Jake Humphrey has found his way back into Formula 1’s slipstream — and he’s not doing it alone.
Ahead of the 2026 season restarting in Miami next weekend, the former BBC F1 anchor has launched a new podcast, *High Performance Racing*, alongside ex-Aston Martin and Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer and long-time Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley. On paper it’s a tidy bit of casting: a broadcaster who knows how to steer the conversation, a team boss with scars from the modern paddock, and an engineer who spent years translating the madness into usable information on the pitwall.
Humphrey, now 47, fronted the BBC’s F1 coverage between 2009 and 2012, an era many still remember for its chemistry — and for the sense that the sport was being explained by people who’d actually lived it. He stepped away to football presenting in 2013, then pivoted hard into the podcast world, becoming one of the medium’s more recognisable voices in the UK.
Now he’s pitching *High Performance Racing* as the sort of show that doesn’t just recycle talking points, but gets into the mechanics of why things happen — and how decisions are really made when the clocks are running and the radio is cracking.
“The four years I spent fronting the BBC’s F1 coverage were the most incredible of my career,” Humphrey said in a statement. “I have waited a long time to return to the sport and this new show is the perfect moment. No other podcast brings the knowledge of a race engineer and team boss to the audience.”
He’s not wrong about the gap in the market. Plenty of F1 podcasts have access and personality, but comparatively few can lean on the kind of experience that lets you call out nonsense, sharpen the technical detail, and explain the politics without sounding like you’re reading a press release.
Smedley’s presence is particularly interesting because he’s never been the “content” type. He was Felipe Massa’s race engineer at Ferrari from 2006 to 2013 and then followed the Brazilian to Williams, before leaving the team in 2018. Since then he’s built a low-cost electric karting series, Total Karting — a very different corner of the sport, but one that suggests he’s more interested in systems and structure than nostalgia.
Szafnauer, meanwhile, remains one of the paddock’s more intriguing loose ends. He hasn’t held an active F1 role since Alpine sacked him during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend in 2023 — a departure that, even by the standards of modern team politics, landed with a thud. Before that he’d been a fixture at what is now Aston Martin stretching back to 2009, through the Force India years and beyond, with a reputation for being commercially astute and quietly stubborn.
Last month he took on a dual role as chief executive officer and managing partner at Van Amersfoort’s junior team operation. It’s a move that keeps him close to the grid’s supply chain, but it doesn’t exactly look like retirement — and that matters, because Szafnauer has been unusually open about what he wants next.
He’s spoken previously about working with American funders and car manufacturers with the aim of putting together a future Formula 1 entry, now framed as a potential 12th team. Cadillac has taken what he described as the 11th spot, shifting his target further down the road — but not changing the ambition.
“I’ve been working with some American funders and some car manufacturers to look at a 12th team for the future,” Szafnauer said. “At the time, when I started the project, it was going to be the 11th team, but now Cadillac is in so they’ve got the 11th spot. So when they open up the process of adding the 12th team, I hope to be able to put in a robust case…”
That’s the subtext humming away under this podcast launch. In 2026, when everyone in F1 is selling a version of “access” and “authenticity”, Szafnauer is one of the few who can still use a platform like this to stay relevant in a tangible way — not just as a pundit, but as a man actively trying to get back into the game. If your long-term play is persuading serious backers and manufacturers that you’re still plugged into the sport’s bloodstream, there are worse ways to do it than spending an hour a week sounding calm, competent and connected.
For Humphrey, it’s also a smart moment to re-enter the conversation. The sport is noisier than it’s ever been, the analysis cycles are faster, and the audience is better informed — but also less patient for the obvious stuff. Put a former team principal and a seasoned race engineer in the same room and, if you get the format right, you can cut through a lot of the froth.
Whether *High Performance Racing* becomes essential listening will come down to execution: how willing they are to challenge received wisdom, how much genuine technical depth Smedley is allowed to bring, and whether Szafnauer can speak freely without sanding down the edges. But the ingredients are there — and Miami is as good a launchpad as any.
