Welcome to 2026! We bid adieu to 2025 and Formula 1‘s ground-effect era (2022-2025) and welcome a new set of regulations.
Will the new formula shake up the running order? Will it be the tonic for what ails Ferrari? Will it help Cadillac hit the ground running in its debut season? ESPN answers those questions as more as we detail the storylines that will define the 2026 campaign.
Will F1’s new cars be an improvement for racing?
While 2025’s three-way championship fight went to the wire, racing was arguably the worst it’s been for a while in what was the final year of the controversial and much-disliked ground-effect cars that came into being in 2022. Formula 1 has a clean slate this year, a complete overhaul of the rules on both the aerodynamic and engine side of things.
As a result, F1 will look and feel radically different in 2026. Under the new rules, the cars themselves will be shorter, thinner, lighter and nimbler, with the stated aim of creating better racing. Pirelli is still supplying 18-inch tires, but they’re narrower. And, perhaps the best bit of news for haters of the last generation of cars, is a simplification of things across the board. The long ground-effect tunnels of the last cars are being replaced by flatter floors and side pods with bigger openings. Front and rear wings are also becoming much less complex after looking more and more like a sci-fi writer’s dream in recent years.
Beneath the bodywork, the new engine rules were enough to convince Red Bull to partner with Ford to build their own, convinced Audi to join as a fully fledged manufacturer by taking over the Sauber team, and saw General Motors promise to have the new Cadillac team race race with American-made engines by the end of the decade.
That all sounds great on the surface, but there are some concerns.
While the complexity has shifted away some of the design elements, it has moved instead toward the driver inside the cockpit. Early simulator feedback from drivers was hardly enthusiastic. While virtual running is far from definitive and the cars will evolve rapidly through testing and the early races, one theme has already emerged: workload.
Managing power deployment, aero modes and energy recovery look set to become a constant, relentless task inside the cockpit. Those simpler front and rear wings will become big talking points, as they are both part of the “active aero” rules: drivers will be able to adjust flaps and angles on both as they complete a lap, which will require constant back and forth with their teams. The Drag Reduction System (DRS) has been scrapped completely, with drivers now equipped with an Overtake Mode power boost.
Expect more radio traffic than ever as drivers and engineers attempt to unlock performance lap by lap, a mentally exhausting reality that could define the early races of the season at the minimum. F1 had to explain all of this in an eight-minute video, hinting at the complexity that might dominate the start of the new season — and that’s just on the aerodynamic side.
Who will emerge as top dog?
Formula 1 introduces new rules for a variety of reasons, but the most appealing from a sporting point of view is that it can reset the competitive order. For F1’s most recent past, that order has been split into a big four — Mercedes, McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari — and the rest.
A big question, straight out of the gate, is whether Aston Martin can muscle in on that cluster of teams. The early mood music is that the benchmark might be elsewhere. Numerous well-placed paddock sources have indicated to ESPN that Mercedes is increasingly confident about the strength of its budding engine program. While no one knows for sure, word of horsepower levels and targets quickly spreads around F1 teams, especially through the natural movement of staff from one team to another.
It will be impossible to know until testing, but Mercedes is the one most in the paddock expect to be in front come March’s Australian Grand Prix. George Russell had a stellar 2025 and would be an immediate title favorite in that scenario.
Mercedes’ engine being the benchmark would create another fascinating storyline. Engine customer McLaren has won back-to-back constructors’ titles, and it would be a PR nightmare for the German manufacturer if its F1 team kept losing to a customer outfit in a brand-new regulation cycle. Mercedes also supplies engines to Williams and Alpine, both whom will have renewed hopes of a leap up the order if early predictions about the engines come to pass.
Expectations are lower around the newer entries on the grid. Audi might have an uphill battle with its new engine program early on, although it was already making clear progress in the final year of the Sauber project it has now completely taken over. Red Bull’s new in-house engine project — built in conjunction with Ford — is also a massive question mark, albeit multiple years in the making.
