“Life is always worth living.”
Before we get going, we have to talk about Alex Zanardi. The legendary racing driver and athlete sadly passed away at the age of 59 on Friday night, and I’m not going to lie, I was devastated.
I could easily rattle off some numbers, the obvious being his 15 wins and two Championships in Champ Car over in the States, alongside his 44 F1 starts. But that’s not why you loved Alex. It was “The Pass” at Laguna Seca at a time when no-one cared about Track Limits and how it inspired Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez to do the same years later.
It was the embodiment of the human spirit that he represented. The bravery, determination, and never, ever, ever giving up. Man built his own prosthetic legs, and even joked that he made himself taller as a result. He drove again in the World Touring Car Championship, he got to drive an F1 car again with adapted hand controls we now see with Robert Wickens in IMSA, and returned to DTM and the 24 Hours of Daytona.
He became a hand-cyclist and won four Paralympic Gold Medals and 12 World Championships as a H4/5 athlete. He even did an Ironman.
Alex was a hero and inspiration to so many within Motorsport and beyond as a symbol of courage and strength. He touched the hearts of everyone he was around, a seemingly endless positivity he brought to sport and life, and he’ll be sadly missed by everyone who knew him.
Let’s talk about Miami.
F1 2026.1
This also marked the first weekend back for F1 in five weeks due to the United States botching another war. During that time, we got F2 moved to Miami and Montreal meaning North American racing for the first time, murmurs that Bahrain may come back in October, but the big one being that F1 was making adjustments to the regulations in the interim to shutout the biggest issues – Closing speeds after the Bearman/Colapinto crash at Suzuka, and super-clipping in Qualifying.
Now, if I went into huge detail about everything here, this post would be 6,000 words long instead of my usual modest 3,000, but here’s the big ones to me:
– Maximum Recharge reduced from 8MJ to 7 (About 3 seconds less recharge in real-time)
– Peak Superclip power increased to 350kW from 250
– Alternative lower energy limits races increased from 8 to 12 (Rounds that they can change)
– Max power boost in races capped at 150kW, Max MGU-K deployment at 350kW in overtake zones, 250 elsewhere to reduce closing speeds
– Visual warning system introduced to alert drivers on harvesting
– Automatic MGU-K deployment so we get minimum acceleration off the line in starts.
In real world terms, these are sensible changes. More flexibility to make changes on the fly. Taking some of the maximum recharge down so less superclipping will be needed (Remember, the issue here is F1 still using the same 4MJ battery meaning recharging and deploying constantly over the lap in a clunky way), the ability to superclip at a higher rate is good, and reducing deployment in races means less chance of huge 30mph disparities in braking zones like we got in Suzuka.
Now that I’ve seen them in real time, I say… “Hmmm. Is this really any better?”
There’s some caveats here. First of all, the sample size is small and generous. Miami is a rather energy-rich track due to some heavier braking zones (You’re over 200mph twice, and nearly a third), so harvesting was always going to be a little easier. Actually watching the sessions as the weekend went on, felt… normal? I’ve been vocal in saying that I can sacrifice qualifying to a degree if it means a better racing product overall, but at no point watching Sprint or Grand Prix Qualifying did I feel irked by the clipping. Maybe Biggin’ Hill did a better job of “smoke and mirroring” this, but I was largely unbothered.
The Sprint itself was a bigger issue. See, deep down I always had the belief that eventually, teams would figure out the most efficient ways of deploying energy, and combining that with active aero that limits slipstreaming exposes a key element of these cars that I feel hasn’t been talked about enough – topside downforce. Remember, we have more of it than ever now we ditched the ground effect aero we had in 2022. I still miss that year, we had closer racing that was actually enjoyable, and the FIA failed to keep it in check as the teams inevitably added more on the top to give us a boatload of dirty air.
I think all the talk about battery deployment was supposed to brute force the problem, but we didn’t like that. We’d rather have no overtakes than “fake” ones. Miami no doubt doesn’t help, it’s a clunky track at the best of times that on paper doesn’t produce great racing, but the stalemate in the back half of the Sprint race wasn’t exactly encouraging with cars spread out across the points besides Max Verstappen’s late charge. Sarcastically, my head said: “Man, at least the Qualifying laps looked good.”
