My Predictions for 2026 F1 Season
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What is arguably the biggest change to the technical regulations makes it extremely difficult to make any evidence-based predictions about the upcoming F1 season.
Last year, I scored 68.000% of available points in the constructors’ championship predictions, and 41.905% in the drivers’, in accordance with the point system shown below.
Anything close to these numbers this year would be a positive surprise.
In this blog post, I will show my predictions about where each team and driver will finish this season, with 40% and 30% of scoring percentage set as a realistic goal for constructors’ and drivers’ respectively.
Gap between actual position and predicted position | Points |
0 | 5 |
1 | 4 |
2 | 3 |
3 | 2 |
4 | 1 |
* This blog post is based on the predictions I made before the start of the official ‘shakedown’ in Spain despite being published now.
CONSTRUCTORS’ CHAMPIONSHIP
Predicted Position | Position Change from Last Season | Team | Drivers | |
1 | 0 | McLaren-Mercedes | Norris | Piastri |
2 | 0 | Mercedes | Russell | Antonelli |
3 | +1 | Ferrari | Leclerc | Hamilton |
4 | -1 | Red Bull-RBPT Ford | Verstappen | Hadjar |
5 | +2 | Aston Martin-Honda | Alonso | Stroll |
6 | +4 | Alpine-Mercedes | Gasly | Colapinto |
7 | -2 | Williams-Mercedes | Sainz | Albon |
8 | 0 | Haas-Ferrari | Ocon | Bearman |
9 | -3 | Racing Bulls-RBPT Ford | Lawson | Lindblad |
10 | -1 | Audi | Hulkenberg | Bortoleto |
11 | - | Cadillac-Ferrari | Perez | Bottas |
In making these predictions, I trusted the rumour that Mercedes and Red Bull-Ford had found some loophole in the regulations regarding the compression ratio in the ICE.
I predict McLaren’s 3rd consecutive title win, as they started focusing on the R&D for 2026 early last year and have what is rumoured to be the strongest PU in the field, and I put Mercedes in P2.
I placed Ferrari in 3rd not just because of their history of dealing with the new regulations in 2022 relatively well, but also because I expect Ferrari’s PU to be generally better than RBPT’s, who is designing and building their in-house PU for the first time.
Now I hear the rumour that RBPT found the loophole that Mercedes did but didn’t manage to exploit it, but I didn’t know that at the time of making these predictions, so I thought their PU would perform better than that of Honda, which explains why I put Red Bull above Aston Martin.
The decision to put Alpine in P6 above Williams in P7 wasn’t easy to make.
Alpine gave up on 2025 to focus on their development for this year, and Willilams under the leadership of James Vowles performed way better than I expected last season to finish 5th in the constructors’, which made me think they’d continue to make steps forward in 2026 and onwards.
All I could do was to throw a virtual dice in my mind as to which team would finish ahead of the other.
Conversely, it was pretty easy to predict which 2 teams would finish last in 2026.
My prediction is that Audi, who runs Audi’s very first Formula 1 power unit, and Cadillac, who is literally a new team built from scratch, would spend the majority of the season in the back of the field.
I put Haas and VCARB in P8 and P9 respectively, but I fear I may have made the same mistake as last year by terribly underestimating VCARB’s performance.
We’ll see if that’s the case.
DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP
Predicted Position | Position Change from Last Season | Driver | Team |
1 | +2 | Piastri | McLaren-Mercedes |
2 | +2 | Russell | Mercedes |
3 | -2 | Norris | McLaren-Mercedes |
4 | +3 | Antonelli | Mercedes |
5 | +1 | Hamilton | Ferrari |
6 | -4 | Verstappen | Red Bull-RBPT Ford |
7 | -2 | Leclerc | Ferrari |
8 | +4 | Hadjar | Red Bull-RBPT Ford |
9 | +1 | Alonso | Aston Martin-Honda |
10 | +8 | Gasly | Alpine-Mercedes |
11 | +5 | Stroll | Aston Martin-Honda |
12 | -3 | Sainz | Williams-Mercedes |
13 | +7 | Colapinto | Alpine-Mercedes |
14 | -6 | Albon | Williams-Mercedes |
15 | 0 | Ocon | Haas-Ferrari |
16 | -3 | Bearman | Haas-Ferrari |
17 | -4 | Hulkenberg | Audi |
18 | -4 | Lawson | Racing Bulls-RBPT Ford |
19 | - | Lindblad | Racing Bulls-RBPT Ford |
20 | -1 | Bortoleto | Audi |
21 | - | Bottas | Cadillac-Ferrari |
22 | - | Perez | Cadillac-Ferrari |
I dare to be different from many fans and predict that George Russell won’t win the drivers’ championship.
My (hopeful) prediction is that Oscar Piastri, who led the fight for the championship longer than any other driver in 2025 only to miss out on it as a result of an underwhelming final stages of the season, will come out on top of the four-way fight involving the drivers for Mercedes and McLaren.
Fighting for P3 in the constructors’, in my predictions, are Ferrari and Red Bull, with Hamilton having what would feel like the polar opposite of the disastrous 2025 season, beating his teammate and Max Verstappen for P5 in the drivers’.
Albon’s explanation as to why Red Bull cars have traditionally been perceived as difficult for any of Max’s teammates is now widely known: Max is like someone who can use a computer with the maximum mouse sensitivity, with which ordinary people would struggle terribly and allow the pointer to fly around on the screen.
The upgrades to the car, naturally, would be designed to allow Max to maximize his ‘productivity’ with that computer, so it only gets more and more difficult for his teammate to use.
Perez, however, showed at the beginning of 2022 that there could be a fighting chance for Max’s teammate at the start of a new regulation cycle, where the cars are not too well-developed.
That’s why only 1 driver separates Max and his teammate in this year’s predictions, unlike last year where it was 5.
That means both drivers for Aston Martin-Honda had to be placed below the second Red Bull driver in my predicted standings.
Looking at this prediction table, I fear I may have placed Colapinto a bit too low.
I remember him showing similar pace to Gasly at the end of last year, so I may have cost myself some points here.
Have I done the same with Bortoleto?
I don’t think Audi would beat anyone but Cadillac in the constructors’, but if Hulkenberg can beat both VCARB drivers, there should be no reason Bortoleto can’t do the same – although that’d contradict with my constructors’ predictions where I put VCARB ahead of Audi in P10.
I’m writing this piece on the first day of Bahrain test 2 (which is effectively pre-season test 3).
Aston Martin-Honda is having a horrible time, and Red Bull-Ford is showing incredible reliability and performance for a new PU manufacturer.
I sincerely hope Aston Martin finds success with its in-season development so that I can score a decent amount of points with them in my predictions!