But it is still complete guesswork at this stage. Ferrari as always will garner a lot of attention, having shifted focus onto 2026 earlier than most, something that only increased the pain of the dismal 2025 season down the stretch. Pressure on the Italian team to finally deliver a title contender will be massive — with one obvious consequence for failing.
Can Ferrari convince Leclerc to stay?
During his media interviews after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc said the first five or six races of 2026 would be key for him in deciding what’s next. It was a clear and obvious message to Ferrari.
After years of waiting for the team to deliver a championship-worthy car, cracks in his patience were clear last season. The man who was signed as a teenager by Ferrari and fast-tracked to the race team after a rookie year at Alfa Romeo has become the face of the team, but has also come to epitomize the ongoing frustration around the Italian outfit.
Leclerc will have a clear reason to be apprehensive going into the new regulation cycle. In 2022 Ferrari appeared to be the team to beat and he won two of the first three races, only for the team’s form and season to unravel in gut-wrenching style from there. Bar a fleeting constructors’ championship fight with McLaren in 2024, it was a difficult few years for anyone in red.
Leclerc’s performances were one of the few bright spots for Ferrari. The Monaco-born superstar would not have trouble finding interested suitors elsewhere if he decided to leave.
Leclerc is a Ferrari man to the bone and he might not need a world beater in Melbourne to be convinced to stay, just one that is clearly in the right ballpark, but even that is less of a certainty than it might have been before. Leclerc is too good to be waiting for a team to deliver him a championship-worthy car, and that realization appears to have dawned on him. There would be no bigger indictment of Ferrari’s failure in modern F1 if Leclerc decided his best bet to become a champion was to wear a color other than red.
What happens to ‘Papaya rules’ at McLaren?
After a storybook 2025, the dynamic is different at the reigning world champions now: for the first time since they became teammates, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri enter a season together on unequal footing. Norris will have the No. 1 on his car as reigning world champion, while Piastri is still searching for that maiden title. McLaren walked a tightrope trying to ensure a fair fight between its drivers last season and it almost cost it the drivers’ championship.
The team insisted that will continue into 2026, but it will be fascinating to see how that plays out under the new reality.
Piastri admitted the events of Monza — when he agreed to let Norris through to second at the end of the race — stuck in his craw for a little too long, partly contributing to his disastrous Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, while he was also upset how Norris barged past him at the start of the Singapore Grand Prix. It’s fair to wonder whether the Australian will put his foot down a little more often in the 50-50 moments — certainly there are a lot of F1 fans out there who would feel he has every right to given how his 2025 season played out. Beyond that, Piastri’s high points last year were supremely high, and if he can continue that upward trajectory — and learn from the things that contributed to his championship collapse — then he will be well placed to challenge for a championship again.
Then there’s the question of Norris himself. He had a rollercoaster championship season and still has a fair share of doubters despite that success. Title glory can be a mixed bag for drivers. For some, with the pressure gone, they can dominate further; for others, one world title can be all they needed to achieve. Should Norris step up his game even further in 2026 and erase the mistakes that have dogged his career to this point, the conversation about Papaya rules and fighting Piastri on equal footing might become moot anyway.
How will Cadillac fare as F1’s new team?
Cadillac’s new Formula 1 team has been several years in the making and will join in 2026 with Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas at the helm. It’s a landmark moment, the first new team to join under current owners Liberty Media.
The sport has changed hugely since Haas’ debut in 2016, and Cadillac’s acceptance to the series only came after a lengthy back and forth with the grid’s other teams over whether it could bring enough value to the paddock. Cadillac is already making waves in that regard: it will unveil the livery of its new race team in a Super Bowl ad.
Even though an exciting moment for American motorsport, expectations must be tempered. Cadillac has said so itself. The budget cap might in theory make it easier for a new team to join today than in the past, when rivals could spend unlimited sums on development, but that rule has also raised the bar of competition across the board compared to 10 years ago.
