Ferrari will use its ADUO-permitted upgrade on its engine for the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix, while also bringing aerodynamic updates and track-specific parts for its home round.
Following reliability checks and the announcement of Ferrari being over 4% behind on the Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) benchmark – and therefore permitted to two upgrades this season – the Italian squad has moved to immediately update its power unit.
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#bull #permitted

A top-three finish in a Formula 1 Sprint is typically a solid platform to build on, but for Lando Norris, stepping out of the car at Zandvoort brought a stark reality check.
Despite securing third place and banking valuable championship points in the 2026 Dutch Grand Prix Sprint, Norris bypassed the usual post-session pleasantries to deliver an unvarnished diagnosis of McLaren's current machinery. For all the team's aerodynamic strides, the twisty Dutch circuit has laid bare a critical, ongoing limitation in the car's operating envelope: a glaring deficit in slow-speed corners.
When quizzed after the Sprint about whether tyre balance on the medium compound had hindered his run, Norris was quick to dismiss surface-level excuses.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Norris made it clear that the shortfall was rooted in pure mechanical and aerodynamic fundamentals rather than rubber management.
"Yeah, not a bad result, not the best," Norris admitted. "It would have been nice to be a little bit faster today… I don't think it was the tyres, just real race pace. We're not quick enough, and we have some work to do".

#aerodynamic #despite #grand

Formula 1's competitive order was shaken up in 2026 with the roll out of sweeping new regulations across the chassis, aerodynamics and power units. Mercedes came out on top, with it now leading the constructors' standings and Kimi Antonelli is on top in the drivers' championship.
But the team hasn't been bulletproof this year, and strong performances from drivers up and down the grid have shown that there's still a lot at stake in F1 2026. Here, we look back on some of the best drives of the year so far, which show that a great driver can still make a difference in F1 2026.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari crosses the finish line
The auguries for Ferrari success in Barcelona were not great from FP1 onwards – a session Lewis Hamilton missed, on account of having to give his car to Dino Beganovic for one of the seasonal 'rookie runs', and in which Charles Leclerc was third fastest, albeit half a second off the pacesetting Mercedes of George Russell. All this on a weekend in which Ferrari added yet another upgrade package.
Hamilton was then over a second off the absolute pace in a disappointing FP2, complaining volubly about terrible tyre degradation. It's becoming evident in 2026 that, owing to the subtleties of operating the new power units, missing a session is more disadvantageous than it used to be, even at tracks such as this one, which a veteran of Hamilton's calibre could lap blindfolded.

#units #great

Utah endurance cyclist Matthew Lefthand spent 10 nights in an altitude tent — an enclosed canopy over his bed which lowers oxygen levels to simulate high-altitude environments — before attempting to become the fastest rider ever to cover 200 miles on a standard upright bicycle.
But that was only one aspect of his meticulous preparation that included months of aerodynamic testing, equipment optimization, nutritions strategies and training to sustain roughly 200 grams of carbohydrates per hour during the effort.
Lefthand rides at about 4,400 feet elevation near his South Ogden home, but traveled to Colorado late last month for the record attempt at 7,700 feet, where there is less air resistance.
Endurance cyclist Matthew Lefthand of South Ogden, Utah, pictured here on July 26, 2026, became the first rider in history to average more than 30 miles per hour over 200 miles on a certified road course using a standard, upright bicycle. This single performance included six World Ultracycling ***** ociation (WUCA) and Guinness World Records on a 61-mile stretch on Highway 17 in Colorado's San Luis Valley. | Bailey Lefthand
On July 29, he became the first rider in history to average more than 30 mph over 200 miles on a certified road course using a standard upright bike, according to the World Ultra Cycling ***** ociation. He averaged 30.11 mph riding an aerodynamic time trial bike back and forth over a 61-mile, pancake-flat stretch of Highway 17 in the San Luis Valley in 6:38:31.

