JUST IN: MAX VERSTAPPEN TARGETS TITLE RETURN AFTER PROMISING FIRST 2026 ENGINE RUN
Red Bull's first in-house engine, the RBPT DM01, exceeds expectations in Barcelona as Max Verstappen prepares for a 2026 title bid.
Max Verstappen wants his F1 crown back in 2026, but it all comes down to whether Red Bull’s brand-new engine is up to the challenge.
Last year, Verstappen’s winning streak finally ended. He missed a fifth straight title by just two points. Lando Norris, driving for McLaren, edged him out to take his first championship—even though Verstappen racked up the most wins and poles. Weirdly, Max never actually led the standings at any point in 2025. That hadn’t happened to him since 2020. Still, he wrapped up the season with eight Grand Prix wins and eight poles, while Red Bull kept pushing upgrades till the bitter end.
But there was a risk. Red Bull’s focus on the 2025 car might have hurt their 2026 project. Team boss Laurent Mekies tried to steer them away from the slide they’d started under Christian Horner, but he wasn’t convinced it made sense to throw everything at 2026 like the other teams.
And that might become a real problem if Red Bull’s standards slip. Ferrari stopped developing their 2025 car as early as April, and McLaren switched focus to 2026 regulations by July. Pretty much everyone else jumped on the new rules early, since F1 is changing just about everything—engines, aero, chassis, tyres. It’s the biggest shake-up the sport’s ever seen.
Red Bull has even more on their plate. For the first time, they’ll build their own engine instead of buying from someone else. Honda planned to leave but then signed up as Aston Martin’s factory partner, which left Horner—while he was still around—scrambling to launch Red Bull Powertrains.
Jan Lammers, who’s been around the block in F1 and at Le Mans, thinks Red Bull would actually be thrilled just to land in the top three next year. He’s not so sure Verstappen would settle for that. “I think Red Bull would be very happy if they could immediately run in the top six,” Lammers told RacingNews365. “If they can get into that top three, that’s a good start. I don’t know where Max draws the line for himself.”
Red Bull’s first in-house engine will run in both their main team and Racing Bulls in 2026. They’ve brought Ford on as a technical partner to help with the hybrid side of things. Building an engine for a brand-new ruleset is a massive leap for them—they’re used to being a customer, not starting from scratch. Now they have to nail a power unit that splits its energy 50/50 between electric and combustion, and it runs on advanced sustainable fuels.
To boost their odds, Red Bull poached a bunch of engine experts from Mercedes. That move has other teams a bit nervous, suspecting Red Bull might have found a loophole in the new engine rules.
So far, things don’t look too bad. The first signs from last week’s shakedown test in Barcelona were promising for their RBPT DM01 unit. But Red Bull isn’t satisfied yet. They’re still working out the kinks in how the engine delivers its power, after spotting a few rough edges during the first pre-season test of 2026.
FRED VASSEUR REJECTS TEAM ORDERS AS FERRARI DRIVERS DUEL CLEANLY IN SHANGHAI
Lewis Hamilton secures his first Ferrari podium at the Chinese GP as Fred Vasseur praises his drivers' clean racing.
Fred Vasseur felt pretty good about Ferrari’s performance in the Chinese Grand Prix, especially the way his drivers fought each other so cleanly, even though, as he admitted, it could’ve ended up looking like a disaster.
Ferrari started the race in third and fourth, and, right from the get-go, both drivers didn’t hold back. They actually got ahead of the Mercedes for a bit, but it didn't last; they ended up getting passed again. In those early laps, the two Ferraris were stuck between the Mercedes cars: Kimi Antonelli stretched his lead while George Russell stayed glued to their tails.
Lewis Hamilton led George Russell early on, and those two swapped places a bunch of times. Ferrari’s drivers did, too. There were moments when they went side by side, pushing the absolute limit, without ever making contact. Honestly, they kept at it almost the entire race. The last big move happened on Lap 40. Hamilton passed Leclerc and held onto third place, finally putting a red car on the podium for the first time this year.