As said, the jury’s still out on these tweaks, I need to see a couple more conventional/modified races before I pass full judgment. But maybe I’m not the right judge given I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen for the most part. Bluesky me or something telling me I suck if I disagree, wouldn’t be the first time this month.
Oh Yeah, The Racing Part
The actual racing part was more interesting to me. McLaren brought a big upgrade package to Miami, as did Ferrari, and out of the box, McLaren looked racy. They took an unlikely Sprint Pole and then 1-2 on Saturday morning as they pulled away from the Mercedes factory team and didn’t really look back. Lando Norris was uncontested at the front and pulled away from teammate Oscar Piastri. Charles Leclerc tried to stay with him but ultimately faded in the back end, continuing the Ferrari trend of not quite having the tyres late in stints. But it was another clumsy day for Mercedes.
George Russell made it very clear that he does not like Miami, with the Brit qualifying in sixth and six tenths off the pace, and Kimi Antonelli having another poor start and having to make up ground to finish fourth on the road, dropping to sixth after picking up a five-second penalty for track limits. I think you’ve genuinely got to try to get one of those on a street track.
What’s weird was, after parc-ferme reopened, it seemed the natural order was restored. Kimi Antonelli back on pole with the fastest lap of the weekend, and to everyone’s surprise – Max Verstappen sharing the front row with him after a stunning effort. Max told the Dutch media that Red Bull fixed a long-running steering problem with the RB22 and that made him no longer “feel like a passenger” when driving the car. Given Red Bull looked more like a second off the pace in the early races, it’s a big step forward for Milton Keynes. All that with Ferrari and McLaren a step behind but still in the mix.
For once, the sport was proactive and it kinda had to be. In the US if a lightning bolt strikes within seven miles of the track, you have to evacuate the area and seek shelter and your sports event can’t run. As a result, the race itself was moved back three hours due to the risk of thunderstorms and the signs weren’t promising in the early morning, but the storms cleared up right around the F2 Feature Race and by race time, the track was dry. Sods law.
Then all hell broke loose off the line. Max sent it on Kimi to take the lead but ran wide, he got pinched slightly by Leclerc at Turn 2 and Verstappen just spun out. Amazingly, he keeps his foot pinned, has a full 360, everyone else dodges him and he’s able to keep going despite dropping into the midfield. Through all that, Leclerc took the early lead, only for Antonelli and Norris to come back and pass him to drop him into third in the early going. Like with Australia, the first 15 laps were genuinely really fun seeing that battle for the lead alongside Verstappen driving angry, and a huge crash as Liam Lawson’s gearbox failed into the back hairpin and then launched into Pierre Gasly, flipping him backwards into the outside wall. Thankfully, Gasly was okay.
The race settled down in the middle, with teams anticipating a rain shower that never really landed. It made it a genuine challenge seeing teams stretch their medium tyre stints trying to get through the phantom shower, while Max Verstappen took advantage of the early gains by switching to Hards during the Safety Car. Lando Norris lead going into the pitstops, but, and stop me if you’ve heard this before – McLaren got undercut yet again by Kimi Antonelli to take the lead. Dang.
Antonelli didn’t have it his own way this time. He had to withstand a large amount of pressure from Norris behind, with Kimi nursing a minor gearbox problem (DOWNSHIFTS, ARGH – Max, probably), and tyres that felt very 2013 Pirelli, falling apart rather quickly by modern F1 standards. But Norris couldn’t follow for the final 30 lap final stint and eventually faded at the end, allowing Kimi Antonelli to take his third win in a row.
It’s a truly historic run from the teenage prodigy. He’s only the third driver after Ayrton Senna in 1985 and Michael Schumacher in 1994 to have their first three wins all land consecutively, and he’s the only driver ever to have converted his first three pole positions into wins. And did we mention he’s 19?! He now has a 20-point lead before the sport heads to Canada in three weeks time, and he now has to be title favourite.
