping new rules and with eleven teams on the grid, Mercedes has set the pace and Kimi Antonelli leads with eight rounds left.

This is the story so far of a championship that is still being decided. The 2026 season began under a sweeping rewrite of the rules. The power units kept their turbocharged V6 engines but lost the motor generator unit that recovered energy from heat, and far more of their output now comes from electric power. The cars became smaller and lighter, with movable front and rear wings in place of DRS. Cadillac arrived as the eleventh team, the first new entry since Haas in 2016, Audi took over Sauber as a works team, Honda began supplying Aston Martin, and Ford returned alongside Red Bull Powertrains. The calendar fell to twenty three Grands Prix after the outbreak of the Iran war led to the cancellation of the Saudi Arabian race, and Bahrain's was postponed.

Mercedes understood the new rules first. George Russell won the opener in Australia, and then his teammate Kimi Antonelli took over. In China he became the youngest pole sitter in the sport's history and Italy's first Grand Prix winner since 2006, and after Japan he became the youngest driver ever to lead the championship. Oliver Bearman's high speed crash at Suzuka brought scrutiny of the new energy rules, and adjustments took effect from Miami. Antonelli's run reached five straight wins, the last of them at Monaco from pole while leading every lap, about as complete as an afternoon in Monte Carlo can be.

Others have had their days. Lewis Hamilton won for Ferrari for the first time in Barcelona, and no older driver had won a Grand Prix since Jack Brabham in 1970. Charles Leclerc won the British Grand Prix, and Lando Norris gave McLaren its first wins of the year in Hungary and at Zandvoort. At Monza Pierre Gasly took his first pole for Alpine, but Antonelli became the first Italian to win his home race in sixty years, and did it from nineteenth on the grid. He won again at the new Madrid circuit, and Russell led every lap in Baku to hold off Max Verstappen by 0.196 seconds.

After fifteen rounds Antonelli has eight wins and leads on 302 points, 66 ahead of Russell, with Hamilton third on 199 and Norris fourth on 186. Eight rounds remain, starting in Bahrain, and the championship is still open. How it ends is a story for later in the year.

The calendar

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