Three races into 2026 and the on-track storylines are already noisy enough. Yet the paddock rhythm is being shaped just as much by who’s turning up, who isn’t, and how teams are choosing to organise themselves in the sport’s first season under the new regulations.
Start with the broadcast end of the business. Martin Brundle has confirmed he’ll be working a lighter Sky F1 rota this year, pegged at 16 races. That’s down from the 18 he covered in 2025 and comes after he missed the last two rounds in China and Japan. Sky hasn’t offered an explanation on whether the reduced schedule is contract-driven or simply collateral from a calendar that’s already had Bahrain and Saudi Arabia fall away.
Either way, Brundle doing fewer weekends is more than a diary note. Sky has leaned heavily on the familiarity of its voices to keep the show coherent through the sport’s relentless travel and constant churn of story. When one of the anchors scales back, it changes the texture of the coverage: different pairings in the booth, different editorial instincts, and inevitably a slightly different lens on the paddock. For a championship that’s trying to bed in a new era, that matters.
Away from the TV compound, one of the day’s more human stories came via Lewis Hamilton, reacting to his brother Nicolas landing what he called the “biggest announcement” of his career: a front-running BTCC seat for 2026 with reigning champions Team VERTU. Nicolas Hamilton, who has cerebral palsy, has been pushing for the kind of opportunity that lets him fight at the sharp end rather than simply participate, and the move is a proper step.
Lewis didn’t overcook it — a simple “Let’s go” on social media — but it’s the sort of message that carries weight in motorsport because it’s rooted in the grind they both understand. In a week where F1’s talk can skew toward org charts and power shifts, it cut through.
Those power shifts, though, are very real. Audi’s handling of Jonathan Wheatley’s exit is the clearest signal yet of how some teams want to operate in 2026: less traditional hierarchy, more distributed leadership — at least publicly. Mattia Binotto has said Audi won’t be appointing a new team principal following Wheatley’s departure. Instead, he’s open to adding “someone to support me at the race weekends” and has admitted he won’t attend every race himself.
That’s a fascinating admission in modern F1, where visibility is often mistaken for control. Not having a defined, ever-present figure at the top can work — if the processes are strong, if the delegation is clean, and if the factory and trackside teams aren’t pulling in different directions when the pressure spikes. But it also invites the obvious question: in the heat of a messy weekend, who is empowered to make the call? Audi’s first season in this new ruleset was always going to be a test of more than lap time; it’s a test of whether the project can establish a decision-making spine quickly enough.
If you want a snapshot of how quickly reputations are being rewritten, look at the early “surprises” being batted around during the break to Miami. The Wheatley twist is right up there, but it’s not alone. Red Bull’s rough start, coming off a pre-season that evidently didn’t hint at this level of struggle, has altered the tone of the opening phase. And Cadillac’s first impression has been… well, better than many expected. Nobody in F1 survives long on goodwill or novelty, but a new entrant arriving and looking credible early changes the midfield conversation immediately — it forces established teams to treat them as a real reference point, not just a curiosity.
Then there’s Max Verstappen doing what Verstappen tends to do: making even a “non-F1” outing feel like part of the main plot. Daniel Juncadella has been talking up Verstappen’s approach to traffic during the recent NLS race at the Nürburgring — specifically the way he stayed glued to cars ahead through certain sections, managing the gaps with a sort of mechanical patience rather than frantic aggression. It’s telling that seasoned GT racers notice it, because traffic management at the Nürburgring isn’t a party trick; it’s a skill that saves time, tyres, and risk.
The result on the road — a win before a disqualification for a tyre-related infringement — will be filed away as trivia by some. The more interesting bit is that Verstappen keeps adding to the mythos in places where the stopwatch is brutal and the margins for error are even worse than in F1. He doesn’t need it for credibility, but it’s another reminder that his toolkit is as much about judgement as it is about raw speed.
All of which leaves F1 heading into Miami with an unusual kind of pause. Not a lull — the politics and personnel moves don’t stop — but a moment where the sport is showing its 2026 shape. The calendar is already fluid. Big broadcast names are adjusting their roles. A manufacturer project is improvising its leadership structure in public. A new team is making itself inconveniently competitive. And the grid’s reference driver is out there collecting proof, again, that his instincts travel.
Miami will bring the usual noise. But the early part of this season has already underlined a point worth keeping in mind: in 2026, the story isn’t only being written in the timing screens. It’s being written in who’s in the room when decisions get made — and who isn’t.
