{"id":672505,"date":"2026-05-16T02:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/672505\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T02:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:43:09","slug":"happy-10-years-max-verstappen-plus-why-the-canadian-gp-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/672505\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 10 years, Max Verstappen! Plus: Why the Canadian GP is important"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Prime Tire, where I\u2019m pleased to report my\u00a0$100 Miami Grand Prix hot dog expense<\/a>\u00a0was approved. I filed it under \u201cnewsgathering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy 10 years of excellence, Max<\/p>\n

Today is the\u00a010th anniversary of Max Verstappen\u2019s first Formula 1 win,\u00a0and Luke Smith\u00a0put together an excellent oral history of it<\/a>\u00a0that I think is very much worth your time.<\/p>\n

I forgot just how little prep time Verstappen had before his first race. It wasn\u2019t the buildup you\u2019d expect from a moment that launched such an incredible run of success.<\/p>\n

All the quotes in Luke\u2019s piece \u2014 from Verstappen himself to his race engineer, GianPiero Lambiase, to Dutch commentator Olav Mol \u2014 are so good. Two details from the piece stuck with me though:<\/p>\n

Lambiase, who is leaving for McLaren by 2028, said Verstappen\u2019s first win and first championship are the cherries on the cake of his career. We love a good cake metaphor.
\nMol recalled calling it on air as \u201cYo ho! How bizarre!\u201d and then broke into tears. I mean, come on.<\/p>\n

Give it a read here<\/a>! If only to admire the amazing lead image our art team cooked up.<\/p>\n

Canadian GP: Why Montreal stands out<\/p>\n

Formula 1 goes to Canada next weekend, and if you were waiting for a circuit that will actually tell you something more about these cars, congratulations. You\u2019ve made it.<\/p>\n

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve\u00a0is not a complicated track<\/a>. It\u2019s a man-made island in the St. Lawrence River, which runs through Montreal, and the circuit itself is basically:<\/p>\n

Go fast
\nBrake very hard
\nGo fast again
\nBrake very hard
\nGo fast
\nTry not to hit the wall at the end<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a hairpin. A couple of chicanes. There are long straights that punish you if your car is slow in a straight line. It\u2019s a lovely, by-the-book track.<\/p>\n

This makes it a fascinating stress test for a set of regulations that, five rounds in,\u00a0still have more questions than answers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2026 engine rules reward exactly the kind of circuit Montreal is. All those hard braking zones feed energy back into the battery. All those long straights demand you spend it.
\nThe 350kW Overtake Mode, which has already become one of the more tactically interesting<\/a>\u00a0parts of this season, will get an absolute workout at the hairpin, where overtaking actually happens and the margins between a move that sticks and one that doesn\u2019t are very, very small.<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri said in Miami<\/a>\u00a0that you can\u2019t actually fix the fundamental problems with these cars without changing the hardware. Any major fixes will need to come next season. He\u2019s right \u2014 and some are coming, as we\u2019ll get into in a moment.<\/p>\n

But Montreal will at least show you which teams have figured out how to work within the constraints and which ones are still arguing with them.<\/p>\n

Isack Hadjar said in Miami that he thought some tracks would be harder on the power units than others. Montreal is one of those tracks.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s throw it to Luke in the paddock.<\/p>\n

Inside the Paddock with Luke Smith<\/p>\n

The thorny issue of multi-team ownership is again in the F1 spotlight amid Mercedes\u2019 interest in purchasing a stake in Alpine.<\/p>\n

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown took a fresh step in the matter this week when he sent a letter to the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, expressing his concerns over the topic.<\/p>\n

In the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by\u00a0The Athletic, Brown said companies having stakes in multiple F1 teams \u201cneed to be addressed as a matter of priority,\u201d before going on to cite the competitive advantages it can bring \u2014 and the cost to rivals.<\/p>\n

