“Ban Max Verstappen from Qualifying in Brazil, permanently. Who says no?”
Welcome back to Dre’s Race Review and in my second post of the day, we’re going to break down the 2026 Brazilian Grand Prix, with Mercedes having their first chance to clinch the Constructors Championship, a second Brazilian on the grid joining in Rafael Camara as he gets a headstart for Haas in 2027, and a minor surprise as a Lando Norris would take a dominant victory. Let’s talk about it.
But First, A Catch-Up
We got a little bit of tidying up to do between the Mexican Grand Prix and now, so a quick run-down before we really get going:
Rafael Camara is in for Haas at least for this race. After Ryo Hirakawa’s exceptional point in Mexico, he had to shoot back to Monza for their 6 Hour WEC decider. And while it wasn’t a great day for the brand on track, he did bring home his third driver’s Championship, so congrats to him. Ryo may be back for the last two rounds of the season, as Rafa allegedly wants to try and win the F2 Championship, even though Haas wants to get him as much F1 seat time as possible. Personally, Rafa I think is giving the series more credit than it deserves (bless him), but I respect that he wants to finish the job. We’ll see how Haas plays it, but this also means Jack Doohan can’t drive the car this season, as per FIA Rules Haas have already used four drivers for the season.
Colton Herta finally got his 40th Super License point after completing 100 km of running in FP1 alongside Leonardo Fornaroli, Dino Beganovic, Luke Browning, Gabriele Mini and Freddie Slater as more teams get their four rookie appearances in. At least we think, it may depend on whether IndyCar secretly hid another scoreboard somewhere on their website.
There were also a lot of engine penalties dished out here over the course of the weekend, some scheduled, others a result of issues occurring during the weekend. Such as:
- George Russell: 5-places for taking a sixth ICE
- Charles Leclerc: 10-places for taking a fifth ICE
- Gabriel Bortoleto: 10-places for taking a sixth Energy Store and Control Electronics
- Arvid Lindblad: 10-places for taking a seventh ICE and sixth Turbo
- Max Verstappen: 30-places for taking a fifth ICE, Turbo and Exhaust
- Sergio Perez: 30-places for taking a fifth ICE, Turbo and a fourth MGU-K
And finally, Lewis Hamilton. Who was originally meant to take a 10-place drop for a 5th Engine like Charles, but then that engine failed during FP3 and that meant replacing everything in the power-unit. The Grand Total, which I think is a new F1 Record – 75 GRID PLACES! ULTRA COOOOOOOMBO!
Reminder, any penalty of 15-places or more is now automatically a back of the grid start, in order of who declared their parts change first. Right, I think that’s everything…
Let The Wars Begin
This was always going to be a very interesting test for the FIA’s Race Control. Rain was expected all weekend in Sao Paolo and by the time we got to Qualifying, it was a deluge. Just three minutes into Q1 and we had to have a red flag in what was one of the heaviest torrential downpours I’ve seen in 25 years of watching F1. We had a 90-minute delay while the heaviest of the rain and standing water was taken care of, and then… we actually got going really quickly.
It seems the FIA has become a bit more open to the idea of Extreme Wet tyre running in Qualifying sessions, and it largely went without a hitch, getting the usual crazy scramble in the end as the last man over the line tended to get in. Bortoleto damaged his rear wing with a small crash at the end of Q1, with the Cadillac’s, Alpine’s and Lance Stroll getting cut.
Rafa Camara did great to make Q2 and was on a lap that would have put him into Q3, but he crashed at the penultimate corner to bring out a session-ending red flag. Still, P13 was a great first effort for the rookie. Verstappen called it a day at the end of Q1, and that red scuppered Oscar Piastri, meaning back-to-back Q2 exits for the Aussie after 46 straight appearances in the final round.
In the end, it was Lando Norris who held his nerve best to take a dramatic pole position, with George Russell steaming at his team for being told to back out of his final attempt due to Alex Albon being in close range. I don’t think it was enough for pole, but it was certainly yet another case of miscommunication between him and the Mercedes pitwall, who have been poor at times this season. In some other cool surprises, Liam Lawson would match his career best in P3 post-penalties, and he’d be sharing Row 2 with Nico Hulkenberg’s Audi, who loves a wet Brazilian quali session. Ollie Bearman was P6 for Haas and Alex Albon briefly caught a break from his hellish season to put his Williams P9.
Don’t Call It A Comeback
So, Lando Norris made a horlicks of his start and coughed up the early lead to Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes on the front row. Remember him, the guy who won the world title last week and who I haven’t mentioned yet? Lawson got him too so early on at this stage he was actually running sec-
So, you stick Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen at the back of the grid in Brazil, with both men making famous comebacks at this very track. What did you think was going to happen?
Lewis has one of the craziest opening laps you’ll ever see in F1. He nails his restart and because he chose lower tyre pressures, he was able to get heat into his inters quicker than those around him (Useful as the 2026 Inter tyre is stiffer to deal with the extra forces from having overtake mode on these cars), and by the end of the opening lap, Lewis was up 11 places, to P9.
Slightly further back, Max took a little longer to bed in, but once he did, he was picking cars off left and right like they were standing still. My personal favourite was the consecutive passes around the outside of Piastri at Turn 3, and then Albon at Turn 4 straight after. Unreal battling and car control. By Lap 7, Max was running P6 and gaining on the leaders.
