{"id":446481,"date":"2026-02-26T10:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/446481\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:36:07","slug":"f1-live-mclaren-announce-new-driver-as-verstappen-claim-made-f1-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/446481\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 LIVE: McLaren announce new driver as Verstappen claim made | F1 | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next week, a new season of Formula 1 action will truly get underway as teams arrive in Melbourne to do battle for the first time in 2026. Pre-season testing is already over after a spell in Bahrain and the debates have already started.<\/p>\n

Which team’s engines are best? Ferrari<\/a>, McLaren<\/a>, Mercedes<\/a> and Red Bull<\/a> are battling it out after an overhaul of the regulations, but few want to completely show their hand. Ferrari and Mercedes are emerging as the consensus top two and McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has called them the “teams to beat”.<\/p>\n

Soon, we will know who has put together the most competitive car via race results. Join us to count down the days.<\/p>\n

Express Sport will keep you up to date with all the latest F1 news before the first Grand Prix weekend of the 2026 season…<\/p>\n

Ensure our latest sport headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate<\/a> or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next week, a new season of Formula 1 action will truly get underway as teams arrive in Melbourne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2355,6538,34235,7193,1665,7309,162055,831,59,9307,1152,1693,832,3006,1469,162056,1470,9734,3803,162057,101,56,54,55,8235],"class_list":{"0":"post-446481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-aston-martin","10":"tag-audi","11":"tag-cadillac","12":"tag-charles-leclerc","13":"tag-f","14":"tag-f1-2026-season","15":"tag-ferrari","16":"tag-gb","17":"tag-george-russell","18":"tag-haas","19":"tag-lando-norris","20":"tag-lewis-hamilton","21":"tag-max-verstappen","22":"tag-mclaren","23":"tag-mclaren-new-driver","24":"tag-oscar-piastri","25":"tag-racing-bulls","26":"tag-red-bull","27":"tag-russell-accusation","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-unitedkingdom","32":"tag-williams-f1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}