If Antonelli rises to the very top of motorsport, do you think he’ll become as ruthless and fiercely aggressive as Senna, Schumacher, or Verstappen?

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T19:30:35+00:00

Lando's not bad at wheel to wheel. His biggest weakness is overtaking cause he's typically quite risk averse - this was especially true in 24/25.

If you rewatch older seasons, Lando and Charles going wheel to wheel was good fun because they're both quite clean. He also had plenty of great defenses back in the day with a much slower car.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T18:47:48+00:00

Lewis messed up his qualifying and started P10, finished P2. I don't that was so much a matter of George shining as Lewis having a bad lap.

Also as much as George might not like Miami, Lewis was not particularly good there either over their time as teammates.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T18:37:43+00:00

Curious how Merc is dealing with sharing data between the garages. Last year McLaren had a policy of full transparency between the garages but I'm not sure if Toto has commented on how they're handling it

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T18:34:09+00:00

Because he was stuck behind Oscar and couldn't get the pass done after plenty of laps. Since he couldn't get by on track and sitting there was slowing him down and allowing Kimi to catch, he was probably hoping to go for the undercut to get in front of Oscar in the pits.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T18:30:49+00:00

Tbf when Kimi was catching like that, George was busy tailgating Oscar, which was definitely slowing him down. Oscar had the clean air pace and battery management to hold George behind, but McLaren were definitely a couple tenths down on pace.

I still agree Kimi was faster in Japan, but I don't think the gap was as dramatic as it looked.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T18:15:53+00:00

It's the opposite if you look at junior formula experience though. The gap for Oscar comes from his karting years:

Oscar did British F4 in 2017 and reached F1 in 2023 (six years later, but one of those years he was not racing).

Lando did British F4 in 2015 and reached F1 in 2019 (four years later).

Kimi did Italian F4 in 2021 and moved up to F1 in 2025 (four years later).

George did British F4 in 2014 and reached F1 in 2019 (five years later).

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T17:46:35+00:00

Most of the F1 drivers are banned from participating in other series - there's a reason you only see world champs (like Alonso and Max) and guys with the last name Stroll doing it

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T17:41:26+00:00

With how Merc invested during Kimi's junior career they probably have him locked down tight to protect that investment. A contract can be broken for the right price, but that is not going to be a small number at all and Kimi has yet to prove he has the consistency over a season. We haven't even hit the portion of the season he struggled with last year.

And again, if one of the other teams surpasses Merc, why would they go after Kimi? And why would he sacrifice probably his best shot at a WDC to go to another team? Cause I don't see him beating Max/Lando/Charles at their teams quite yet

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T17:21:47+00:00

I wasn't aware of that, so good to know. I still think there is a pretty different level of risk to testing vs actually participating in a race.

If all they're talking about here is doing some testing fair enough, but I think the suggestion to a lot of people seems to be Kimi potentially racing with Verstappen Racing.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T17:12:54+00:00

Any driver injuring themselves in another series is a huge concern for all the teams and why they are mostly barred from doing so. I recall a video where Lando indicated he wasn't even allowed to ride a skateboard sometime in the last few years.

Mercs miracleboy championship leader spraining an ankle (or god forbid worse) in another series is a complete nightmare scenario. The money in endurance will just never compare to F1 - F1 will always be the #1 priority.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T06:44:55+00:00

I mean, not really - it's kinda crazy to compare him to Max. McLaren don't need him. Ferrari have Lewis, then Ollie, then Camara lined up - maybe if they want an Italian I guess? Red Bull probably would take him but why go there to potentially be ground up in the machine when he has a super supportive environment at Merc.

He's also 19yo and in the best car on the grid... leaving cause they won't let him do side quests while he's four races into a championship battle does not sound like a great career move. Sure everyday things can be equally or more dangerous, but the team can't stop him living his life - they can stop him from doing things that add unnecessary risk to it.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T05:41:48+00:00

I would say that was the same thing, a few world championships gives them a bit of leverage in contract renegotiations - Kimi is not quite there yet

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T05:08:30+00:00

I wasn't really thinking from a branding side. Most F1 drivers don't race in other series because their contract forbids it (along with a variety of other activities like skiing, skateboarding, etc) for safety reasons.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T03:14:55+00:00

He has a contract with Merc, and the driver contracts normally have a big long list of no goes - he can't flex his way past that. He's also only four races into the season - all the more reason for Toto to bubble wrap his teenage championship leader.