The scariest part? There’s still so much he can improve. He’s been woeful off the line all season, and multiple times has had to recover from a hole he’s dug for himself. Mercedes’ computing isn’t helping here given they simulate the conditions for the car, but I don’t think he’s had a beneficial start all season. His Sprint Race track limits penalty was still really silly too and completely unnecessary. But the outright speed is obscene, the quickest I’ve ever seen for a teenager. It’s good enough for him to win a Championship NOW, let alone later.
I’m not ringing alarm bells for George Russell yet. He was sensational last season, for me the second best driver in F1 behind Max. George has made it very clear he doesn’t like Miami and actually spent the closing laps tweaking his driving style trying to extract speed. It says to me that the setup on his side of the garage isn’t quite right yet. Being passed by Antonelli in the Sprint and then Russell losing several seconds following wasn’t ideal either. In any case, being down almost an entire GP worth of points already is rough and he needs to steady the ship. I still think Mercedes are the best team but McLaren has clearly closed the gap.
Further behind, Max Verstappen was peak Max Verstappen. This was the sort of race that personified him. Two rare errors from the former champion in the spin, and the 5-second penalty for crossing the white line on pit exit. His overtakes on lesser opposition were aggressive to the point of drifting into foul territory, but he’s still one of the few drivers prepared to take that level of risk, and it was spectacular to watch. A 51-lap stint on the Hard tyre was too ambitious on this occasion, but it’s still the best result a Red Bull’s had all season and some genuine hope going forward for them.
And of course, how can I not mention that ridiculous ending? Charles Leclerc got too cute, shutting down his active aero and letting Oscar Piastri pass him for the podium spot, hoping to catch him on the counter-attack, but not only did that not work, he then spun on the final lap, breaking his steering rack after he glanced off the wall. He then cuts every corner available to nurse his busted car to the flag, four times in total. He still finished sixth on the road, with Verstappen passing him on the final run to the flag.
He then gets demoted to eight via a 20-second penalty post-race for leaving the track multiple times without a justifiable reason. Genuine question given he was cleared of this – At what point is your car deemed unsafe? We’ve seen Hamilton and Perez clapped with this in years past, and I’d love more clarification on it because it’s a rule clearly installed to stop damaged cars from moving on a live track, and yet, this happened. I guess a broken steering rack isn’t damaged enough. Just weird friggin’ stewarding.
Still, hell of an ending. Always helps with a rating.
The SUPER Lightning Round
For what it’s worth, do check out the F2 races in Miami this weekend. Genuinely really entertaining, from the brilliant battle between Nikola Tsolov and Laurens van Hoepen for the Sprint win, to John Bennett’s1 hellacious gamble on slicks in the rain.
I love that Netflix rattled the everloving shit out of F1 on Twitter when they took a clip out of a TV show where Brenda Song talks about how hot the drivers are, and everyone took offence to that. Newsflash folks: Some people watch sports because the athletes are hot, and that’s okay. F1 is the only sport in the world that openly acts like gatekeepers when anyone acts against the conventional grain and it’s embarrassing how openly insecure we are as a fandom about that. As long as it isn’t hurting anybody, who fucking cares?2
How to get your friend into Formula 1 ✍️ pic.twitter.com/h4OzWgpjE5
— Netflix (@netflix) April 26, 2026
If you haven’t read Valtteri Bottas’ powerful written piece “Born Crazy” in The Players Tribune, you really should. It’s a wonderful bit of writing and amongst the best I’ve ever seen from an active driver, puts many of us in this space to shame. Amongst the many brilliant jokes given his classic Finnish dry sense of humour, is a deeply harrowing look at the fact his career was laced with poor mental health and battling an eating disorder that he believed, forced him into eating nothing but steamed broccoli and cauliflower, starving himself in the belief that every lost kilo meant more performance in the car. I won’t fully spoil it, but there’s a picture in there that’s… man.