#upright #utah

Cristiano Ronaldo posted two photos to his personal Instagram account this week captioned simply "My toys," and unlike most athlete garage flexes, the hardware in the frame actually holds up to scrutiny. The images, viewed directly on his verified account, show him perched on the fender of a low red Ferrari inside what looks less like a garage and more like a boutique dealership: polished stone walls, gallery-style track lighting, glass panels overlooking greenery, and cars parked on what appear to be rotating display turntables. It's built to be looked at, so let's actually look at it.
View the original "My toys" post on Cristiano Ronaldo's Instagram
Strip away the sunglasses-and-white-shirt theater and the hardware tells its own story. In the foreground of both shots sits a low, wide Ferrari with a sharply creased nose, integrated splitter, and shield badge consistent with the styling language of Maranello's hybrid hypercar flagship. Parked nose to tail with it is a second Ferrari that has no windshield at all, a dead giveaway for the Monza SP1 or SP2, Ferrari's "Icona" series barchetta. Ferrari's own spec sheet credits the Monza with 810 metric horsepower from a V12 borrowed directly from the 812 Superfast, and a "virtual wind shield" aero channel that redirects airflow over the driver's head instead of putting glass in front of their face.
Wedged in front of both Ferraris is a deep maroon Bugatti wearing the brand's oval "EB" badge and the round quad headlamps that mark it as one of the Veyron-generation cars rather than the sharper-edged Chiron that replaced it in 2016. ******* uming it's the roofless Grand Sport Vitesse the exposed targa panel suggests, that's the variant Bugatti's own press materials credit with a 408.84 km/h (254 mph) top speed set with the roof removed, a record for an open-top production car that stood specifically because Bugatti engineered the Vitesse's structure to stay rigid at that speed without a fixed roof tying the chassis together.
Further back, a black coupe wearing a towering, strut-mounted rear wing lines up with the unmistakable silhouette of a McLaren Senna, the track-focused hypercar McLaren built in a limited run of 500 examples, each hand-assembled over roughly 300 hours. McLaren's own figures put the Senna at 789 horsepower from a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, a 335 km/h (208 mph) top speed, and a 2.8-second run to 62 mph, with that enormous wing doing real aerodynamic work rather than just looking angry. A handful of other cars are visible deeper in the frame, including a pale, low-slung shape and a boxier silhouette, but neither is clear enough in the photos to identify with confidence.

#monza #bugatti

Riders at the Tour de France Femmes were subject to extra clothing checks before Tuesday's stage following claims some could be using extra padding in their bras to seek an aerodynamic advantage.
A communique from race organizers confirmed the checks after Dutch outlet Wielerflits reported some teams had raised concerns that padded bras could smooth the airflow around the body for the stage four time trial.
"Riders must be to the final checks before the race (bikes and outfit) no later than 10 minutes before their respective start time," the communique said.
"Particular attention will be paid to compliance with article 1.3.032 of the UCI regulations, including non-essential elements and clothing or other items/accessories worn by a rider (including but not limited to helmets, glasses, shoes or in-race communication devices) which could modify riders' morphology."
The UCI defines non-essential elements as "any element which does not have a purpose which is exclusively of clothing or protection, or which is not strictly necessary for the functionality of the clothing, or other item, or accessory".

#clothing

IndyCar has unwrapped its highly anticipated next-generation race car, the Dallara IR-28, with the new car scheduled to make its racing debut at the start of the 2028 season.
The brand-new chassis and aero pack replaces the long-serving Dallara DW12 chassis that has been running around the series since 2012-it's basically vintage at this point.
The redesign focused on reducing weight, increasing driver safety, and fundamentally changing the aerodynamics to maximize wheel-to-wheel overtaking opportunities. IndyCar people openly say that the IR-28 is engineered to eclipse current lap times and actively smash long-standing track records-including Arie Luyendyk's legendary 236.9 mph qualifying average set at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1996.
Rather than chasing pure downforce at the expense of the chasing pack, the IR-28's aerodynamic furniture has been purpose-built from day one to optimize the vehicle's wake.
Key design and bodywork highlights include:

#dallara

Call it a B-spec, call it a heavily revised AMR26, call it whatever you want – what Aston Martin rolled out at the Hungaroring for the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix is, by any reasonable engineering standard, a new Formula 1 car. Sixteen separate components were declared upgraded, mechanics broke FIA curfew to get both cars fitted in time, and the team reportedly flew spare parts to Budapest just to guarantee Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll could each run the full package. That is not a development update. That is a rebuild.
The backstory is by now well-documented and not particularly flattering. Adrian Newey didn't get serious work underway on the AMR26 until mid-March 2025, and the wind tunnel didn't see a model until mid-April – three months behind rivals who were already deep into the new regulatory cycle. The car that arrived at pre-season testing in Barcelona was overweight, paddock insiders estimated by somewhere between 10 and 15 kilograms, maybe more, and the Honda power unit was generating vibrations severe enough to rattle onboard cameras loose and leave Alonso and Stroll visibly fighting the steering wheel.
At the Australian opener, Alonso qualified 2.462 seconds off the pace. Both cars retired when the vibrations damaged the battery systems. It went largely sideways from there – one point across the opening ten rounds, tenth of eleven teams in the constructors' standings, behind only the expansion Cadillac outfit.
The nose is the clearest sign of how deep the changes go. Where the original AMR26 carried a wide, blunt front structure, the Hungary version features a noticeably thinner, more tapered profile – the kind of slender nose Newey has favoured since his early Red Bull years. That change alone cascades through the entire front end: new uprights, revised aerodynamic ducting, changed actuator mounting, and a completely reworked front wing with reshaped endplates. Per Newey, the forward section of the chassis was lightened to the point that it required a full re-homologation and fresh crash testing – which, depending on your definition, crosses the threshold from upgrade to new car.
Newey himself occupies both sides of that argument simultaneously. "The main structural elements remain the same – the chassis and gearbox architecture don't fundamentally change – but we've taken weight out of both, which required re-homologating and crash testing the forward chassis," he said. So: same architecture, new crash test. Make of that what you will.

#call #stroll

The 2026 Formula 1 season has been incredibly brutal for Aston Martin. After tumbling down the competitive order and fighting a severely overweight and aerodynamically flawed chassis, the Silverstone-based squad is finally hitting the reset ****** on.
As the paddock sets up for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the FIA has released the official car presentation documents, and Aston Martin’s submission is nothing short of staggering. The team has declared a massive 16-component upgrade package. This isn’t a simple front wing tweak—this is effectively the debut of the highly anticipated B-spec AMR26.
The official FIA document reveals that nearly every aerodynamic surface on the car has been heavily revised. Unsurprisingly, almost all of the 16 changes are primarily focused on increasing “local load” to conquer the twisty, downforce-heavy layout of the Hungaroring.
The aggressive changes start right at the front of the car. Aston Martin has introduced a completely new, “longer, thinner nose” ****** embly that marries to a highly revised front wing featuring redistributed chord profiles and updated endplate diveplanes. Moving rearward, the team has fundamentally redesigned the car’s underbody.
The FIA document confirms that “all of the permitted surfaces of the floor” have been changed. This includes heavily updated leading-edge floor fences, a highly modified floor edge just ahead of the rear tires, and a completely reworked diffuser.

#martin #highly #official #document

Cadillac Formula 1 driver Sergio Perez believes Aston Martin's significant car update at this weekend's Hungarian GP will close the gap with his team.
Aston Martin has struggled massively with its AMR26, and with engine partner Honda also facing a steep development curve, the team decided to hold back its upgrades until it could bring enough performance to the car to lift it from the back of the grid.
That moment has now arrived in Budapest, with the AMR26 getting a facelift including a full aerodynamic overhaul and a weight reduction.
Paddock rumours vary on just how much of a laptime boost Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will get out of their new package, with some observers expecting the AMR to gain over two seconds per lap.
That type of gain will be necessary to threaten Cadillac and get off the last row of the grid. The fastest Cadillac was 1.6 seconds quicker in qualifying in Silverstone and 2.4s up in Belgium, although Honda's lack of power and deployment exaggerated that gap. In Barcelona and Spielberg, Aston Martin's deficit was just over a second, with the caveat that Cadillac has since also added performance to its MAC-26.

