Autosport – April 2026 – Autosport (1)

In practice the adjustable front wings, limited to six degrees of articulation, were useless in terms of defeating drag, and only served the purpose of changing aero balance as the fuel load went down. KERS, meanwhile, had been inadequately thought through and at most circuits the additional performance – equivalent to 80bhp, limited to 6.6 seconds per lap – wasn’t worth the weight of the motor, batteries and associated hardware.

Those teams who had committed to KERS, either as a philosophy (BMW) or for pure technical reasons (Ferrari, for instance, buried the hardware deep within its chassis, so it couldn’t easily abandon the concept) therefore had a baked-in disadvantage. And this was all before the effects of the global financial meltdown, which had begun in mid-2007, finally crashed into F1 in December 2008. The money emergency In a complex series of transactions in the mid-2000s, Honda had first acquired a minority stake in the British American Racing team for a reported $180million, then converted it to a full shareholding.

The complication was necessary because British American Tobacco, which had bankrolled the acquisition of the struggling Tyrrell team in 1998 as part of a consortium involving the Brackley-based race car constructor Reynard and Jacques Villeneuve’s manager Craig Pollock, wanted to divest itself of the other minor shareholders first, blaming them for the team’s competitive struggles and substantial debts. In 2001 it brought Prodrive magnate David Richards in to turn the team around, and by 2005 Honda was enthusiastic enough about the state of affairs that it was prepared to buy the team outright.

Thereafter, competitiveness slumped as it installed its own people in key technical positions despite their inexperience in F1 car engineering.

12 Pit + Paddock 15 Opinion: Stuart Codling 16 Opinion: Jake Boxall-Legge 18 Opinion: Pat Symonds F1 PREVIEW 20 All the 2026 cars 22 Bahrain test analysis 30 F1 2026 tech battles 34 Arvid Lindblad shapes up 40 What’s going on at Aston? 47 Team by team guide 71 Calendar and essential info 72 Brawn and the 2009 season 78 Alternative view 80 Great debate SINGLE SEATERS 85 Pit + Paddock 87 Opinion: Rachit Thukral 88 Who to watch in F2 and F3 SPORTSCARS 96 Pit + Paddock 99 Opinion: Gary Watkins 100 Genesis gets ready for WEC RALLYING 111 Special Stage 113 Opinion: Tom Howard 114 Time for a WRC revival?

TOURING CARS 121 Pit + Paddock 122 Brickley’s TCR challenge NATIONAL 130 Pit + Paddock 137 Opinion: Stephen Lickorish 138 What we’re looking forward to FINISHING STRAIGHT 146 What’s on 154 Gear up: product reviews 156 Star cars for sale 158 From the archive: 1974 Italian GP 160 Desert Island Autosport 161 Next month Kevin Turner Chief Editor [email protected] IGNITION MARK SUTTON/F1/GETTY IMAGES Having trouble finding Autosport magazine?

Ask your local newsagent to reserve a copy each month or subscribe at autosportmedia.com/ offer/Autosport 5 APRIL 2026 AUTOSPORT.COM Finally! It feels like the 2026 Formula 1 season has been a topic of discussion forever, but now we are going to see how the new era works and who has nailed it quickest. As ever, drawing any conclusions from pre-season testing is fraught with difficulty. As well as unknown fuel loads, different tyre compounds and the use of ‘lower’ engine modes, the increased levels of electrical power have made it harder than ever to get a true read of how everyone is doing.

Nevertheless, the brave Jake Boxall-Legge was at all the Bahrain testing and he’s looked at lots of data, including the significant longer runs, to come up with a ranking for all 11 teams, with a bit of help from viewing trackside. Take a look at his conclusions on page 22.

As Pat Symonds points out in his expanded column (p18), there’s been a pleasing level of variation on the technical side. It will be interesting to see which solutions hit the ground running and which could have the most potential. One team already looking further into the future is Aston Martin after the first car of its Adrian Newey era hit various problems in testing. Ronald Vording looks into what’s going on at the green team on p40, while Stuart Codling casts the spotlight on this year’s only rookie: Arvid Lindblad (p34).

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: e69d35b2fcc34a36
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 80,668,233 bytes (76.931 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 165
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 280.56 minutes
• Total Words: 56,111
• Total Characters: 340,040
• Average Words per Page: 340.07
• Average Characters per Page: 2060.85

Most Frequent Words

com (222), team (216), autosport (211), car (191), april (186), formula (170), race (161), new (157), time (146), last (142), season (135), one (133), racing (132), cars (127), year (127), red (121), first (117), drivers (116), images (107), bull (99), it’s (99), now (98), motorsport (98), also (93), ferrari (90), two (90), getty (88), championship (88), mercedes (87), world (85), driver (83), get (71), teams (69), technical (69), mclaren (64), laps (64), points (63), series (62), rally (62), start (62), wins (62), back (61), champion (60), titles (60), engine (59), races (58), front (56), place (56), three (55), going (54), fastest (54), title (54), second (53), performance (52), much (52), since (51), power (50), aston (49), end (49), testing (47), well (47), prix (47), british (47), years (47), top (47), alpine (47), good (46), debut (46), march (44), even (44), martin (43), lap (43), really (42), starts (42), work (42), win (41), like (40), evans (40), said (40), that’s (40), another (40), made (39), verstappen (39), engineer (39), brickley (39), around (38), between (38), came (38), test (37), round (37), run (37), still (37), track (37), position (37), development (36), grand (36), won (36), pace (35), director (35), poles (35).

PDF Download