Can Miami really be the start of a 'new' F1 season?

Ferrari chief Fred Vasseur was the first to call Miami the start of a new championship. Perhaps it was his way of managing expectations, being at pains to point out that the form table at the season opener in Australia would just be an early snapshot. A starting point for teams to build on as they master the complex 2026 regulations and not a final judgement the tifosi should crucify the Maranello squad for in case it got things wrong.

Ferrari, as it turns out, made a promising start to 2026, but Vasseur's point still stands. It could all be for nothing if the men and women in red at the factory don't back up all that hard work with an aggressive development programme throughout the year. Not every team has confirmed as much, but after the cancellations of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia it stands to reason that every single one has now earmarked Miami as 'the Big Red One' on the calendar, the first major opportunity to upgrade their 2026 machinery.

Could Mercedes be dethroned already as rivals bring "completely new cars"?

Could Mercedes' reign really be over after just three race weekends? Given the gulf of performance it had in hand in Australia, China and Japan, that idea seems fanciful, with Mercedes' narrowest of three victory margins still a healthy 13 seconds in Suzuka.

But in the hands of Oscar Piastri, McLaren did seem a lot closer as it started figuring out its Mercedes customer engine. Having qualified three tenths off polesitter Kimi Antonelli, Piastri jumped into the lead at the start and could have been closer to an upset without an unlucky timing of the safety car.

The reigning champion squad is not hiding away from Miami as a pivotal weekend for its 2026 fortunes. Speaking to select media at its Woking headquarters, including Autosport, team principal Andrea Stella said McLaren aims to roll out a "completely new car" across the events in Florida and subsequently in Montreal at the end of the month of May.

"In our intent there was always the idea to deliver a completely new car especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view for the North American races," Stella explained. "I could say that across Miami and Canada we will see an entirely new MCL40 again."

Both Ferrari and McLaren have declared major upgrade packages to be delivered in Miami

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

F1 teams are chasing a moving target as Mercedes won't have twiddled its thumbs either over the past five weeks. But Stella seemed confident that McLaren, which has an impressive track record regarding in-season car development, can be "slightly more competitive MCL40 in Miami and then in Canada".

The fight will be at least as fierce in what has been a finely poised midfield battle. Red Bull is one team that is in urgent need of an overhaul to its difficult to balance 2026 car, languishing in sixth at this stage. Meanwhile, the midfield which has been somewhat surprisingly led by Haas ahead of Alpine, with Racing Bulls closely shadowing the parent team in seventh.

Speaking about Racing Bulls' upgrade programme earlier this month, team principal Alan Permane said the squad had pushed a package planned for Bahrain to Miami, with another hit coming in Canada. "I'm very confident that we can keep up, if not do better than the other midfield teams," he said. "I think we are starting from a little further back than some of them. We already had a good step from Bahrain [testing] to Melbourne. We've got another good step coming in the next race and then another good step from Montreal."

The power unit curveball

F1 teams may have had a lot of time on their hands to set themselves up for the next phase of the championship, but a package of refinements voted through last week to improve the troubled launch of the 2026 power unit regulations means there has been a lot of rethinking over the past week on how to run the new hybrids.

The maximum harvesting limit has been brought down from eight to seven megajoules, while teams can now harvest the full 350kW limit while "super clipping" on full throttle. There will also be a trial for a new emergency mode at the start to help cars get off the line, as a safety measure.

Any change to the sporting regulations around power unit usage means starting from near zero again with car set-up. But the power of modern simulation tools has made teams confident that a lot of that work can be done in advance, so on the actual race weekend calibrating the new upgrades appears to become a much bigger ticket item than adjusting to the rule tweaks themselves.

The rule tweaks will be tested for the first time in Miami

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

"Like we have seen before, to a certain extent we will be able to predict through simulations the behaviour of the power unit once we apply the new regulations," Stella indicated. "At the same time, offline simulations or even running these regulations in the simulator doesn't mean that you can cover all the possible scenarios. 

"You definitely have to be quite forward thinking in terms of considering everything that can happen and make sure that the way in which you exploit the power unit is the most optimal. But I'm quite confident that to a certain extent we can achieve this with the current simulations."

Tying this all together within the compressed framework of a sprint weekend is a daunting challenge, but in order to give teams more time to make the necessary adjustments, the FIA has tweaked the format for Miami. Friday's sole practice session has been extended from 60 to 90 minutes before teams head into sprint qualifying in the afternoon.

Miami's sprint weekend schedule provides an extra headache for teams to get up to speed with upgrades and rule changes

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images