#team

The 2026 season has been an unmitigated disaster for Red Bull Racing, but the British Grand Prix may have officially pushed Max Verstappen to his breaking point.
After suffering a premature DNF just six laps into the race at Silverstone, the reigning multi-time world champion did not hold back in his post-race media duties. While speaking with SkySports F1, Verstappen delivered a brutally honest ******* sment of his machinery, citing not only a severe lack of pace but a terrifying mechanical flaw that actively put him in danger.
Here is why the former championship juggernaut is completely fed up.
Silverstone is one of the fastest, most aerodynamically demanding circuits on the Formula 1 calendar. Relying on massive downforce to navigate corners like Copse and Maggotts, a fully functioning rear wing is non-negotiable for driver safety.
But according to Verstappen, his Red Bull was actively failing to re-engage its downforce after the Drag Reduction System (DRS) was deployed.

Carlos Sainz pulled into parc fermé at Silverstone having crossed the line 12th, more than four seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc, with his teammate Alexander Albon not even making the finish. It was not a good Sunday. What followed in the media pen was worse.
Speaking to reporters after the British Grand Prix, Sainz didn't reach for diplomatic language.
"Patience doesn't run out, but I'm disgusted and worried," he said via Marca. "Honestly, I'm worried. It's the first time I've clearly seen that the car isn't being developed.
"Each time it's getting closer to the weight… and the gap is increasing. There's no aerodynamic improvement and it's starting to worry us.
"I'm going to the factory, I'm going to the simulator, and I'm going to have meetings with the team. We'll keep working to improve the situation, even though it's clear we're carrying this bad situation with us."

Kimi Antonelli left Silverstone empty-handed after suffering a mechanical failure during the British Grand Prix - but before that he had been firmly in contention for victory.
Having delayed his pitstop by 10 laps compared to Charles Leclerc, the Mercedes Formula 1 driver was chasing down the Ferrari when an aerodynamic component on the front-left corner of his car broke after he attacked the kerbs on the exit of Copse.
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As a result, Antonelli lost several positions and Mercedes even considered retiring the car. Instead, the Italian continued to the finish, crossing the line ninth before being demoted to 16th by a five-second penalty for repeated track limits violations.

For years, NASCAR’s biggest battles played out on pit road, atop the pit box and behind the wheel.
Brad Keselowski believes the sport’s most important competition has moved somewhere else.
Speaking Friday at Chicagoland Speedway, the RFK Racing co-owner offered one of the most revealing ******* sments yet of why Toyota has dominated the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, arguing the manufacturer’s greatest advantage isn’t horsepower or aerodynamics. It’s organizational philosophy.
Toyota teams have won 11 of the season’s first 18 races entering Chicagoland. Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing have combined to establish themselves as the benchmark in the Cup garage, and Keselowski says that success didn’t happen by accident.
Instead, he believes Toyota found a formula the rest of the industry has yet to duplicate.

Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll propped up the field in sprint qualifying at Silverstone on Saturday, finishing 21st and 22nd respectively – more than 3.5 seconds adrift of Lewis Hamilton‘s pole-setting Ferrari. For most teams, that would be a crisis. For Aston Martin right now, it was almost beside the point.
Adrian Newey spoke to Sky Sports F1 on the sprint grid and made no attempt to dress up where the team stands. The AMR26 has scored a single championship point across eight rounds in 2026, and the car that arrived at Silverstone is not the car the team believes it can build. Newey’s message was straightforward: don’t judge us yet. “A first phase of upgrades will arrive for Hungary and another one along with the Honda engine in Zandvoort,” he said.
The package Newey has been building toward is substantial. Per his own description to Sky Sports, the team has re-homologated and crash-tested a revised forward chassis after extracting meaningful weight from it, developed a new nose, and substantially reworked the aerodynamic surfaces. The rear suspension has been revised, though the core structure – gearbox architecture and chassis fundamentals – stays in place. Newey described it as “a big aerodynamic package coupled with significant weight reduction.”
One race later at Zandvoort, Honda brings its sole permitted mid-season power unit upgrade, targeting combustion chamber and pre-chamber improvements according to Honda’s general trackside manager Shintaro Orihara. The FIA’s ADUO regulations allow Honda two upgrades this season, and the Zandvoort unit represents their only mid-season token.
The decision to bank everything on a single large Hungary package rather than drip-feed incremental updates was, in Newey’s words, “painful but correct.” While that call has left Aston Martin getting eclipsed even by Cadillac – a team that didn’t exist in F1 twelve months ago – he argues the long-term logic holds.

