Martin Brundle has never been shy about calling a swing point when he sees one coming, and he reckons Miami could be exactly that for 2026: less a routine stop on the calendar, more a hard reset on what we think we know.
Mercedes arrive in Florida with the cleanest record possible — every pole, every win — but Brundle’s read is that the spring break has given the chasing pack just enough breathing space to turn this into something messy. In the best way.
“We’ll see… a lot of changes when we get to Miami and through the spring and summer,” Brundle said on Sky’s *The F1 Show* podcast, framing the weekend as a “relaunch” for the season. The reason isn’t just the usual post-break upgrade cycle; Miami is also set to be the first proper glimpse of the tweaked 2026 regulations after April’s round of meetings to refine the package.
That matters because the competitive picture has looked straightforward on paper, yet oddly conditional in reality. Mercedes have been perfect, yes, but Suzuka introduced doubt — the kind that grows legs in a paddock that’s been waiting for an excuse to believe there’s a fight on.
McLaren, in particular, left Japan looking like a team that’s finally found a lever worth pulling. Oscar Piastri’s launch into the lead and his ability to resist a recovering George Russell gave Mercedes something they haven’t really had to deal with so far: a rival dictating terms at the front, not simply clinging on. Then the Safety Car timing swung the narrative again, vaulting Kimi Antonelli into clean air — and once there, the Mercedes rookie’s pace on the hard tyre was, in Brundle’s words, “absolutely extraordinary”.
The subtext is obvious. If Suzuka was the first time the Silver Arrows felt genuinely uncomfortable, it’s also hard to say with certainty whether they’d have had the straight fight wrapped up without the timing falling their way. Brundle suspects Mercedes will have come home from Japan thinking, *right, so it’s started*.
That’s where Ferrari enter, and Brundle’s view is that they’re about to look like a different proposition.
Ferrari have been the most consistent presence in the “best of the rest” slot so far, featuring on every podium in 2026: Charles Leclerc taking third in Melbourne and Suzuka, with Lewis Hamilton also third in China. Solid, but not yet the sort of form that keeps a dominant team awake at night.
Brundle’s expectation is that the step is coming — and that it will be driven by the sort of gains that change your weekend rather than simply polish it. “I think Ferrari will find a lot with their power unit and their deployment,” he said. “I think they’ll improve their car a lot.”
That’s an interesting choice of words, because it points to Ferrari not merely bringing downforce but unlocking performance through how it’s used — the unglamorous, brutally decisive side of modern F1 where harvesting and deployment can make a car feel like it’s gained horsepower even if nothing “headline” has changed. If Ferrari really do arrive with better tools in that area, it’s the kind of upgrade that can travel from track to track instead of flattering one layout.
McLaren, meanwhile, are talking like a team that believes it knows exactly where the lap time is hiding. Brundle said they “seem very confident that they know what to do with their car to go faster,” and that confidence has been backed up by the hint of something major for Miami — an “entirely new” car teased for the Sprint weekend.
Ferrari, too, are expected to bring a hefty set of parts, with talk of a “package and a half” for the Miami International Autodrome. With only one practice session — albeit an extended FP1 on Friday — teams won’t have long to understand what they’ve bolted on. That’s where this weekend gets spiky: upgrades, a compressed timetable, and regulatory tweaks in the mix, all on a circuit that can punish a car that’s slightly out of its operating window.
Brundle’s bigger point is that this is no longer about one team doing the winning and the others picking through the leftovers. He thinks the top end is about to bunch — and that Mercedes, for all their early-season authority, are about to be pulled into a proper three-way scrap.
“I think this championship is wide open,” he said. “I think the top three teams, it’s going to be absolutely wild… Mercedes is not going to stand still either… So those two teams are coming at them.”
That last line lands because it captures the mood shift. For the first phase of 2026, Mercedes have felt like the reference. Miami could decide whether they remain the benchmark, or whether they become the team trying to hold the line while two very different challengers attack them from different angles: McLaren with momentum and a car they’re itching to reinvent, Ferrari with the promise of a more complete package — power unit behaviour, deployment, and a car that might finally give Hamilton and Leclerc something sharper than “P3 is possible.”
Brundle summed up the sense of occasion, too, calling Miami “amazing” and “such a big event for Formula 1”. He’s right on that front regardless of lap times. But if he’s right about Ferrari’s imminent gains and McLaren’s ability to execute on its confidence, then the sport won’t just be putting on a show in Florida — it’ll be setting up the kind of summer where no one at the front gets to breathe.
