Ferrari’s F1 team principal, Fred Vasseur, believes that the Miami Grand Prix in May will mark the start of a “new championship,” as teams “are pushing themselves to the limit” to seize the first real opportunity to debut significant upgrades.
Some teams already introduced upgrades gradually at last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, but most of the frontrunners are saving their best for the Miami Open race on the first weekend of May. In some cases, they were forced to do so by the cancellation of the April races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia due to the US-Israeli conflict with Iran.
Vasseur had long indicated that the season opener in Australia would only be the starting point of a long battle, and that his team’s passionate fans shouldn’t get too excited or discouraged by the initial picture presented in the first qualifying session of 2026.
The Maranello-based team, which has already shown several signs of an innovative approach with its first aerodynamic devices—including a much-publicized rotating rear wing—is one of the teams expected to bring a significant upgrade package to the Florida race.
“Everyone will bring new things to Miami, they’ll have time to work on the software, and that’s why I said a new championship will begin,” Vasseur told Sky Italia in Japan. “We won’t be the only ones working between Japan and Miami, so we need to pay attention to that. It’s true, however, that we have a month available, and that’s not typical in Formula 1. Every team on the grid is pushing hard to improve, and there will be a step forward for everyone; we’ll see how things develop.”
“We need to keep scoring a lot of points, get on the podium, and stay close to Mercedes. We’ll have to stay close in the standings. The pace of development in the championship will be very high, so we’ll have to keep pushing ourselves to the limit during these months to accumulate points and results.”
When asked by Motorsport.com if he viewed the Miami weekend in the same way, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff replied: “Yes, it’s exciting. I think perhaps we would have liked this to continue in the two Middle Eastern races so we could score a few more points, but I agree.”
“The teams have learned, the drivers are starting to learn how to optimize these systems to their advantage, and today we saw the first indication [after the Suzuka race]. What seemed like a resounding success in the first two races isn’t the case for us, and we’ve always warned [that this would happen].”
“For me, Miami is also going to be a new beginning. How will the upgrades that others are bringing work? How have we optimized all the other systems? It’s going to be exciting.”
The reigning world champion, McLaren, is also preparing its first set of upgrades, which were always planned for Miami regardless of what happened in the Middle East. The team has a history of using the US Grand Prix weekend as a springboard to success, as the race proved to be a key turning point in 2023, when the Woking-based team gradually worked its way to the front of the grid.
“For me, Miami is also going to be a new beginning. How will the upgrades that others are bringing work? How have we optimized all the other systems? It’s going to be exciting.”
The reigning world champion, McLaren, is also preparing its first set of upgrades, which were always planned for Miami regardless of what happened in the Middle East. The team has a history of using the US Grand Prix weekend as a springboard to success, as the race was a key turning point in 2023, when the Woking-based team gradually worked its way to the front of the grid.”
“For me, Miami is also going to be a new beginning.” But unlike then, all their direct rivals will now be doing the same, so McLaren team principal Andrea Stella doesn’t expect the team to suddenly make a huge leap forward compared to Mercedes and Ferrari.
“There are good things in the development, so I expect the car to improve significantly in the coming races, especially from Miami onwards,” Stella said in China. “But obviously, we’ll have to see what the development pace is for the other teams, because all the cars will be improving. So, hopefully, as we were able to do in 2023, we’re going to have a faster development pace than our competitors.”
The leading team most in need of improvements is Red Bull, which looked completely lost in Japan with a difficult-to-handle RB22 that seems to suffer from fundamental flaws that make it hard to set up and get grip.
How confident is the team that it can use April to overcome its problems? “We’re confident we’ll use this break to take a big step forward,” replied team principal Laurent Mekies. “We need time to thoroughly analyze our data, to simulate what we see in the data in the wind tunnel and our simulator. We can test some sensitivities and all of that without racing.”
“Does that mean we’ll arrive in Miami having magically solved everything? No. But am I sure the teams will get to the bottom of that analysis and start introducing improvements in Miami? We’ll see.”
