Race weekend F1 Spanish Grand Prix Sun 13 Sept · Madrid, ES Read next Ferrari has spent its second ADUO engine. The rulebook that sets what it cost never uses the word.
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Paddock Notes A field journal for motorsport
Culture

Culture

Drivers, principals, fanbase, and the workplace of motorsport. The paddock as a culture unto itself. The radio dialect engineers speak. The longer arcs that don't fit a single race weekend but define the era.

  1. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a single tall paddock flagpole flying the flag of Bahrain in a humid tropical setting, dense palm fronds behind it and the tented roof of a large grandstand rising beyond the treeline, a row of empty flagpoles alongside.
    Formula 1 Filed 9 Sept 2026 8 min read

    The FIA calendar has a way of marking a race called off. It is not using it on Qatar or Abu Dhabi.

    Two days apart in July, the same governing body cancelled its endurance championship rounds in Qatar and Bahrain outright and re-created a Formula 1 Grand Prix at Sepang under Bahrain's name, flag and country code. Both releases quote the same president on safety. Both F1 calendars, read on 11 September, still list the final two rounds with no qualification attached.
  2. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration seen from inside a Formula 1 cockpit under braking for a first chicane, the steering wheel and halo framing the bottom of the view and the rear wing of a second car in the identical Ferrari livery filling the centre with no gap between them, the chicane kerbs curving away to the right.
    Formula 1 Filed 8 Sept 2026 6 min read

    Hamilton wants rules of engagement. Formula 1 deleted its own in December 2010 and never wrote another.

    The phrase team orders appears nowhere in the 98 pages of the 2026 Sporting Regulations. What survived the repeal is two general clauses in the International Sporting Code and an entry undertaking that points at other teams. On 7 September McLaren named a test it had applied and Ferrari scheduled a conversation.
  3. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a single-seater racing car in three-quarter view carrying Fusion branding on its rear wing and sidepod and the number four on its wing endplate, with a head and shoulders portrait of a young driver rising behind the cockpit.
    Formula 2 Filed 3 Sept 2026 4 min read

    Formula 3 fixed its grid at ten teams through 2027. Lando Norris's new team did not add an eleventh.

    FIA Formula 3 selected ten teams in October 2024 for the 2025 to 2027 seasons, a thirty-car field settled three years in advance. AIX Racing was one of the ten. On 2 September 2026 LN4 Fusion took that entry over, and Bruno Michel's word for what happens next in Formula 2 was application, not expansion.
  4. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a MotoGP garage corner where a set of racing leathers hangs from a hook beside a worn hinged knee brace, an open locker door carrying a single sheet of paper taped flat inside it, and a machine on paddock stands behind.
    MotoGP Filed 31 Aug 2026 4 min read

    The double long lap Johann Zarco served at Aragon was 105 days old, and it survived his absence because the crash that earned it was the crash that caused the absence

    The FIM MotoGP Stewards published their penalty protocol before the season opened. A sanction lapses when a rider misses the next round through unrelated injury and follows him when the absence traces back to the penalised incident. Zarco's did, so two long laps waited through six missed Grands Prix and were paid on Sunday for one point.
  5. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a bare grand prix motorcycle frame on a paddock stand with no bodywork and an empty engine cradle, forks and swingarm exposed, a fully faired and liveried machine of the outgoing generation standing complete behind and to the left.
    MotoGP Filed 28 Aug 2026 5 min read

    Yamaha says MotoGP's 850cc reset is the ideal moment to promote a rookie. No factory team acted on it.

    Prima Pramac Yamaha confirmed Izan Guevara for 2027 on 27 August, the third rookie announced for MotoGP's new formula. All eight seats at the four factory teams are now filled, every one by a rider who has already raced in the premier class, and the longest term any of them has put a number on runs four years.
  6. A two-tone hatched illustration of a lone helmeted figure in plain overalls standing in a garage doorway with their back turned, watching an empty pit lane and the grandstands beyond.
    Formula 1 Filed 24 Aug 2026 4 min read

    Lawson was a tenth from Verstappen in two of three qualifying segments, and four tenths in the other

    Laurent Mekies said his stand-in was only one tenth away from Max at Zandvoort. Formula 1's timing sheet puts the gap at 0.102s in Q1 and 0.115s in Q3, and at 0.427s in Q2. Liam Lawson finished seventh, the only Red Bull running at the flag, on a weekend whose other announcement was a Verstappen contract to the end of 2030.
  7. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of an empty main straight seen head-on from the pit exit, grandstands rising bare on both sides and the start line running away into the distance under a flat daylight sky, no cars and no people anywhere in the frame.
    Formula 1 Filed 21 Aug 2026 5 min read

    Verstappen re-signed two years early in a winless season, and the fullest published explanation is a reader comment

    The extension runs to the end of 2030 and replaces a contract that ran to 2028. Verstappen's stated reasons are the people and getting back to the top. Nothing in the announcement addresses the timing, and on Friday morning RaceFans promoted a reader's theory about it to the front page.
  8. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a boy's kart parked in a domestic garage beside household clutter, a race suit far too small hanging from a shelf bracket above it, an invoice folder wedged under one wheel, cream negative space filling the open door.
    Formula E Filed 17 Aug 2026 3 min read

    The youngest winner in Formula E history got there by the skin of his teeth, and he says the ladder is worse now

    Hours before Taylor Barnard won the London finale at 22, the BBC published an interview in which he described his family re-mortgaging their house to keep him racing. The numbers behind the ladder he climbed run to seven figures before a driver reaches a professional seat.
  9. Two-tone hatched-ink illustration of a driver in a race suit walking away down an empty pit lane with his helmet carried low in one hand, his stopped car small behind him at the far end with a mechanic crouched beside it, hall roof glazing above.
    Formula E Filed 17 Aug 2026 3 min read

    Formula E's first race winner spent his last weekend watching the car break

    Lucas di Grassi failed to finish either race at the London ExCeL, closing a 163-start career from the side of the track. Sebastien Buemi, the other founding champion leaving on the same afternoon, saw both flags and had an unwilling hand in the title.
  10. A two-tone hatched illustration of a Moto2 rider sitting up off the throttle with both arms starting to rise in celebration as a pit board reading one more lap hangs unseen behind him, a second rider slicing past on the inside, the mismatch between the count and the racing rendered as two diverging lines.
    MotoGP Filed 10 Aug 2026 3 min read

    Manuel Gonzalez has lost Moto2 points to the lap count twice in 2026, once to the timekeepers and once in the cockpit

    At Silverstone he sat up to celebrate a lap early and finished 14th. In Thailand in March a timekeeping miscount rescored his win to half points. Two counting failures, only one of them the series' to fix, and a championship lead that survived both by circumstance.