Five weeks is a long time in Formula 1.
When the sport went dark after Japan, the championship looked settled on Mercedes dominance. By the time Miami rolls around, there are new regulations on the grid, team upgrades in transit, a race engineer who has just handed in his notice, and a world champion who looks increasingly like he has one foot out the door. The 2026 Formula 1 season is barely three rounds in and it is already moving faster than the calendar.
Dianne Bortoletto and Ciara Gillan of Formula Live Pulse are back for for Episode 69 of the Away We Go Podcast to pick through what has changed, what is still rumour, and what Miami might actually look like when the lights go out on a sprint weekend.
The regulation changes we’ll see at Miami
Both hosts flagged the new technical rules coming into effect at Miami, even if the full implications remain unclear until cars are on track. The available boost has been capped at 150 kilowatts and the maximum permitted energy recharge has been reduced from eight megajoules to seven. In qualifying, drivers will have access to additional battery power, which the discussion suggested will allow them to run flat out for longer before needing to lift and coast. Whether this meaningfully compresses the field or simply reshuffles the order within it is the question no one can answer before free practice. And with Miami and Canada both being sprint weekends, the 90-minute extended free practice session announced for Miami takes on extra significance. Teams arriving with upgrades, Red Bull among them testing a new rear wing concept, will need every minute of it.
The Verstappen question
The most substantial conversation in the episode centres on what happens to Max Verstappen at Red Bull, and when. The announcement that race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase is departing at the end of 2027 to join McLaren was the catalyst. Verstappen has been quoted previously saying he would leave if Lambiase went. The question Ciara and Di worked through is whether that departure is already decided in Verstappen’s mind, even if unannounced publicly. Ciara’s reading: Verstappen has already made his decision and is not sitting around to see how things play out. Di’s: the writing is on the wall, it is a matter of time. Neither believes Red Bull is finished as a constructor, pointing to how closely they ran the 2025 championship, but both see a driver who is not enjoying himself when results are not coming, and who has said publicly that he does not particularly care how many championships he ends his career with beyond the four he already has.
The driver market speculation that follows is properly speculative, and the episode says so clearly. Verstappen to Mercedes, Russell potentially displaced by Antonelli, Oscar Piastri to Ferrari as a domino, Andrea Stella following the money in the opposite direction. All of it is conjecture, but it is the kind of conjecture that tends to have a thread of truth running through it. The Stella-to-Ferrari rumour in particular: Bortoletto’s argument is simply that the money at Ferrari would be the deciding factor, and she is probably right.
Dorian Pun and the F1 Academy ceiling
The episode’s most energetic exchange is about something that happened away from a race weekend entirely. F1 Academy champion Dorian Pun completed 76 laps in a Mercedes Formula 1 car, the first woman to drive a Mercedes in competition specification. Neither host underplayed it. What followed was a sharp conversation about whether the pathway from F1 Academy to the Formula 1 grid is genuinely progressing or still largely symbolic. Gillan made the point that F1 Academy cars should be at minimum F3 specification. Bortoletto raised the physical argument in reverse: that women’s smaller, lighter builds could theoretically be an advantage in a car where every kilogram costs tenths per lap, if the pathway exists to develop the endurance and strength for those G-forces. The cost of the junior pathway came up too: the estimate from David Coulthard that a family would need to invest $8 million to take a driver from karting through to Formula 1 is a structural problem that affects women disproportionately, given the lower volume of commercial backing available at junior levels.
What Miami might produce
Ferrari are bringing upgrades. Mercedes are not, not until Canada. Red Bull tested the Macarena wing concept. McLaren’s hand is unclear. Going in blind was how both hosts described the prediction problem, which is exactly how sprint weekends at the start of a mid-season resumption tend to feel. Bortoletto’s pick: Lewis Hamilton winning Miami, first race win in a Ferrari, possibly with extra motivation. It is an audacious call. Get your predictions in at awaywegopodcast.com before the sprint.
Alongside the racing, Formula Live Pulse has shipped new post-session analytics during the break: super-clipping speed loss data by driver and duration, and lift-and-coast stats, both relevant to the regulation changes landing this weekend. The app’s free seven-day trial requires no credit card. The cost after that is the price of a coffee a month.
The Formula 1 break is over. Whether it ends five weeks of clarity or five weeks of chaos brewing beneath the surface is what Miami will start to answer.