Alright, let’s try this one more time.

The Australian Grand Prix opens the 2026 Formula 1 season – as it should do every year – which means we’re finally about to learn the pecking order for this new era.

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Some F1 fans (and writers, like our colleague Michael Lamonato) are well across the technical changes, and others (like us) only understand it in broad strokes.

Briefly: the engines are different, battery usage is going to be critical (and create more moments where going all-out isn’t the best strategy… weird that they’d want more of that), and there’s less downforce through the end of ground effect (which hopefully makes the cars harder to drive, also making races feel different and opening up more strategies).

But all of those changes are in service of answering two questions: which car is fastest? And, of the two men inside said car, which driver is fastest?

We love unpredictability. It’s why 2025 was more fun than the three seasons before it; multiple drivers were serious contenders, and even though for periods the question was merely Which McLaren Driver Is Faster This Weekend?, that’s better than the question being Will Max Verstappen Win Again Yes Of Course Oh God It’s The Dutch Anthem Again?

And it’s why heading into 2026, we’re so excited. Sure, we think we have an idea of who’ll be up the front (the same four teams again) and who’ll be at the back (Cadillac, with Aston Martin waving from the pits because the car didn’t start). But we don’t really know until Sunday evening.

Which is why it’s the perfect time to make our bold predictions for the 2026 season.

Last year we did pretty well – highlights included ‘Lando champion with Oscar close’, ‘Doohan sacked because money’ and ‘Williams finally relevant’ – so let’s see if we can repeat that sort of success rate.

We make our bold F1 predictions for 2026.Source: FOX SPORTS

OSCAR BEATS LANDO… BUT ENDS UP PAINFULLY CLOSE AGAIN

We all know the story by now – Oscar Piastri leads the world championship for much of the season, then it all turns sour at the Italian Grand Prix when McLaren tells him to let Lando Norris through, and his campaign sorta falls apart from there.

We do not believe McLaren actively worked against one of its drivers. We think Piastri happened to find himself in more situations where the team had to make a call going the other way because they had talked themselves into a corner about Being Fair and Treating Both Drivers Equally and Letting Them Race.

And we think Piastri has himself to blame for some of his mistakes. His lows were lower than Lando’s; he was relatively off the pace at low-grip tracks. Azerbaijan was a particularly poor weekend.

But he was also in his third F1 season, and in a title fight for the first time. Norris’ experience advantage paid off – it was the Brit’s seventh year, matching when Max Verstappen won his first title. Piastri presents as older than he is because of his composure.

That composure and the growth he showcased during 2025 should serve him well in 2026. He didn’t crack under the pressure of going wheel-to-wheel with Verstappen early in the season when he won four out of five races.

Of course the speed of the McLaren was the main reason he and Norris were up the front with the Dutchman, but we (and a lot of others) came out of the year more impressed with Piastri’s racecraft and skill than with Norris’.

And it’s why we think Piastri will continue to grow and actually beat Norris across the course of the season. We know he is good enough to win the world title if he’s in a car worthy of the world title, because he almost did it.

The problem, then, could be the car.

Piastri MOBBED in Melbourne | 00:25

GEORGE WINS THE WORLD TITLE

We’re already expecting a moment some time in November when David Croft says something like “and the man from King’s Lynn is now King of Formula 1!”

George Russell is the betting favourite to win the 2026 F1 world title, partially because of his strength as a driver (and in particular his consistency), but mostly because it sounds like Mercedes has nailed the new rules better than anyone else.

Ferrari was the fastest car of the pre-season but you can only trust the pure numbers so much, and you certainly can’t trust the Italian outfit to get through a campaign without multiple mistakes.

If the Mercedes engine is the best of the bunch, it only makes sense that the works team will know it best, and they haven’t gone for the sort of radical design that ruined their chances early in the previous era.

Kimi Antonelli showed some promising signs at the back end of his rookie season but, understandably, also looked like a rookie plenty of times. He’s quick but he’s also a literal teenager.

Russell, on the other hand, had a relatively anonymous season often running 10 seconds away from any other car while posting solid thirds, fourths and fifths. He didn’t have race-winning machinery but he’s clearly good enough to make a car that’s quick enough reach most of its potential.

We expect Russell to make a strong start to the season and potentially be pegged back as the McLaren improves, but Piastri and Norris will take enough points off each other to limit their chances of a comeback.

That’s partially based on the way McLaren has spoken about their 2026 challenger – admittedly teams are rarely boastful but they don’t sound like a team that has everything in order right at this moment. More like a team that trusts they’ll get there with a bit more info and development.

Leclerc could sneak into the title picture too but we have him fourth in the pecking order on the grounds that Ferrari is gonna Ferrari.

Kayo & Fox Sports secure new F1 Deal | 03:40

RED BULL KEEPS ITS NO.2 DRIVER FOR A FULL CALENDAR YEAR

Which shouldn’t be a bold prediction, but, well…

This is about two things – the driver himself, and the team not being so dramatic for once.

