F1 signs new multi-year Australian broadcast rights deal<\/a><\/p>\nCroft said including Piastri, he expects the title fight to be contested by six drivers across four teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the top four teams of Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull, in that order coming out of testing, have six drivers within those teams that realistically have an opportunity to become champion,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cMax Verstappen, you can\u2019t discount. Look at the way he stormed back last year. One of the great recovery half seasons from Max Verstappen and from Red Bull.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge Russell at Mercedes, who is a world champion in the making and has looked like that for years and has never had the car. This year he might just have that.<\/p>\n
\u201cLewis Hamilton, who\u2019s won eight, sorry seven world titles during his career. Should be eight. One day I\u2019d love to see it become eight. He deserves to have eight. He is the greatest we\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Charles Leclerc. Ferrari are starting on a much better footing this year than they have in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cLando Norris, the current world champion with the number one on his car and that pressure of expectation off his shoulders. But a new pressure comes his way now as a defending champion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed for a definitive pick, Croft ultimately landed on Piastri as his choice for who would be crowned 2026 champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to press me, Oscar is the guy that I think will be a world champion at the end of this year because of the way that he\u2019s improved in the past, and because of the way he ran Lando, who\u2019s had a few more seasons, so close last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there realistically is six that could do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Croft said he expected the 2026 campaign to be unpredictable amid sweeping regulation changes, suggesting the championship battle could run deep into the calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a really exciting season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne team might start better than the others. Others will then catch up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to go all the way to the final couple of rounds before we find a champion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The veteran commentator also warned that the early flyaway run from Australia through to Japan will provide little immediate clarity on the competitive order.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlbert Park is very different to Bahrain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we go from Bahrain testing to Albert Park, a completely different track. We go to China, a completely different track. We go to Japan, a completely different track. And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single round this year is a new learning and a new adventure for the drivers and for the teams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking at the Kayo Sports Motorsport Launch in Melbourne on Tuesday night, Croft singled out the Australian as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-516988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}