The 2026 F1 season started on March 7th. Going into the season, fans saw the dominant Max Verstappen, who races for Redbull and dominated the 2023 and 2024 season, get beaten by Lando Norris who races for McLaren and who secured his first F1 championship victory in the 2025 season. Beginning the 2026 season, many expected the top names to be McLaren and Redbull once again, just like previous seasons, with Norris and Verstappen dominating the competition.
However, despite the expectations from fans, two teams have risen above those teams. Most notably, Mercedes and Ferrari have taken the top 4 spots in both China and Australia, where the first two races were held. Mercedes secured the top places both times. Seven time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who transferred from Mercedes to sign with Ferrari in the 2025 season performed well as well. In the 2025 season, he had performed generally poorly in comparison to his previous record, however, this season he has performed much better, securing fourth and third in the Australian and Chinese Grand Prix respectively.
Norris and Verstappen both performed poorly considering their previous victories, with Norris and Verstappen placing 5th and 6th in the Australian Grand Prix respectively and neither finishing in the Chinese Grand Prix. This performance is disappointing to say the least, and it is fair to say that their cars are looking much slower than last year.
Based on the past two races it looks like Mercades and Ferrari’s engineers have made an engineering breakthrough. These cars are the fastest in the grid and by far. Their success isn’t only due to their fast cars though. There has been a huge improvement in the performance of Mercedes second year driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli. George Russell is also performing well like always. On the other side of the coin, Hamilton looks like he is reviving his career. Last year critics said that he was too old to be performing in F1. But this year, he has proved those haters wrong. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari’s ace driver, has also looked top class in the first 2 Grand Prix.
Taking this all into account these are our predictions for the F1 drivers and constructors cup.