Isack Hadjar was one of the most impressive members of Red Bull’s junior team in some time, with a strong rookie season capped off by a podium in the Netherlands, outscoring teammate Liam Lawson (who had two fewer races).

Lawson was the victim of arguably the team’s cruellest sacking yet, gone after just two races, with his replacement Yuki Tsunoda failing to keep the team anywhere close to McLaren in the constructors’ race despite Max Verstappen’s best efforts.

We know the problems by now. Red Bull has, understandably, developed a car that suits the best driver on the grid. Verstappen’s basket is worth putting your eggs in.

But we would expect them to be more patient with Hadjar, partially because they can’t just keep sacking young drivers and expect to find a good one, but also because Christian Horner and Helmut Marko are gone.

Arvid Lindblad would be the next man up but the 18-year-old himself has been rushed into the second Racing Bulls seat, and while he’s impressive he hasn’t had a Verstappen-like rise that demands a place in the senior team.

There’s some chance we’re underestimating Red Bull. If the car is anywhere near good enough, Verstappen will be in the title fight; we’re not worried about that.

But they need to find a way to have a competitive team, not just a competitive driver – because at some point after all of his threats Verstappen will simply walk away from the sport and go become a full-time Twitch streamer playing Assetto Corsa, or something equally weird.

Actually giving a driver of Hadjar’s quality more than a season will make that goal much easier to achieve.

Middle East conflict to impact AUS GP | 05:00

ALPINE GO FROM LAST TO BEST OF THE REST

This is more about everyone else having question marks than us being overly convinced by the French outfit.

With no help from the second seat Pierre Gasly was a consistently mid midfield driver in 2025, sneaking into the points a handful of times, but Alpine’s car was too bad to avoid last place.

Above them, Sauber capitalised on a stellar midseason run of form from Nico Hulkenberg (including the Hulkenpodium at Silverstone), Aston Martin, Haas and Racing Bulls traded being sixth-best (the former weighed down by Lawrence’s son), and Williams finally raced as professionally as James Vowles sounds.

But much like Mario Kart, F1 features rubber-banding – not just the ability for the backmarkers to focus more on next year’s car, but the extra aero testing time given in reverse standings order. And that will help the perennial midfielders return to their rightful place of ‘should get someone into Q3 most weekends’.

They’re helped by having the Mercedes engine in their still awkward-looking pink and blue machine. It’s pretty clearly the best of the bunch thus far, and while they’re not going to catch the works team or McLaren, they will be better than Williams which barely made it to testing with a car that apparently needs the motorsport equivalent of GLP-1 injectables.

They’ll be challenged by Racing Bulls, but the junior team didn’t look quite as quick in testing and has a genuine rookie in Arvid Lindblad.

They won’t be challenged by Aston Martin or Cadillac, as we’ll get to, while Audi will need time to settle in as it transitions into works team status, and we can’t quite trust Haas to be quick enough.

It may be a case where Alpine starts well and clings onto 5th as the others improve, but that worked well enough for Aston in 2024.

Oh, how they’re longing for those relative glory days now.

F1 reserve driver suffers horror crash | 00:22

ASTON ARE EMBARRASSING EARLY, BUT GET IT TOGETHER EVENTUALLY

It may be a bold prediction at this point merely to suggest Aston Martin actually has a car running in the Australian Grand Prix.

Slow in their brief testing appearances before having to limit running due to running out of parts – already?! – the car that was supposed to be a dark horse thanks to Adrian Newey’s masterful design work instead comes into the season opener as the paddock joke.

There have been genuine suggestions they were looking to avoid the trip down under altogether, or do the bare minimum in qualifying to make the race start before retiring the car, because the Honda machine’s battery pack is being so severely shaken during running it cannot last anywhere near a full race distance.

This was effectively confirmed on media day – they’re basically tanking Australia, hoping to find a solution for China a week later, and then pray it’s all cleared up in the fortnight before Honda’s home race in Japan.

It would be an embarrassing start to a moment they’ve effectively been building towards for years, with all of that reported investment towards becoming a genuine front-runner for the first time in the new era. But all of that work can’t possibly be for nothing.

At some point, it’ll pay off. They aren’t a bunch of mugs. And while we’re not saying they’re going to be challenging for podiums by the end of the season, they should at least be back in the midfield with the potential to grow. Let’s say they get at least one top six finish by season’s end.

And they should at least be better than a completely new team, Cadillac. While they’ve overperformed by not underwhelming across the pre-season, it’s still unrealistic to expect much more than a respectable back-of-the-pack finish from the 11th team.

Eventually Aston will surpass Cadillac. Eventually Newey’s brilliance will shine through. Eventually they won’t be a team most known for a familial relationship.

Surely…