I’m glad that F1 and IndyCar have better rules in place to protect this from happening (Driver and Ballast now has to be 82kg/185lbs in their respective series), and the ballast has to be in the cockpit to mitigate performance gain, because in years past, there were horror stories. Mark Webber openly talked about being on 1,500 calories a day to stay slim, a hard task given he was over 6ft tall with a larger build. Adrian Sutil talked about racing without a water bottle in the car to save weight. In bike racing, a young Scott Redding was on 800 calories a day in the winter because he was naturally large, and then took that out on Alvaro Bautista, leading to World Superbikes combined weight rules and petty social media beef.
David Emmett of Motomatters and the Paddock Pass Podcast summed it up perfectly. It’s a matter of control. There’s so much within Motorsport you can’t control, your body is one of the few things you can. Combine that with the obsessive, often lonely nature of pushing your limits to give yourself the best chance of winning, and it’s no surprise so many people see this space as a miserable one.
There needs to be far more dialogue about nutrition and health within Motorsport, given the struggles are a pretty open secret, especially because if you’re a greater sports fan, we’ve seen the ramifications. I used to be a WWE and UFC writer and people have died and come very close to doing so via extreme weight cutting in environments not a million miles away from what athletes in Motorsport have to go through. Yes, Stephen A, athletes. In Motorsport. That’s a thing.
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem knows exactly what he’s doing. He made it very clear in a media session with Reuters and the New York Times that V8 hybrids will almost certainly be happening by 2031, maybe even 2030 if he can get the voting approval. This already puts Cadillac in hot water, who are late to the current party and are building their power unit for 2029, which is looking like it’s only going to be two-and-done at most. I wonder… with public support for bringing back V8’s higher than ever, combined with that same opinion leaning towards public support going against the manufacturers for making the sport too complicated with the current hybrids, is this a coup to wrestle power away from the big boys? Hmmm.
Franco Colapinto had probably his best weekend in F1 – Out-qualifying Pierre Gasly in both the Sprint and GP Qualifying, and then taking seventh in the GP, his best ever result. Little shaky in the Sprint itself, and he was lucky to escape punishment for hitting Hamilton on Lap 1 in the GP (With the Brit telling him he was “going for first”), but that’s on the stewards again. More of that needed. Must have been the Lionel Messi visit.
Also the nuances of Miami coming into play. On Saturday, Cadillac was giving Williams genuine problems. A day later, Williams got both cars in the points despite all the well-documented struggles. Goes to show you the challenge of tweaking cars towards needing more rear grip because Sector 2 in Miami is so tricky on the cars. Undulation, quick direction changes, and a bunch of second gear corners. Darn river.
Also, Audi. Honeymoon’s over, get a car that can reliably work.
And finally, and I’ve mentioned it before – People are saying that Miami is one of the really big marketing races now. When I was at Autosport, they made a big habit of flying many members of their staff out there to network and now host their business exchanges. I nearly ended up out there myself for what was just the second episode of the James Allen on F1 Podcast I used to produce.
It’s gotten to the point where I’ve seen some of the influencers of the scene give it back about what they’re doing out there and how for many, it’s not even a full-time job. It’s something I’m deeply conflicted about. I networked with a lot of these folks when I was at WTF1, but felt hella awkward about it because it’s a style of content I’d never willingly do. I dunno what dancing in the middle of the paddock, or standing around a car and posing is ever going to do to actually grow the sport. For most of these people, it’s a side hustle that prays on F1 fandom FOMO, and returns it via clout. It’s far less insidious than some grifts on the interwebs, but a lot of it rubs me the wrong way personally.
Sprint Rating: ⭐⭐ 1/2 – Not a terrible sprint, it started out hot but quickly petered out with a lot of cars spreading out as they were still figuring out the track from their Friday setups.
The Verdict: 7/10 (Good) – Miami is quickly becoming the new Hungary. Hear me out here. Everything about it as a track suggests that it shouldn’t work, beyond being a technical challenge for the teams. And yet, this track has a knack of producing flashpoints and some genuinely fun races. The start and ending of this race was spectacular, brioche buns around a burger that was slightly undercooked. Not enough to ruin your meal, but enough to keep the thought in the back of your head. I enjoyed this race, but I think the jury is still out on how F1 2026 will play out. And that intrigues me. See you in Canada.