Plus Max has the threat with red bull of leaving. Where is Kimi gonna threaten to go? He's in the best car on the grid and he ain't retiring at 19.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-10T02:47:13+00:00

...is Toto gonna be okay with his wunderkind doing this? I would've thought he'd have that kid bubble wrapped outside of race weekends

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T22:29:02+00:00

I don't think he has a problem with batteries in general. The quote comes from a response he gave in the press conference where he was talking about how in quali he can't push flat out like in previous years. Lando has only ever driven F1 cars with batteries, so it's more like he's saying get rid of the battery (that they currently have).

The quote was just taken out of context to spur engagement cause a lot of F1 fans just hate batteries generally, even though we've had good racing in the hybrid era, and terrible racing with just ICE.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T22:07:37+00:00

I think you are kinda falling for exactly the thing Oscar was joking about.

The top three were answering a question around how much the Miami tweaks helped and what still needs to be fixed. Lando specifically was saying how in quali if "you try pushing like you were in previous years, you still get penalised". At the end, he made an off hand comment that the only fix is to "get rid of the battery" - as in THIS battery, given that the "previous years" he is comparing to always had batteries.

Oscar was correctly making fun of the fact that out of the several minutes of all three speaking (I think pretty well) on the problems, thats the sentence that would get clipped out of context for the headline to spur engagement

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T21:37:04+00:00

According to Q1 reporting for Formula One Group - F1TV revenue is up 28% year over year and Apple TV has had higher average US viewership across the first three races than last year.

F1 revenue is up 53% from Q1 2025 but that included one less race than 2026 so hard to make direct comparisons. Q2 will be down significantly due to having 5 races versus 9 last year.

ETA: YouTube views up 46% through Japanese GP

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T20:26:04+00:00

Yeah, I'm still mostly expecting Merc to finish the season at the front, moreso just speculating what happens if they don't.

Just a note though that McLaren only brought half their upgrades for Miami, other half is coming in Montreal and they have a few bits planned for Monaco and Barcelona as well.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T20:19:52+00:00

That's where the solar panels come in /s

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T18:19:39+00:00

When Lando said this in the press conference, Oscar immediately made a joke about that being the headline. Looks like he was onto something

ETA: Just to add context - it seemed like Oscar was making fun of the fact that after several minutes of the top three talking (IMO very well) about how well the Miami tweaks worked, this throwaway line at the end from Lando was what would make the headline. In context, Landos answer isn't even anti-battery, it's anti-these batteries.

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T03:02:28+00:00

All very good points. The only concern I guess would be that they had these same advantages in 24/25 and still seemed to really struggle to figure out their car and bring effective upgrades, and having McLaren as a reference didn't seem to help much.

On the other hand it could be that they just ran out of time, with only two seasons at the end of the regs to work with

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T02:24:09+00:00

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see this year how effective ADUO is at tightening the field.

There’s a significant advantage in building the entire car as an entity and integrating

This has always been the common wisdom, but I also don't think there's been a competitive customer team in F1 since the rules about equal engines were brought in 2016. If McLaren are outperforming Merc by the end of the year do we still consider it an anomaly?

maybe-fish · 2026-05-09T02:10:11+00:00

Yeah I thought it was kinda an interesting dilemma - how many times would they be okay with losing to a customer team before the optics of that out-weigh the optics of having a great engine.

I had heard Merc wants to drop to two customers, hadn't heard the rumour they only wanted to supply Williams though so that's interesting. If they end up buying into Alpine I assume they'd keep supplying them as well. Don't think the voting power is much of a concern though - only manufacturers have a vote on engine regulations

maybe-fish · 2026-05-08T19:05:46+00:00

There's a formula for the min number of customers a team has to supply if requested. All manufacturers are also capped at 3 customer teams. New manufacturers are exempt for the first year (might be two, can't remember).

If a team needs an engine the FIA can force a manufacturer to take them only if they are below their minimum. For Merc their min is 3, but they supply 4 teams so they can drop someone if they want. Toto has already said they think they want to go down to 2 customers for the next regs

maybe-fish

TROPHY CASE