A good first season would be to look the part. In Pérez and Bottas, Cadillac has two drivers who can snatch points if they’re available — much like Pierre Gasly repeatedly did for Alpine last year — but there will undoubtedly be growing pains for a team that a few short years ago was nothing but a concept. The GM-backed team will race with Ferrari power in 2026 and 2027 at least, with plans already afoot to compete with its own engines by the end of the decade.
Can Aston live up to the hype?
After being dubbed “the team of the future” in recent years, the onus is now on Aston Martin to turn big talk and big spending into big results. Owner Lawrence Stroll has invested heavily for this very rules cycle, with the singular goal of making his team world champions; team boss Adrian Newey, F1’s greatest car designer, was the headline signing, but they also have a new exclusive engine partnership with Honda and a swanky new facility opposite the Silverstone circuit.
Should Aston deliver the car, it has the driver to do the rest. Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso has not won a race since 2013 and is hungrier than ever to remind the world how good he is behind the wheel of a race car.
Aston Martin has been a difficult one to make sense of more recently. Each time Strolll has made a big-name technical signing, it has appeared to undermine the last one he made. Shortly after Newey arrived, Andy Cowell was shifted away from his team boss position into a role overseeing the integration of the Honda engine. Newey took his place as team principal, a slightly odd appointment for a man whose legendary status has always been built on his prowess as a car designer and not as an inspirational team leader. Cowell, who oversaw the dominant Mercedes engine department in the 2010s, might now have found himself in the right spot, but Aston Martin has lacked stability and a coherent vision behind the scenes for a little while.
Given that it was nowhere under the previous regulation cycle, Aston was able to hide away from public scrutiny to a large degree — that ends this year. Given the work that has gone into this project to this point, failure is not an option.
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Can Hamilton turn things around at Ferrari?
Ferrari’s issues going into 2026 are twofold: Leclerc is one, Lewis Hamilton is the other — for very different reasons. After a huge amount of hype coming into 2025, Hamilton’s Ferrari debut season was a disaster. Bar the sprint pole and win in China, he often looked ordinary compared to Leclerc, and his defeatist tone later in the year further soured the feeling around his first year in red.
Going into the new year, it’s fair to ask if he can turn it around, and what he would do if the form simply did not come to him once 2026 gets going.
Hamilton should get some leeway here. He said from the outset that 2025 would be a foundational year for 2026, although no one could have predicted how off the pace he would be. His dislike of the ground-effect cars was well known and the new generation might well be more to his liking, but the difficulties of last season mean he starts on the back foot.
A slow start early in the year would only increase the pressure on him and Ferrari, who might quickly start having buyer’s remorse (if they don’t already). Leclerc’s own future might dictate Hamilton’s; it’s hard to imagine the Scuderia letting him walk if Leclerc also leaves at the end of 2026. Even then, academy product Oliver Bearman looks like an absolute superstar in the making at Haas.
How long will Verstappen stay in F1?
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen has made no secret that he would happily walk away from F1 when he stops enjoying it. Early on last year, it seemed as though he might have been close to that moment, but a midseason GT race at the Nürburgring and his legendary turnaround in the second half of the year seemed to give him a spring in his step again.
There are two points to consider here. One is that if the new cars are not to Verstappen’s liking, it is not hard to imagine him simply walking away to do something else; he loves his sports-car racing and has made little secret of his desire to compete in events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the future. He has little else to prove in Formula 1. And two, the strength of Red Bull might play a part in deciding what his immediate future looks like. The team appeared to be in full-on implosion last year, especially when team boss Christian Horner was pushed out in July, but the late resurgence will have given everyone at Red Bull reason for optimism. Red Bull’s in-house engine program is a major question mark, however, and if that is a complete failur,e he might look for other options on the grid.
If Red Bull’s program is not firing and he hates the new cars, F1 might run the risk of losing the most talented driver of the modern era from the grid altogether.