Silverstone has historically been revered as the ultimate aerodynamic testing ground—a flowing, high-speed ribbon of the British GP asphalt that rewards massive downforce and supreme cornering bravery. But as the Formula 1 paddock sets up in Northamptonshire, the engineering conversation has entirely shifted from downforce levels to electrical survival.
Under the 2026 engine regulations, which mandate a massive 50 percent power reliance on the electrical hybrid system, the Circuit de Silverstone is poised to expose a glaring flaw in the new power units. A specific, iconic sector of the track is about to completely drain the cars of their electrical energy, setting the stage for a brutal weekend of energy management.
The core issue stems from how the 2026 power units generate their electrical momentum. With the complex MGU-H entirely removed from the rulebook, the cars must now rely exclusively on the MGU-K recovering kinetic energy during heavy braking zones.
If you look at the track map of Silverstone, the sequence from Turn 7 (Luffield) all the way through to Turn 15 (Stowe) presents an absolute worst-case scenario for that kinetic recovery. This sweeping sector takes roughly 35 to 40 seconds to complete and features absolutely no heavy braking.
Drivers will blast out of Luffield, sweep through Copse, and thread the needle through the legendary Maggotts, Becketts, and Chapel complex, relying almost entirely on throttle control and aerodynamic grip.

Let’s be real for a second—remember when Aston Martin looked like absolute world-beaters back in 2023? Fernando Alonso was racking up podiums, the hype train was running at full steam, and it felt like the Silverstone squad had finally cracked the code. Fast forward to 2026, and that dream has turned into a bit of a nightmare. The team has been struggling massively under the new regulations, but Lance Stroll just dropped some heavy hints that the entire garage is holding its breath for one man to save the day.
According to a tweet from F1 commentator Nachez, which highlights a report from Shiga Sports **** an, Stroll made some incredibly telling comments while in Barcelona. It sounds like Aston Martin is throwing all their eggs into the Adrian Newey basket, and honestly, can you blame them?
We all know Newey is the absolute undisputed aerodynamic wizard of the F1 paddock, having won a ridiculous number of championships during his time at Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull. When he jumped ship to become Aston Martin’s technical boss for 2026, the expectations naturally skyrocketed.
Stroll didn’t hold back when talking about his new boss, bluntly stating, “Newey is the most successful person in F1 history. That’s why the entire team is eagerly awaiting this upgrade.”
It’s pretty rare to hear a driver admit so openly that the current car is basically just a high-speed waiting room for a specific engineer’s updates to arrive. But considering the AMR26 has been an absolute handful this season, it makes perfect sense that the garage is desperate for Newey to finally wave his magic wand.

Teams around F1 are making it known that Ferrari is on the verge of becoming a powerhouse in terms of pace if they fix one part of their car.
Typically, it is the aerodynamics of a car that make or break it, but in the 2026 regulation cycle, it is mostly about the new power units.
Mercedes has been the cream of the crop thus far, having unstoppable race pace that has led them to the top of the F1 standings.
However, Ferrari has been the second-fastest team overall, despite the power unit not being as good as Mercedes’.
What Ferrari lacks in raw engine power, it makes up for with fantastic cornering and agility, traits the car has tended to have outside Italy.

Just hours after Lewis Hamilton brutally exposed Ferrari’s massive 10-month engine deficit, Maranello is aggressively firing back with the only ammunition they currently have: a massive, season-defining aerodynamic overhaul. If the Scuderia cannot match the raw horsepower of Red Bull and Mercedes on the long straights of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya next week, they are attempting to claw back that lap time entirely through the corners.
The stakes for this upcoming Spanish Grand Prix are absolutely astronomical. According to the latest leaks (via Autoracer) from the paddock, Ferrari rolls into Spain calling this the make-or-break GP of the season.
To survive the high-speed aerodynamic demands of Barcelona and compensate for its lagging power unit, Ferrari is arriving armed with a fully revamped front wing and its second major 2026 upgrade.
According to technical breakdowns circulating from Italian outlets like La Gazzetta Ferrari, the SF-26 is about to undergo a significant physical transformation. Here is the exact breakdown of the hardware hitting the track next Friday:
The team is introducing a full front wing evolution.