If there’s a theme running through the paddock chatter this week, it’s authority — who has it, who’s challenging it, and how hard the sport wants to lean on it as Formula 1 heads into its 2026 reset.
The most direct shot across the bows is political: Tim Mayer is lining up to take on Mohammed Ben Sulayem in a bid to become FIA president. It’s the sort of move that doesn’t just ripple through the FIA’s Paris corridors; it lands right in the middle of an F1 ecosystem that’s about to ask the governing body to referee an all-new technical era while keeping promoters, teams and drivers broadly pointing in the same direction. An election contest, by definition, drags internal debates into daylight — and in a sport already living in public, daylight can be brutal.
That context matters because the FIA is simultaneously trying to project calm about the 2026 regulations, even as the loudest criticism comes from the sharp end of the grid. FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis insisted the forthcoming rules are “fundamentally a good package” and pushed back on the idea the sport is “in intensive care”. The phrasing is telling. Nobody inside the FIA wants 2026 framed as a crisis-management project; that’s how you end up firefighting narratives rather than managing the detail.
Max Verstappen, though, has been anything but gentle in his assessment, branding the ruleset “fundamentally wrong”. Verstappen doesn’t throw those words around for effect — he’s not a driver who needs to manufacture attention — so when he plants a flag that firmly, it forces a question: is this the champion airing a legitimate performance-and-racing concern, or a top driver applying pressure early, knowing how much can still shift at the margins?
The truth, as ever, is probably both. Big regulation changes are rarely “finished” when the press release says they are. They’re living documents, nudged by safety, practicality, cost and the inevitable discovery that a clever group of engineers has found a loophole the paperwork didn’t anticipate. Tombazis’ line about “normal adjustments” is essentially the FIA asking the paddock to treat the tweaks as routine housekeeping rather than evidence of a flawed concept. Verstappen’s framing seeks the opposite: make it existential, make it urgent, make it harder for the sport to shrug and move on.
Miami, of all places, has become a small but revealing window into that tension. On a Sprint weekend — already a compressed, high-stakes format — the FIA has confirmed FP1 will be extended to 90 minutes rather than the standard 60, despite it remaining the only practice session of the event. That’s a meaningful concession to the reality that teams and drivers need more time to get a first proper taste of the revised regulations. And it’s also an admission that the modern weekend format, which looks great on a run-sheet, can start to creak when you ask it to carry too much technical novelty too quickly.
The important nuance is that the regulation changes “are not the sole reason” for the extra half hour. That suggests Miami’s adjustment is as much about the overall operational pressure of Sprint events as it is about 2026 specifics — and it’s hard not to read it as a gentle acknowledgement that the sport has pushed the weekend product to the limit in terms of meaningful track time.
Away from the rulebook and into the personality-driven arena F1 does so well, Zak Brown has been making news on two fronts — and both point to the same instinct: control the narrative before it controls you.
First, Brown has publicly backed the idea of Christian Horner returning to the paddock, arguing Formula 1 benefits from big characters. Anyone who lived through the years of Brown-versus-Horner verbal sparring will recognise the sharpness of that endorsement. It’s not nostalgia — it’s brand logic. F1 sells competition, and competition is sharper when it has faces and voices that aren’t afraid of being disliked. Brown understands that better than most; he’s built McLaren’s modern identity as much on messaging as on lap time.
Second, Brown moved quickly to shut down the more speculative thread running through McLaren’s near future: GianPiero Lambiase — previously a Red Bull colleague of Horner’s — is set to join McLaren no later than 2028, and the paddock immediately did what it always does when a senior figure arrives: it started drawing org charts with a red pen. Brown’s response was emphatic. Andrea Stella, he said, is the “glue” holding McLaren together.
That word choice is doing a lot of work. “Glue” is not just praise; it’s a warning label. It tells you Stella’s value isn’t limited to performance calls on a Sunday, but to keeping a complex, ambitious organisation aligned across racing, technical and commercial priorities. And by using it now, Brown is trying to immunise McLaren against the kind of background destabilisation that can start months — even years — before any formal change happens.
Finally, amid the present-day power games, Damon Hill offered a stark reminder of what sits underneath all the politics, regulations and theatre. Hill has said the “horrible” crash involving Pedro Diniz at the 1999 European Grand Prix played a decisive role in him quitting racing. He described it as a “crass mistake” on his part and explained that, in that moment, he couldn’t accept the idea of putting fellow drivers in danger.
It’s a sobering counterpoint to the week’s louder stories. In 2026, F1 can argue about whether a ruleset is “fundamentally good” or “fundamentally wrong”, and it can stretch a practice session by 30 minutes to ease the pain. But the sport’s credibility — from FIA governance to team leadership to how weekends are structured — still ultimately rests on whether the people making the calls keep the consequences in view.
And that’s why the Mayer-versus-Ben Sulayem fight, Verstappen’s pointed criticism, Miami’s format tweak, and Brown’s messaging blitz all belong in the same conversation. F1 is heading into a new era. Everyone wants a hand on the wheel.
