Max Verstappen has already given the 2026 cars a withering review, branding the new driving dynamics “anti-racing” and likening the experience to “Formula E on steroids”. It’s exactly the sort of line that ricochets around the paddock in February, when lap times are private, sandbags are plentiful and everyone’s trying to work out whether the sport has just taken a leap forward or sideways.
David Coulthard’s response is basically: enjoy the quote, but don’t mistake it for a forecast.
The former McLaren driver is adamant that whatever Verstappen thinks of the new breed of machines won’t matter once the championship gets underway in Melbourne, with FP1 set for 6 March. Because for all the talk about “management” driving and the sense that the cars are asking the driver to be a systems operator as much as a racer, Coulthard argues Verstappen will default to the only two things that ever truly motivate elite drivers: being fast, and being first.
That’s the tension sitting at the heart of Verstappen’s early 2026 mood. Red Bull gave him plenty of mileage to form an opinion — 343 laps across the three days of the official Bahrain pre-season test, with Verstappen himself doing a hefty 136 on Day One after the behind-closed-doors running in Barcelona. It wasn’t an offhand reaction formed after a token installation run; it was the verdict of a driver who’s spent long enough in the cockpit to know when something feels instinctive, and when it feels like a compromise.
“I would say the right word is management,” Verstappen said in Bahrain, explaining that the current sensation “is not very F1-like”. The purist in him is clearly irritated by the idea that, right now, you can’t simply drive the thing flat-out all the time. He went further, calling the regulations “anti-racing”, and even hinted the shift could weigh on his future, noting he’s “exploring other things outside of Formula 1 to have fun at”.
Coulthard doesn’t dispute Verstappen’s right to feel that way — if anything, he frames it as earned. Verstappen is into his 12th season, a four-time world champion, and has the competitive credit to be blunt about what he’s experiencing.
But Coulthard’s point is that the calendar doesn’t care about aesthetic complaints. Once the red lights go out, Verstappen’s focus will narrow in an instant.
“He’ll just be thinking, ‘right, how do I exploit this potential to the best of my ability?’” Coulthard said. “And there’ll be a winner at the end.”
It’s also hard to argue with the underlying logic. The Verstappen who talks about “fun” in February is still the Verstappen who turns small margins into suffocating control when points are on the table. Even if the new cars demand more juggling — more energy management, more discipline about where and when to deploy performance — that’s still a competitive game, and Verstappen has made a career out of solving those faster than the people around him.
Coulthard’s wider read is that 2026 is shaping up as a proper fight. Mercedes has been widely billed as the early favourite and George Russell has been touted as a leading title pick, but Coulthard’s warning is familiar: don’t overreact to the paddock’s pre-season consensus, and certainly don’t write off Verstappen.
Last season was the obvious reference point. Verstappen clawed back from a 104-point hole to beat Oscar Piastri to second in the standings, ending the year just two points behind new champion Lando Norris. That’s not the profile of a driver who needs everything to feel perfect before he starts delivering.
Coulthard also revealed an interesting snippet from a recent conversation with Verstappen: asked who he considers the opposition, Verstappen’s answer was “anyone with a Mercedes engine”. Coulthard then listed Mercedes themselves, McLaren and Williams — adding the clarification that Alpine will also run Mercedes engines this year.
On that logic, the competitive map Verstappen is drawing is less about which driver is happiest with the 2026 ‘feel’, and more about which package produces the best lap time once the rules reset. Williams, Coulthard suggested, look “a little bit on the back foot” for now, but the implication is clear: if Mercedes power is the benchmark, Verstappen sees the threat coming from multiple directions.
There’s another strand to Coulthard’s take, too: Ferrari’s long-run pace has caught his attention. And if that’s real rather than seasonal theatre, then the grid’s front-end could be crowded quickly — the kind of environment where Verstappen’s impatience with the driving experience matters even less, because every weekend becomes a knife fight for points.
Coulthard even floated a line that would have sounded fanciful not so long ago, but now sits neatly within the sport’s current storyline: that a “newly loved-up” Lewis Hamilton could rediscover his best form and go after an eighth world title.
Maybe. Maybe not. But the broader message is the same one Verstappen himself has always embodied, even when he sounds like he’s falling out of love with the act of driving these new cars: Formula 1 has never waited for anyone to be comfortable. It rewards adaptation, not nostalgia.
And Verstappen, for all his grumbling, is still Verstappen. If 2026 really is “management”, Melbourne will simply be the first exam.
