Lando and Oscar on F1’s new era and their Championship ambitions

Read time: 10 minutes

Few circuits not currently on the F1 calendar are as enjoyable to tackle as the Nürburgring, but the rare opportunity to drive the iconic German circuit wasn’t the primary reason for Oscar and Lando’s good mood.

Nestled deep in the Eifel National Park, surrounded by rolling mountains, rugged castles, and dense forests, we’ve joined Lando and Oscar in Germany for a Pirelli Tyre Test, where they are driving our 2026 challenger.

Sharing the track with Mercedes, Lando and Oscar are primarily here for Pirelli’s benefit, testing out potential new compounds for 2026, but the chance to gain further mileage in the 2026 machinery isn’t without value.

We caught up with the pair during our visit to Germany to discuss the season so far, and despite the challenges we’ve faced at the start of F1’s new era, they were feeling optimistic about our chances.

During a wide-ranging conversation, they shared their opinions on F1’s new machinery and ruleset, explained how they’ve adapted so far, and revealed why they are feeling confident about our chances in 2026 and beyond, as well as discussing how they’ve been spending the break from racing in April.

A few race weekends into the season, what are your main reflections so far?

Lando: It’s not been the start of the season we had hoped for, and we’ve had some difficult weekends so far. Obviously, coming into the year as defending Champions both as a team and as a driver, the expectations we set ourselves are high. We want to be taking Pole positions, winning races and leading both Championships, but that’s not where we are. We’re not in a terrible position, but we’ve definitely got to work to get back in contention for wins, and even then, we need to keep going to make sure we’ve got a car capable of winning every single weekend.

We’ve also had some issues that really haven’t helped our development of these cars. One thing we realised very early is that time in the car, and getting laps on the board, is so important when it comes to learning how to get the most out of the car, and specifically the power unit. Tiny, tiny margins make significant differences. Combine that with the fact that we didn’t start the Grand Prix in China, and that we didn’t get enough track time during practice in Japan, and it’s easy to see where we’re lacking.

However, we’re using this gap between Japan and Miami to do what we can to fill that gap in our understanding. We’re putting a lot of time in on the sim, and we’re back behind the wheel for a tyre test at the Nürburgring. Despite that test being focused on tyres for next year, time behind the wheel is certainly never going to hurt.

Oscar: I think it’s fair to say that it has been a trickier start to the season than we wanted. Coming into this year as World Champions, we made it clear that it would be a reset across the grid, but we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t hoped to be closer to the front. Getting to grips with this new generation of cars has been challenging, as we expected, and we’ve seen how important track time is for this, so to not start the first two races did take away significant and essential learning time, which is frustrating.

We’ve done well to take what we could from these weekends, which helped feed into the strong performance in Japan, which felt like one of my best weekends. It showed that when we start the race, we’re actually quite good!

We knew that Mercedes and Ferrari were going to be strong this year but I think we made a positive step in Japan. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to be at the front, but I know this team has the ability to develop across the year and I look forward to seeing what we can do when we go racing again.

You've spent more time in these new era of cars, what do you think?

Oscar: Overall, these cars are very different to anything I have driven before. But we’ve known this would be the case since the new regulations were shared. It being so different is a new challenge for us as drivers, which isn’t a bad thing.

One of the big differences with these cars is that they’re lighter and much shorter and narrower than 2025. This means they can be a bit more agile and can feel nicer in the lower-speed corners, but the challenges around dirty air still stand and neutralise some of those benefits, as following is still an issue.

There is also a lot more to think about in the car as a driver. You also have to think more tactically around quite a few things, especially on the power management side.

These cars are also more unpredictable. You’ll have seen we often gets spikes of power which makes these cars do unexpected things. This is just one area of quite a few that needs to be looked at and changed in the imminent future, highlighted further by a few different incidents across the season so far. I know we are working closely with the FIA, F1 and other teams to ensure these things are being looked at to ensure safe, but fun and exciting racing for everyone.

Lando: These cars are certainly very different to the cars from last year, and the differences are quite complex. Some of which I enjoy, some of which I’ve found a bit more difficult so far.

Last year we had loads of downforce, cars that really felt like they were on rails when we got them dialled in and what felt like never-ending speed, however when you lost grip, that was it, you were just losing time at best or heading for the gravel. That could be quite frustrating as it didn’t feel like you could make as much of a difference yourself as a driver, you needed the car underneath you and needed to ensure you stayed within the limits of the car.

This year the cars are much much lower downforce and much more on the limit. You can catch slides more easily, and the slightly lower grip makes for a very exciting car to drive. As a car, I’m enjoying driving them, they remind me of some of the cars I drove coming up through the junior series, and I say that as a big compliment, you really feel like you can make a difference. I’ve said before that it’s not the car I’m struggling with, it’s the bit behind us that I’m not enjoying as much – the power unit regulations. I had a scenario in Japan where the battery deployment triggered, even though I didn’t really want it to, and I had to overtake Lewis as a result.

That meant I was then a sitting duck on the next straight, where I had actually wanted to use the battery. For me, that’s taking too much control away from the driver, but I know that the FIA and all the stakeholders of the sport are looking into it: there has been good dialogue with the FIA on this topic, so I am confident that something will be done for when we go racing in Miami again.