Brown has a point. Last month, Red Bull announced its new head of performance, Andrea Landi, would join from Racing Bulls \u2014 also owned by Red Bull \u2014 effective in July. Other teams often have to wait months, even years, for staff to complete gardening leave.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable why Brown is speaking up now, given Mercedes\u2019 links to the Alpine shares that are up for sale. But this isn\u2019t an anti-Mercedes \u2014 which supplies McLaren engines \u2014 or anti-Toto Wolff move. It\u2019s simply entrenching a long-held position on a matter that Brown feels strongly about.<\/p>\n

Back when Red Bull bought a second team in 2005, F1 was in a very different place. It needed secure team ownership. Now, it\u2019s a seller\u2019s market \u2014 something that only reinforces Brown\u2019s point about the practice of multi-team ownership being outdated and not good for F1.<\/p>\n

Back to you, Patrick.<\/p>\n

ADUO: The acronym you\u2019re about to hear a lot<\/p>\n

The FIA\u00a0confirmed this week that its ADUO system<\/a>\u00a0(Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities, because the FIA loves gobbledegook) will kick in after Canada. We\u2019ll have much more on this soon, but for now, I thought I should get you up to speed, if you\u2019re not already.<\/p>\n

The short version:\u00a0Engine development is frozen at the start of the year. ADUO is the thaw \u2014 for whoever earned it.<\/p>\n

How it works, quickly:<\/p>\n

The FIA will measure every manufacturer\u2019s engine performance against the championship leader (at this point, Mercedes).
\nIf you\u2019re 2 to 4 percent behind, you get to bring one extra upgrade, this year and next.
\nIf you\u2019re 4 percent behind, you get two slots, plus extra sim\/testing hours and cost cap relief.<\/p>\n

Honda (Aston Martin\u2019s troubled engine provider<\/a>) almost certainly qualifies for maximum help. Audi, too. Ferrari may sneak in. Red Bull Powertrains is an interesting case. Laurent Mekies said they expected to qualify; Max Verstappen has said their engine is fine, and the chassis is the problem. Fun internal dynamic!<\/p>\n

ADUO is not a quick fix.\u00a0Lead times on engine development are very long. But it\u2019s a door. Canada is when it opens.<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re on engines \u2026<\/p>\n

The FIA announced last Friday that F1 engines will, \u201cin principle,\u201d change for 2027. As\u00a0Alex Kalinauckas noted this week<\/a>, those two words are doing a lot of work!<\/p>\n

The headline:\u00a0The current near-50-50 split between internal combustion engine (ICE) and electrical power will shift to something closer to 60-40 in favor of ICE. (In recent seasons, it was somewhere around 80-20.) The cars would theoretically be less energy-starved, less prone to superclipping and closer to something drivers would describe as a racing car.<\/p>\n

The catches:\u00a0There are several,\u00a0and Alex gets into them here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The next formal vote could come before the June 23 World Motor Sport Council meeting. Should be a fun Thursday.<\/p>\n

Outside the Points<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude97 Valtteri Bottas showed up to qualifying at Miami without a paddock pass because someone stole his Cadillac Escalade from the driveway of his Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale overnight.\u00a0Alex has the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc1 Verstappen spent this week making his debut at the N\u00fcrburgring 24 Hours, because off weeks are for other people. His co-driver, Dani Juncadella, put the car fourth on the grid for Saturday\u2019s race, eight-tenths off the pole-sitting Lamborghini. Obviously brings to mind Luke\u2019s\u00a0story on why, and if, Verstappen will leave F1<\/a>. (Oh, and\u00a0Verstappen and the 24 Hours<\/a>\u00a0was also our most-clicked story last time!)<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd34 I was reading that former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley\u00a0described Ferrari\u2019s situation<\/a>\u00a0(how it brought a ton of upgrades to Miami and struggled) as \u201cslightly soul-destroying.\u201d If you missed it, Madeline asked\u00a0what it will take for Ferrari to catch Mercedes<\/a>\u00a0this season.<\/p>\n

\u26f5 Ferrari wants to\u00a0build an amazing sailboat<\/a>. That\u2019s stripped of some context \u2026 but the gist is compelling, no?<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcb8 And, finally, our collectibles team took a look\u00a0at a record-high trading card market<\/a>, including for one F1 driver.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udceb Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic\u2019s other newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-672505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}