Hamilton’s pit wall, Verstappen’s sparkle, Cadillac’s first laps: Friday’s F1 notebook
Ferrari has set the tone early for the next regulation era, confirming Lewis Hamilton will have a new race engineer from 2026 as the team reshapes its pit-wall lineup. Riccardo Adami, who is working with Hamilton for 2025, will transition into a new role within the Scuderia for the following season. Adami’s resume is a who’s-who of recent Ferrari history — Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz among his previous drivers — and his shift hints at a broader organisational tune‑up at Maranello with the 2026 reset looming.
It’s a quietly significant move. The driver–engineer relationship is as much about chemistry as it is cadence; getting that pairing locked for the new rules cycle, rather than rolling the dice midstream, feels like classic Ferrari pragmatism. Hamilton’s arrival has already sharpened the focus in red. Now the team’s making sure the voice in his ear is a long-term fit for an era that will look and feel very different, on both chassis and power unit fronts.
Over in Detroit, Red Bull turned the lights up to 11 for its 2026 season launch with Ford — and finally gave Max Verstappen something he’s been pestering them about. The champions have ditched the matte paint that defined the brand since 2016, returning to a lustrous, glossy blue. Verstappen smiled that he’s “been asking for this for quite a while,” and while it’s only paint, F1’s optics do matter. The Ford partnership begins with a visual reset and a bit of theatre; Red Bull rarely misses the chance to set the tone before turning a wheel.
Back on track in Britain, Cadillac’s new F1 operation completed a shakedown at Silverstone, releasing a short video of the car stretching its legs around the Grand Prix venue. Shakedowns are about systems checks and box‑ticking more than lap times, but watching a brand-new project circulate in anger is always a moment. Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez are set to drive for Cadillac this season, and putting mileage on the package now will help the team hit pre-season testing a little less green.
On the tech front, the Red Bull family blinked first. Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls showed their 2026 colour schemes this week, and the renders offered early clues about how the two camps are approaching the new rules challenge. It’s rare to see both chassis and engine regulations overhauled together; 2026 will compress the room to breathe for every technical department on the grid. There’s only so much you can read from a render, of course, but the contrasts between the two cars hint at different cooling and packaging priorities under the same corporate umbrella. That’s fertile ground for development divergence — and intrigue — once the real cars roll out.
As for the whispers swirling around the new power units, Red Bull Powertrains’ Ben Hodgkinson moved to steady the narrative. Addressing off-season chatter that a couple of manufacturers had spotted a loophole in the 2026 engine rules — with RBPT and Mercedes name‑checked in some reports — Hodgkinson said he’s “confident” Red Bull is operating well within the regulations, calling the speculation “a lot of noise about nothing.” That’s the tone you expect from a project determined to project calm competence. Still, with fresh rules come grey areas, and the first fire-up videos of 2026-spec power units will only fuel the detective work.
If there’s a theme to today’s headlines, it’s that 2026 isn’t creeping up anymore — it’s knocking on the door. Ferrari is future-proofing Hamilton’s cockpit-to-garage communication. Red Bull’s making a spectacle of the start of its Ford era and hinting at the shape of what’s to come. Cadillac is busy de-bugging in the cold at Silverstone. And the engineers? They’re already jousting over the fine print.
We’ve got a full 2025 campaign to run, with all the jeopardy and pace wars that entails. But make no mistake: the next reset is already shaping strategies, personnel charts and, yes, paint choices. In a sport this tight, tomorrow’s edges are found today.
