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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today it’s time to take stock of this season’s Formula 1 during the brief pause between Rounds 2 and 3. That’s of a new 22-round season, following the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian events for this year.
I’m Alex, and Luke Smith will be along later.
Fast-Moving F1: McLaren scrambling to save its season
Yes, already.
Above is Lando Norris helping pick out the eyes for his wax sculpture, which will go on display at the Madame Tussauds exhibition in London to honor the Briton’s 2025 F1 world title.
It reminded me of something important in the F1 world, and it’s not good news for McLaren.
Tourists can see Norris immortalized in wax starting this summer, by which point his F1 title defense may already be over, given how McLaren has started this year … and how its engine supplier, Mercedes, currently leads the way.
The orange team was F1’s dominator last year. Now, it’s the Silver Arrows squad.
With Kimi Antonelli’s victory in the Chinese Grand Prix, ahead of George Russell, Mercedes not only registered a second 1-2 GP result in a week — after Russell’s win in Australia — it also pulled 80 points away from McLaren in the 2026 constructors’ standings.
In 2024, that championship was settled by 14 points, when McLaren beat Ferrari.
In 2025, Norris beat Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by just two points.
Three reasons so far stand out to me to explain McLaren’s massive gap to Mercedes.
Two go down to misfortune: Oscar Piastri crashing on the reconnoitering laps ahead of the Australian GP, and Norris then being unable to start the main race in Shanghai due to engine electrical systems issues. (Piastri is still yet to complete a GP racing lap in 2026.)
The other reason is actually more problematic for McLaren: that it has started 2026 firmly as F1’s third-fastest team at the start of this new car design rules era.
Ferrari is chasing Mercedes most closely, while Red Bull seems to have handling and engine issues with which to grapple.
If that pattern continues for the season’s next phase, there is no logical reason to expect a McLaren driver to do any better than fifth place at best, with the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers locking up the higher positions.
And that is no way to win, either.
If anything, McLaren’s fall has highlighted that what Mercedes achieved in 2017 and Red Bull in 2022 — staying atop the standings while traversing a car design rules change — is the exception in F1, not the rule.
In the previous four such instances, Red Bull was toppled by Mercedes in 2014. Brawn GP (which became Mercedes) and then Red Bull replaced the McLaren and Ferrari stranglehold on F1 success from 2009. Renault ended Ferrari’s era of dominance so far this century, in 2005. And McLaren did likewise to Williams in 1998.
But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella had insisted post-sprint race in China that its MCL40 car is “a solid platform.”
He added: “There’s nothing in the car that is not sound conceptually, it just needs to be developed further.”
This is positive. It implies McLaren has not got its aerodynamic concept wrong, as it did in 2022 and 2023.
Once it’d fully reversed this in F1’s previous car design rules era, via a series of impressive upgrade packages that culminated in the 2024 Miami GP Norris won, McLaren was the championship’s leading team.
“The journey for this car will be more about accelerating the development along principles that we think are sound,” Stella said. “(The car is) still a little too below the line of development of where Ferrari and Mercedes seem to be.”
As a result of all that, which is typical Stella candidness, I have confidence that McLaren can refine its package — especially once it fully understands how best to utilize the Mercedes engine.
It should at the very least compete for wins before the 2026 season is out. Stella just runs too good of a ship, and Norris and Piastri still form a formidable lineup.
But it shows just why the title fight between them last year mattered so much. It may be the only one they ever get to properly contest. And, even if McLaren does catch Mercedes before the year is out, then another McLaren title tilt may now have to wait for 2027.
That’s how fast F1 moves. Much faster than wax melts.
Now, over to Luke to continue the feelgoodness that surrounds F1 after Antonelli’s win in China last weekend.
Inside the Paddock with Luke Smith: Winning won’t change Antonelli
“Kimi, this is Luke. He’s going to look after you when you get to F1.”
I looked up at Roberto Chinchero, an Italian colleague and legend of motorsport media, then down to the teenager he was introducing.
Under a tousle of brown hair, at least half a foot shorter than Roberto and wearing a tuxedo, 16-year-old Kimi Antonelli said “hello” and shook my hand.
This was my first meeting with Antonelli — at the 2022 FIA prize giving event in Bologna. I told him I’d heard a lot about him — meaning his success in go-karting. He’d just ended the year as the dual Italian and German Formula 4 champion, stamping his status as a future star.
What struck me in that first chat was Antonelli’s politeness and good character. We chatted briefly before Roberto took Antonelli around the room to make more introductions, but I got a good feeling. This wasn’t a young driver who thought he was “it.” He clearly felt grateful and excited to be in the room.
Three-and-a-half years later, I had the same feeling sitting in the news conference room last Sunday in Shanghai as Antonelli, now 19 and F1’s newest grand prix winner, soaked in the moment. You could still feel the gratitude, and that much was clear from his tears in parc ferme.
Despite such a rapid rise, Antonelli hasn’t changed. He’s still that good kid I met in Bologna. I don’t expect becoming an F1 race winner will change him one bit.
Back to you, Alex.
Who’s In Charge? Wheatley definitely out at Audi
It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours for Aston Martin and Audi fans.
First, this report said Jonathan Wheatley was being lined up to become Aston’s team principal. Aston said Thursday that “Adrian Newey continues to lead the team as team principal and managing technical partner.” Audi, meanwhile, said it does “not comment on speculation.”
Then, this afternoon, Audi announced Wheatley left the team — which he joined as team principal only in April of last year — for “personal reasons.” That sounds an awful lot like, “signed with another team in his home country, the UK, rather than be on our base in Switzerland.”
Former Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto — in charge of the Audi F1 project — has taken over team principal duties. At least for now, with Audi’s latest statement saying, “the team’s future structure will be fully defined at a later stage.”
The news release tennis rally then continued, as Aston released a statement from Lawrence Stroll. He claimed he “set the record straight,” but did nothing of the sort.
Stroll did say: “I would like to reaffirm that Adrian Newey is my partner and an important shareholder. He is Aston’s managing technical partner, and he and I have a true partnership built on a shared vision of success for the company.
“We do things differently here, and while we don’t currently adopt the traditional team principal role that you see elsewhere — it is by design.”
That backs up what Luke wrote in this piece, that Aston is eyeing up signing Wheatley so that Newey can go back to being a car-design guru, as well as having oversight of the whole team from his position as managing technical partner and as a major shareholder.
But that means he wouldn’t have to run Aston day to day. It would also mean Aston has had five team principals in five years, a really rotating cast facing Stroll across the net at the green team.
Ultimately, it seems likely that Wheatley will end up at Aston after all. Stroll only finished his statement by saying, “We are regularly approached by senior executives of other teams who wish to join Aston, but in keeping with our policy, we do not comment on rumor and speculation.”
Clear as mud. But what else to expect from a team that has been in crisis since preseason testing …
Outside the points
🇩🇪 Mercedes has a new deputy team principal: its former head of communications, Bradley Lord.
🇺🇸 Luke interviewed IndyCar-star-turned-Formula-2-hopeful Colton Herta for this piece outlining the 25-year-old’s aim to reach F1 with Cadillac in the coming years.
😂 And finally, just because it amuses me so much, check out F1’s podium announcer confusing Antonelli for 2007 world champion Kimi Räikkönen. He took it so well!
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