Formula 1 heads into the Hungarian Grand Prix with the summer break just around the corner and the paddock unusually restless. Kimi Antonelli left Belgium 45 points clear at the top of the championship, but it is the business beyond that defines the pre-race conversation: Max Verstappen’s unsettled future is drawing enquiries from across the grid, Aston Martin are staking half a season’s worth of development on a single upgrade package in Budapest, and McLaren are finally ready to trial the upside-down Macarena wing that has been sitting in the factory since Austria.
Here’s the latest
Laurent Mekies has confirmed that Red Bull are receiving enquiries about their driver seats from high-quality rivals, as uncertainty over Max Verstappen’s long-term future continues to hang over the Milton Keynes outfit.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, the team principal acknowledged the situation is working “in both directions,” with Verstappen fielding calls from other teams while Red Bull simultaneously fields interest from drivers hoping to fill a potential vacancy.
Verstappen is contracted until the end of 2028, but performance-based exit clauses are widely understood to exist within that deal, which could allow him to leave earlier should conditions not be met. With the Dutchman yet to win a race in 2026, sitting seventh in the drivers’ standings on 91 points with three podium finishes, speculation around those clauses has intensified. McLaren, the reigning constructors’ champions, have been the most consistently cited destination.
Mekies was quick to frame the situation as manageable rather than destabilising, pointing to the progress Red Bull made during the second half of 2025, when Verstappen overhauled a 104-point deficit to finish just two points short of a fifth world title.
(Source: Formula1.com)
Aston Martin arrive at the Hungarian Grand Prix carrying the most consequential upgrade package of their season, having chosen to hold back virtually all development work since Bahrain in order to concentrate resources on a single overhaul timed for the final race before the summer break.
The scale of the gamble reflects just how difficult 2026 has been. The Silverstone-based team has collected a single championship point across ten rounds, sitting tenth in the constructors’ standings and trailing even the brand-new Cadillac entry. Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have been operating what the latter described bluntly as a “pretty terrible” car, one that has been overweight, underdeveloped, and unreliable since pre-season testing. Rather than distribute gains through a steady trickle of smaller updates, Adrian Newey chose to consolidate everything into one meaningful package for Budapest.
(Source: Motor Sport Magazine)
McLaren have confirmed they will bring a significant upgrade package to Budapest this weekend, centred on a redesigned floor alongside further aerodynamic components. The British team will also use Friday’s opening practice session to run their own version of the unconventional upside-down rear wing that has generated considerable discussion since Ferrari introduced the concept during pre-season testing.
The wing works by rotating the mainplane 180 degrees when the driver activates Straight Mode on long stretches of track, reducing drag and increasing efficiency at high speed. McLaren had originally planned to test the concept at the Austrian Grand Prix but encountered problems in the garage and returned the wing to the factory for further refinement. After additional development work, it will make its first running appearance in Budapest, though the team has confirmed it will be removed before qualifying begins.
McLaren stated the wing is not scheduled for full introduction at this event or the following Dutch Grand Prix; if Friday’s data is encouraging, it is expected to be considered for circuits where drag reduction carries particular value, such as Monza or Baku.
(Source: Motorsport.com)
Two notable pieces of personnel news emerged from Red Bull during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, offering a clearer picture of how Laurent Mekies is rebuilding the organisation through a period of significant transition following a string of senior departures.
The first was the confirmation that Tom Hart, who had been on course to join Williams as Alex Albon’s race engineer, has chosen to remain with the Milton Keynes team. Hart spent several years as Max Verstappen’s performance engineer and has already taken on race engineering responsibilities on a number of occasions during this season.
With Gianpiero Lambiase confirmed as heading to McLaren in 2028 and an anticipated gardening leave period expected to begin before that, Hart is set to step into the race engineering role at the start of 2027. Mekies had hinted at the development during an earlier media session in Austria without naming Hart specifically, suggesting that several figures reported as departures had in fact remained within the team.
The second announcement was the recruitment of Gwen Lagrue from Mercedes, where the Frenchman spent a decade as one of the paddock’s most widely respected talent scouts. During his time at the Silver Arrows, Lagrue was instrumental in identifying and developing both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli. He will head Red Bull’s junior programme as part of the succession plan for Helmut Marko, who oversaw the development of Sebastian Vettel and Verstappen before stepping down at the end of last year.
(Source: Autosport)
Carlos Sainz has delivered his most pointed public assessment yet of Williams’ difficulties under the 2026 regulations, admitting at the Belgian Grand Prix that he does not expect the team to recover their competitiveness before the season concludes and deploying a sharp colloquial phrase to make his feelings clear.
Speaking to DAZN at Spa, the 31-year-old said the Williams car simply is not good enough and that the team has fallen well short of the expectations placed upon it. He said he finds it hard to believe they will escape the situation this season, and used the Spanish expression “hay que espabilar,” which translates roughly as needing to wake up and get moving, to summarise the challenge facing the Grove-based outfit.
Team principal James Vowles has acknowledged the squad’s approach to the new rules was not optimal, and the result is an overweight and uncompetitive car that has left Sainz frustrated.
Sainz contract expires at the end of this year, and while no formal arrangements with a rival team have been confirmed, reports suggest Audi could represent a potential destination.
(Source: GPFans)
Fernando Alonso has made clear that Aston Martin’s performance recovery will have no bearing on his decision about whether to continue in Formula 1 beyond this season, stating instead that his future depends on whether the current generation of cars can become something he genuinely wants to drive.
The two-time world champion’s contract with the Silverstone team expires at the end of 2026, and his plans have become one of the paddock’s more closely watched open questions. Aston Martin has invested considerable effort in trying to persuade him to stay, with the Budapest upgrade and a Honda power unit step planned for Zandvoort after the summer break both partly framed as demonstrations of the team’s direction. But speaking at Spa, Alonso dismissed performance as the deciding factor, placing the emphasis instead on the character of the cars themselves under the 2026 rules.
“My decision for next year is more about the rules,” Alonso said. “Driving these cars in places like Spa today or Silverstone in the last race is not what I’m dreaming of for my future.” The new regulation cycle has introduced a significantly greater emphasis on energy management relative to raw mechanical and aerodynamic performance, and several drivers have expressed reservations about the experience of driving the current machines.
For Alonso, who will turn 45 before the season ends, that experience appears to weigh more heavily than the scoreboard.
(Source: Motorsport.com)
Cadillac are barely a handful of races into their Formula 1 existence, but the American team has already cycled through four different liveries, a rate of change that team principal Graeme Lowdon has attributed to a deliberate philosophy of doing things differently and responding directly to fan opinion.
The squad unveiled their original design during the Super Bowl halftime show in February, presenting an asymmetric split colour scheme that divided the car along its centreline: one side finished in stark white, the other in deep black, separated by a chevron gradient. Depending on the viewing angle, the two machines appeared almost entirely different to one another. That bold look served as the team’s base livery through the opening rounds of the season, including the race in Barcelona.
The current scheme, which replaces the asymmetric split with a more unified black-and-white design, was directly inspired by a one-off livery the team ran at the Miami Grand Prix. Lowdon said that particular look generated a strongly positive reaction from supporters, and the team took that feedback into account when deciding to adopt a version of it as their regular running design.
In between, Cadillac also ran a special red, white and blue stars-and-stripes scheme at Silverstone on the Fourth of July weekend to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
(Source: RacingNews365)
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