One important point though, is that we’re glad the fans are enjoying the racing, because we’re an entertainment sport at the end of the day. Fans want to see us out on track battling each other and the limits of grip. We need to avoid artificial elements of racing where we can, but we’re not too far away from achieving that and having a really exciting era of racing.

At the beginning of the year, you referenced how you'll have to adapt your driving style for this year. A few races in, is this case, and what specifically are you having to do differently to 2025?

Oscar: Yes, this has been the case. I think this is the same for every driver on the grid though, and with anything, the more time we spend driving, the more we start to tweak our pre-learned instincts. However, these cars are fundamentally so different to anything we’ve driven before in F1 or on the F1 ladder, so you are having to re-learn so many techniques to be able to maximise what you can.

One of the biggest changes is the focus on battery deployment. Things like lifting on the straights to harvest energy, and then the power we have on the corner exits are all new things. This battery side also feeds into Qualifying, where it’s no longer a case of just grip, it’s much more tactical around energy management. Without the ground effect downforce that the 2025 cars had, the cars can feel looser, making them more prone to sliding, which also impacts tyres - something I’ve had to adapt my style to become more comfortable with.

The nature of racing is different and something that has to be taken into consideration when looking at how you overtake. There is a lot more focus on battery deployment, so it comes back to this idea of a chess game, which you can see from some of the battles on track.

Lando: Like I said before, the more on-the-limit nature of the cars - the skinnier tyres, the lighter weight, and the shorter wheelbase make these cars drive very differently to last year - are really exciting to drive. You really need a different approach when it comes to driving style. You can push these cars, find the edge and still recover, whereas last year, it was very hard to recover the car when you pass the edge of grip.

This is one of the real positives of these regulations. In this sense, the skill of the driver, the ability to hold on through a corner and get the best exit right on the edge is what becomes the difference in performance. However, this is at odds with what we need to do on the power unit, because going flat out in one corner might mean you get through that sector quicker, but by the time you get to the next straight, you lose time because you have no battery, as it’s been deploying through the corners, and that is a shame.

Qualifying is very different to in previous years. In the past, the driver who could extract the most grip from the car, get on throttle earliest and accelerate out of the corner quickest could usually unlock more lap time and would be rewarded for it. Now, you have to be much more careful about when you get the battery to deploy, not using too much in the corner as it could cost you further on in the lap.

With all this said, I’ll re-emphasise my point about these cars – they’re fun to drive, and some of these challenges can be solved with software changes. Once we get that balance right, I think we have a very exciting regulation set. Starts, energy management, harvesting, lift and coast, are all topics of discussion and areas where I’m hoping we can bring improvements for the good of the sport.

Looking ahead, what do you think is possible to achieve this season as a driver and as a team?

Lando: I think we can have a good season, even if we’re not where we want to be right now. And although we haven’t started the season where we want to be, we still want to push hard for the Championship, this isn’t a case of giving up and focusing on next year - I’m not sure if that approach ever really works. There’s plenty of examples where we’ve not quite been where we want to be at the start of the year, but have ended up in a much stronger position by the end - 2023, 2024 and so on, and we’re a stronger team now than we were then. We’ve been there, done it, learned from it and I trust that this team knows how to do it again. Plenty of hard work ahead, but we’re ready for it.

Oscar: I’m confident in this team that we’ll be back fighting consistently for wins this season. In Round 3, whilst there was still a gap at the end, we were able to push the boundaries of our initial expectations and, without the Safety Car, could have genuinely been in contention for the win. We have a lot of work to do to be back at the front consistently, but closing the gap to Mercedes and out-developing the field is something that’s within our control. This team have proven how we’re able to turn things around, and we’re starting in a stronger position than we have in previous examples of this, such as 2024. I have complete trust that the team will do everything they can to get us there and I am genuinely excited to see what we can achieve.

We now have a bit of a break in the season, how are you using the time between now and Miami?

Lando: We would all love to be going racing during this break, but it does provide us with a few opportunities to prepare for the rest of the season. I started with a bit of time to disconnect from F1 for a little bit -a short holiday with some friends in Spain and Portugal, we played some golf, and watched some Champions League football in Lisbon before I glued myself to a screen to watch The Masters.

Now, we’re straight back to work. With testing at the Nürburgring, and plenty of time in the simulator coming up. With Miami and Canada both being Sprint races, we’ll have to be well prepared to get the most out of the car.

Oscar: Whilst our first choice as drivers is always to go racing, the gap has provided the unique opportunity to properly rest, reset and then get back to it within the season.

After Japan, I headed back to Monaco for the week to relax and decompress after the busy start to the year. It was my birthday last Monday as well, and I had a nice day celebrating with my girlfriend, Lily.

Last week, I was back in the factory seeing the team to debrief Japan and prep for a tyre test at the Nürburgring, where we are at the moment, as well as some partnerships and media activities. I also went to the Monte-Carlo Masters tennis this past weekend with some of the other drivers, which was good fun.

After the test, I’ll have a few more days rest before heading back to Woking again with Lando for more engineering and marketing duties. This break is also a good opportunity to get some more training in, especially as the off season was so short this year. Before we know it, we will be back racing in Miami. I’m excited.