Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.
Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I’m enjoying that rather rare thing at the British Grand Prix — a sunny Silverstone day.
This place can feel pretty grim when it’s wet — unless you’re Emerson Fittipaldi in 1975, Ayrton Senna in 1988, Michael Schumacher in 1998, Lewis Hamilton in 2008 or Lando Norris last year — so I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
I’m Alex, and Sam Joseph will be along later. (Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman are also with me here at Silverstone.)
But I promise from here on out, there will be minimal interjections of that very British thing of … talking about the weather.
Engine Angst … is back. But there’s plenty to celebrate, too
There was one story in town when the British GP weekend got underway yesterday: the dreaded return of 2026 engine angst.
This topic dominated the start of the season, as the new V6 turbo hybrid engines, with their added reliance on electrical systems for overall power, made their debut in preseason testing and then in the opening races in Australia, China and Japan.
But ever since F1 reconvened in Miami after its unplanned spring break, the engine angst had largely faded away as a discussion point.
The rule changes aimed at making the cars more intuitive for the drivers worked, and the agreement to reduce the importance of electricity systems for car power in 2027 and 2028 even seemed to have pleased the new Car Basher In Chief, Max Verstappen.
But the Red Bull driver reignited the topic after he came oh so close to winning in Austria with a great drive last Sunday.
“Silverstone, I love the track, but I did a few laps on the simulator, (and) I just started laughing. It felt like a different track,” Verstappen said post-race in Austria.
“You barely have battery around the lap. It’s just constantly flat. It’s going to feel very different compared to what we are used to.”
So naturally … cue the rest of the grid players having their say.
As has always been the case, there are legitimate concerns about how the new engines work. But F1 drivers love nothing more than getting their gripes in early, so I thought I’d dedicate the rest of this section to the feel-good stories floating about the paddock ahead of the opening practice at Silverstone:
- The biggest lesson for Ollie Bearman entering his second home race as an F1 driver? Knowing that sleep can be a struggle at Silverstone.“There’s so much adrenaline in a home race, it’s actually really hard to then sleep a full eight hours,” the Haas driver said when I asked what he reflected on most after his Silverstone F1 debut in 2025.
- Nico Hülkenberg is still fondly looking back on scoring his maiden F1 podium at this race in 2025. The best bit for the Audi driver? Celebrating with his team (then known as Sauber) in the paddock afterward.“Probably my highlight and favorite moments of that whole thing was the after party in the motorhome after the interview marathon (post-race),” Hülkenberg said. “We had a couple of hours of good times there. That was incredible.”
- Norris is chuffed his branded grandstand — the very obviously dubbed “Landostand” — is even bigger in 2026. When watching on TV, it’s the one lit up with fluorescent yellow clothing (cued from Norris’ helmet colors) on the outside of Stowe corner at the end of Silverstone’s Hanger straight.“It looks amazing,” Norris said. “(The color is) hopefully going to distract everyone, it’s that bright. I’ve got an extra tinted visor just for getting through Stowe. It’s a lot bigger, a lot better than it was last season.”
- But George Russell is eying this spot for a future grandstand of his own — possibly coming as early as 2027, he said yesterday — at his home race, too.“Lando’s got quite a good spot on the outside of Stowe, so I’ll try and steal it off him,” Russell said.
- Speaking of Russell, he also revealed he had quite the random childhood dream while growing up in Norfolk, England. His main aim in life, the Mercedes driver said of his childhood self in the early 2000s, was to own a “Massey Ferguson tractor.”
- Most of the drivers are already utterly giddy with excitement at the prospect of using bespoke Lego go-karts for the Silverstone drivers’ parade on Sunday.
It’s the latest marketing stunt from the Danish building-block maker and F1 sponsor, after it built 10 life-size F1 cars out of bricks for the 2025 Miami GP.
Inevitably, with racing drivers, they were very quickly making it a proper race and smashing bits off the life-size cars as they toured slowly around Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
As Luke explains here, get set for Round 2 on Sunday. This time, Lego made 22 karts, one for each driver in 2026. Luke even got to sample the 20 mph karts at Lego’s Czechia base and reported, “when the drivers get their hands on them, it’s inevitable what is going to happen. There will be chaos.”
But Lance Stroll — sat alongside Norris and Audi driver Gabriel Bortoleto in the news conference — was a bit of a grouch about the whole thing, declaring himself “indifferent” to the event and “not going to wake up super early in the morning excited about it.” And Hamilton didn’t seem thrilled by the stunt, either.
“That’s something I need to take offline,” the Ferrari driver said.
But Hamilton was otherwise in good spirits, as is our Sam Joseph, here making his PT debut. I’ll let Sam explain …
Inside the Paddock with Sam Joseph: Hamilton seems back to his best self
If Ferrari’s recent upgrade packages have helped revitalize Hamilton on the track, perhaps preparing for his 20th grand prix on home soil has done the same for him off it.