And props to Ferrari, they listened to Lewis Hamilton to come in first for slicks. Just one problem with Hamilton’s tyre pressure choice – As the track got dryer, the Inters overheated and with that choice of pressure, it completely cooked both he and Lawson’s sets. So even though Hamilton nailed his decision to switch, he’d lost so much time struggling on his first inters, he actually came out of the pits in P10 and stuck behind Lindblad.
Meanwhile at the front, the Mercedes drivers started complaining about balance issues, so much so that Antonelli, who had already spun on the practice lap, did so again at Turn 1, gift wrapping the lead to Lando Norris again. This was shortly after George Russell spun it out of pit lane on his new slicks. He’d been surprisingly fast and full of confidence in the rain, and then that happened. Man.
A part of me wonders if it had something to do with the differential on the cars given the complaints mentioned the car pulling in a direction when accelerating. Toto reckoned it may have been a tyre pressure issue. I’ve mentioned them so much already you’d think I was watching a MotoGP race.
Antonelli ran wide again, dropping second place to Isack Hadjar, who deserves some flowers here for what may be his best race yet in F1. Genuine exceptional pace on the slick tyres, and quicker than Max for the majority of their time on the softs. It was just a shame that later on, they forced Hadjar to swap with Verstappen, only for Hadjar to stay with him for a while afterwards. Tough break, but understandable in case something happens, you probably want Max in front for a Safety Car restart for instance.
But there was one more twist – A heavy dose of rain with 10 laps left, Class 2 by F1 standards, and it forced everyone onto the Intermediate tyre again, and the track was lost extremely quickly. Too quickly for Lewis Hamilton, who spun out at the final corner and nudged the rear wing after staying out one lap too long, dropping him back to ninth.
At the front though, it was Lando Norris who once he was in control, never made a mistake again. He dominated the back half of the running, eventually winning by nearly 15 seconds to take his 14th F1 victory and keep McLaren in the fight for third in the Constructor’s. Both Red Bull’s joined him on the podium with Verstappen second and another podium for Hadjar in third. Man, this is going to be a wild Lightning Round…
Speaking Of Which…
So Lando, how did you celebrate your win? “I smashed my champagne bottle to the ground and then dipped my head in the pyrotechnics.” Himbo.
Mercedes did more than enough to clinch the Constructors Championship despite this being the first round all season that neither car got on the podium. A tip of the hat to Toto Wolff for winning his ninth Constructor’s title, matching the all-time record set by the late Sir Frank Williams. I take that tip back for not keeping his ignorant and arrogant statements about the awareness of the MotoGP grid to himself. Like… Why are you assuming the sport’s riders don’t know what’s going on in the world?
I think Max Verstappen may have had the legs for the win if he got to start from the front, but it also seems like the Red Bull had another case of car degradation, getting worse as the race went on. Max himself complained as soon as the race was over about the car having massive oversteer on the high-speed corners and big disparities between his Inter stint at the start and at the end of the race.
Credit to The Race, but good to know Rafa Camara was at his best, only a tenth or so a lap behind Ollie Bearman. It was a really rough set of conditions for a first weekend, but you could see the potential there in flashes across the weekend.
I’ve just about had my fill of Ferrari for the season to be honest. Lewis Hamilton was brilliant at times, the peakiest of anyone on the track at times. But he got the setup choice wrong on his Inters, and his ego keeping him out one lap too long, overall cost him what should have been an easy Top 5. And Charles Leclerc was just painfully slow in changeable conditions. He only picked up again at the very end during the second rain shower and then he got a careless five-second penalty for giving Lawson the same bump-and-run he gave Alex Albon in F2. Look, the racing fan in me HATES it, but this was the definition of avoidable contact and the nudge blatantly set up the pass down the road. By the book, it’s a penalty. Grumble.
Speaking of penalties, I’d love to see another angle on Hulkenberg’s 10-second penalty he got for his pass leaving the track on Franco Colapinto. The only one we really got was from Lindblad’s onboard and my impression was that it was really close. Lucky for him that it didn’t affect his race all that much in the end and another well earned point for Audi.
So you mean to tell me that Valtteri Bottas had a stuck nut to his wheel for the second time in his career?! I am flabbergasted it’s happened to the same person twice. And at some point again, we have to question Cadillac’s build quality for these reliability errors to keep happening.
Glad stories coming out of Brazil suggest that it’s mostly Alan Permane’s call at Racing Bulls (Now newly extended to 2031), as to who gets the seat between Liam Lawson and Nikola Tsolov. The talk is Lawson has done enough and he should be keeping it. He’s undroppable in this kind of form and he single-handedly has gotten the team into the Top 5 role that Franz Tost always wanted. Tsolov can be a Reserve Driver for next year, and race some Super Formula if you ask me.
Worth a mention too – Alpine always complained that it was their power-unit that held them back, even begging for an unfreeze on the regulations developing them. They now have a Mercedes power-unit and they’re stuck in sixth in the Constructor’s, with Racing Bulls’ putting belt to ass and Team Enstone going scoreless in five of their last six weekends. Welp.
The Verdict: 8/10 (Great) – I really enjoyed this one. Chaos, but in the more fun way rather than the bullshit way, with the excellent driving being rewarded, passing actually being easier than anticipated and some excellent dogfighting all the way through the race. Maybe the best F1 race of 2026 so far. Brazil stays until 2035, and I honestly hope it’s forever. See you in Las Vegas. (Recommended)
