The Formula 1 Drivers’ World Championship began in 1950, with the constructors' equivalent being added eight years later, and back in that opening decade Alberto Ascari became an Italian sporting hero on the F1 front. The country has had to wait so long for another driver to capture the nation’s hearts in a similar way, and this has now happened in the form of Mercedes’ 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli.

His prodigious talent has never been in doubt and certainly not in the mind of his team principal, Toto Wolff, who chose young Antonelli to replace the Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton. The Italian’s first season at world motorsport’s top table was, as you might have expected, a mix of highs and lows, as his raw talent was very much in evidence, but so too was his inexperience when it came to consistently driving Formula 1 machinery on the limit.

However, Antonelli, now in only his second F1 season, has proved to have learned so much so quickly and developed way beyond the hopes of Wolff and the Mercedes team, not to mention the rest of the watching world. King’s Lynn’s George Russell had approached 2026 as the widely regarded pre-season favourite to claim a first Drivers’ title, but, as the F1 paddock assembled in Hungary, he found himself only third in the Drivers’ rankings, five points behind Ferrari’s Hamilton and a mighty 50 points behind his own young teammate.

Russell’s controversial opening lap incident with Hamilton just days earlier in Belgium certainly contributed to this deficit, but the British driver now faces something of a make-or-break moment in his F1 career as he needs to reassert his authority over a resurgent Hamilton and, more importantly, over his teammate, before it becomes a foregone conclusion as to who is clearly the quicker driver. Being behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car is clearly a physical challenge, but it is also very much a mental one, and Antonelli is getting close to outpsyching his older and more experienced rival in the other Mercedes car. All drivers live or die by their ontrack results as the stopwatch never lies, and the key priority is to show that you are consistently quicker than your teammate in the same car.

Prior to Hungary, Antonelli had won six Grands Prix out of the 10 so far this season after also claiming six pole positions, and he was denied a further probable victory at Silverstone three weeks ago due to a late technical failure on his car. As such, Wolff’s glowing praise of his young charger and his admiration for his maturity beyond his tender years, including in post-race technical debriefs, is no surprise.

Hence Russell’s need to improve, and sooner rather than later. But how has he found himself in this position? In short, it’s very much due to their differing driving styles. As evidenced by onboard camera footage, Russell has always demonstrated a smooth, progressive approach to car control, which worked well with the ground-effect cars for the previous few years, whereas this year’s new machines are clearly more suited to Antonelli’s noticeably more aggressive inputs and need to be driven harder to get the best out of them. So, Russell is having to work on amending his driving style, with McLaren’s Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, suggesting that all great drivers have to show an ability to react and adjust to changing circumstances. Very true. Unlike Russell, Hamilton struggled to cope with the ground-effect cars when at Mercedes and then Ferrari and welcomed the arrival of the 2026 ones, which have been reflected in his much improved pace and results.

Aston Martin’s updated car was quicker, but if not significantly so

Turning to Aston Martin, its F1 season to date has been little less than a nightmare despite the arrival from Red Bull of the legendary designer Adrian Newey and other senior personnel plus the acquisition of Honda as its power unit supplier. Come Hungary, its AMR26 car was significantly upgraded for the first time this season, and the Silverstone-based team was hopeful that this would prove to be a significant turning point in its fortunes and ontrack competitiveness. In short, the campaign to date for the outfit could hardly have been any worse, and so all eyes were on the revised cars to assess any potential improvement.

Qualifying is always the ultimate test of a car’s true pace, with sticky tyres, a low fuel load and the power unit set to deliver all it can, and the Aston Martin cars, despite showing some improvement, were still only the 16th and 20th fastest, with their lead driver, Fernando Alonso, 2.6 seconds off the pole time, which is light years in F1 terms. However, a new Honda power unit is due to be introduced at the first race following the summer break, the Dutch Grand Prix in late August, and the team is confident that this will further reduce its lap times.




Looking at the calendar for the second half of the current season, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has removed any prospect of the previously cancelled Bahrain Grand Prix being held there in October, but it has emerged that it will still take place, but at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit near Kuala Lumpur, where Formula 1 last raced in 2017. The event will take place during the first weekend in October, just one week before the Singapore round, and will still be called the Bahrain Grand Prix, as the Gulf state is funding it.

Also, there are significant question marks about whether the season-ending Grands Prix in Qatar on 29th November and Abu Dhabi one week later will be able to take place, and alternative potential venues such as Italy’s Imola are being considered.