The seven-time world champion was often dejected during his disappointing debut season in red last year. In Hungary, he called himself “useless” after a Q2 exit, adding that Ferrari “probably needed to change drivers.”
It was sad to see an F1 icon appear so down, but his spirits were lifted recently with a rise in Ferrari’s, and his own, form. It was also interesting to see how at home he feels at Silverstone. After all, he’s won nine of his 19 races here, and even has a straight named after him.
Before the news conference yesterday, the 41-year-old warmly greeted the crowd of reporters before taking a photo of the packed room, and he also chatted with fellow home hopeful Arvid Lindblad about his jeans (“Are those LV?”).
As you might expect, Hamilton was the center of attention, with the overwhelming majority of questions in the second session directed his way. (Stroll, Norris and Bortoleto were in the first media session.)
Hamilton was asked about his dog Roscoe, who passed away last year, and laughed with his former teammate Valtteri Bottas about Roscoe leaving “presents” outside his door in the campsite of Silverstone, where many drivers stay in luxury motorhomes for the event.
Like most of the room, Hamilton smiled in disbelief when Lindblad stated that he remembers sitting in the Silverstone grandstand overlooking Maggots and Becketts in 2013, when the Racing Bulls driver was just 5 years old.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows — Hamilton was one of numerous drivers to say that challenges in energy deployment will make Silverstone a completely different experience in 2026 — and he wasn’t exactly optimistic about his chances of reigning in Kimi Antonelli at the top of the drivers’ standings.
But he even had time to joke about that, saying that the only way of catching Mercedes, his former employer, would be by “going into Mercedes’ garage and undoing the (car) bolts.”
Regardless of how he performs this weekend, it is nice to see arguably F1’s most recognizable character look like himself again.
Back to you, Alex.
McLaren’s New Look: MCL40 to ‘honor’ team’s first car
McLaren enters its home race weekend as the reigning Silverstone winner for the first time since 2009, after Norris’ win in the wet-dry thriller here last year.
On that day — when Oscar Piastri squandered better pace and a shot of winning with some erratic driving behind the safety car — McLaren’s car, the MCL39s, was running a special livery. This has been something of a McLaren tradition for the Silverstone weekend, as part of its sponsorship deal with Google.
The 2026 British GP is no different, but rather than just tweak its current F1 livery, McLaren has done something far more comprehensive and impressive.
The MCL40s will look very different, as McLaren has swapped out its papaya orange and black livery for the grey and green arrangement of its very first F1 car. This was the M2B, which made its debut 60 years ago in the 1966 Monaco GP — driven by eponymous team founder, Bruce McLaren.
Seated alongside Sam in the Silverstone news conference yesterday, I asked Norris about the special livery. He agreed it was a good omen after his victory in the chrome-shod MCL39 last year — “we generally have good races when we have different liveries on,” he said — but then went on to reveal much more.
The first is how “Oscar (Piastri, Norris’ teammate) and me are pretty fussy with, visually, what we see as drivers. So actually what we have around the cockpit quite often stays the same (when the outer livery changes). So when you’re inside the car, we don’t actually notice too many changes from the outside.”
And the second was what running in the same colors as Bruce McLaren means to a modern McLaren driver.
“It’s just an honor that we get to relive this and kind of bring it back to life,” Norris said. “And also showcase it, because not many people know that the first car Bruce had was white, green and grey. Obviously, we tried to put a bit more of a modern twist on it, but it’s not papaya.”
Silverstone Leaderboard: Hamilton tops F1
This is Silverstone’s first sprint weekend since 2021, which certainly adds to the intrigue, given how that weekend descended into one of the biggest controversies of that year’s Hamilton versus Verstappen title battle, precisely because of how the Red Bull driver won the sprint.
But that also means there’s just one practice session before qualifying for the sprint race takes place today at 11:30 a.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. local time.
- In FP1, Hamilton led Ferrari back to the top of the times after its difficult Austria weekend, where hot temperatures and the relatively high altitude caused challenges for the engines run by the Italian team.
- Hamilton’s best time came in at 1:29.260 seconds, with Antonelli 0.213 seconds behind in second. Russell was fourth and Verstappen sixth, with 2025 Silverstone winner Norris in seventh.
You can follow all the action from the British GP this weekend in our live blog.
Outside the Points
⚽ Luke explained how those ridiculous, innovative “space jackets” the Mercedes drivers wear at every hot race are also now being used by players at the FIFA World Cup.
🌍 F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali wrote an open letter in The Times newspaper as the Silverstone event was getting underway yesterday. In a direct message about the upcoming change of Prime Minister in the UK, he asked the British government to help the many F1 businesses based in the country make visa applications easier for team staffs and invest in sustainable fuels — a major feature of the new cars.
📫 Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters.
