Just 39 days since Lando Norris’s title triumph in Abu Dhabi, the Formula One wagon is slowly cranking back into gear. Yet this time, those changes of gear are clunky and unpredictable. 2026 marks a deep dive into the unknown: new regulations, new teams and, for most of the field, new dreams. Disregard the usual gossip and murmurs. The truth is that nobody really knows what to expect.
And so it was 4,000 miles from UK’s so-called “Motorsport Valley” in the Midlands and Oxfordshire, which hosts six of the now 11 teams, where the love-or-loathe F1 launch season began in piercing sub-zero conditions on Thursday night. The venue was Michigan Central Station in Detroit, with temperatures around -10C, as Red Bull took to the stage alongside one of America’s biggest car manufacturers.