Even with all that fighting, both Ferraris came home without a scratch. The drivers both said they had a blast; it was tough, hard racing, but always clean.
Vasseur, who runs the show at Ferrari, was quick to praise them. “Huge respect for both of them,” he told the press. “They’re total pros, and it just made sense to let them race. Sure, sometimes you risk looking stupid if things go wrong, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
He was clear about his philosophy early in the season: you’ve got to let the drivers race. No team orders from the pit wall, just a chance to let them build up the team spirit by pushing each other. “This is how you make real progress,” Vasseur said. “As long as they race like they did today, I won’t freeze the positions. Even on the radio, they were telling us they were having fun.”
Once Hamilton got past Leclerc on Lap 40, the order was set. Hamilton got his first podium for Ferrari, which was huge even if his first season with them had been tough so far. Vasseur wasn’t worried, though.
“It’s so much easier the second year,” Vasseur explained. “He’s been part of the project for a while now; he started working with us as far back as mid-2025, doing simulator runs. He’s got more of a stake in this now compared to when he just turned up last January, and the car was already built. He knows everyone better, and working with the team is just smoother.”
But Vasseur knows Ferrari still has a big gap to Mercedes. The team has shown some solid pace in these first two races, but closing that gap will take time. “We’ve got to keep chipping away with those small gains, that’s how we’ll catch up.”
Right now, Ferrari’s battles out on track aren’t causing any problems. As the season goes on, though, Vasseur’s going to have to keep a lid on any tension because the championship’s heating up. Ferrari trails Mercedes by 31 points, and Leclerc and Hamilton are both chasing Russell for the drivers’ title, sitting 17 and 18 points behind.
If Ferrari’s going to have any shot at beating Mercedes, they’ll need to be on it every step of the way and stay ready to jump if their rivals make a mistake.
MCLAREN FACE RELIABILITY CRISIS AFTER LANDO NORRIS AND OSCAR PIASTRI MISS CHINESE GRAND PRIX
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri suffer a double DNS at the Chinese GP due to Mercedes' power unit electrical failures.
McLaren’s hoping to turn things around after a rough weekend in China; both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri couldn’t even start the race on Sunday. For Norris, it’s the first time he’s ever sat out a race since he joined F1. Piastri’s probably even more frustrated that he hasn’t managed a single lap in two races this season. He crashed on his way to the grid back in Australia, and this time, both he and Norris ran into electrical issues with the Mercedes power unit. There just wasn’t enough time to fix anything.
It’s been a long time since things went this sideways for McLaren. The last time both cars missed the start was that weird 2005 U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis, when only six cars raced because of the Michelin tyre fiasco.
Oscar Piastri’s still trying to wrap his head around it all. Team boss Andrea Stella summed it up, saying, "It’s tough for Oscar. He still hasn’t started a race this campaign, and you can imagine that’s not easy to handle. But honestly, the guys are keeping their heads up."
He said the team’s gone through crazier stuff. The past season was a big step forward; they developed what they call a ‘winner’s mindset’ inside the team. Last year, when McLaren bagged the double championship, Stella said their real victory wasn’t in Abu Dhabi but in Qatar and Vegas. That’s where they held it together, even when things got messy.
Remember Qatar? Piastri lost a win because the team botched the strategy. Vegas wasn’t any better; both cars got disqualified for a technical issue right after crossing the line in second and fourth.
Stella gets it; you have to tough out these moments. He thinks every setback helps build the team into real champions. He sees that attitude in Piastri, Norris, and pretty much everyone on the crew right now.
He also pointed out that the problems in China weren’t the same in both cars. It just happened that they affected the same component. Pretty lousy luck, really, and not something McLaren could control this early in the season. Stella called it ‘exceptional and uncharacteristic’ for both cars to fail at once, especially for the same part. The team’s working with Mercedes’ High Performance Powertrains to pick it apart and see what’s what. Once they dig deeper, maybe they'll find out if anything on McLaren’s side played a role. But for now, it just stings.
