Auto Racing 2026

I'm shocked! But I think that Apple and Formula 1 have made the decision to get more comfy with each other.
 
I watched the first episode of "Drive to Survive" which brought back some memories. The rookies had a rough first race in Melbourne 2025.

It looks like all episodes covering the 2025 Season are available to watch. It showed up in my AppleTV App on my 2nd gen 4K AppleTV.
 
The 2026 Formula 1 season is underway at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia. Free Practice 1 and 2 replay sessions on AppleTV are up, and my first impression is the video quality is as good as I'd expect. But…

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The session itself is uninterrupted by Ads, there is a Ford Racing bug that shows up in the corner from time to time, but once the session is over, there are a couple of minutes of advertising. The worse part, as someone who used the feature in the F1TV App, is there isn't a way to ride along with the drivers.

The F1TV App is improved for the 2026 Season, allowing you to pick multiple drivers to insert a PiP window:
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One of the feeds is the Track Map, the other is the Data Feed. Awesome update!
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Sorry for the blurry pictures (handheld shot with my phone). The F1TV App also includes the F2 and F3 sessions as before, so sorry, Apple. I like my old access methods…

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I'm dubious about the cost/benefit ratio of having in-car cameras during practices.

Then again, I'm becoming of the mind that the value of pre-anything sports coverage is being entirely overblown.
 
Indycar have a great race in Phoenix. Before the race even starts, Grosjean is out of the race with maybe some hybrid system issues (they need to get rid of the hybrid). Coyne and ovals... yak!

Speaking of which, Hauger apparently was leapt into by Sam Beckett around lap 10, which led to some crazy "Oh boy" moment as the car spun around, but somehow Sam managed to save the car from any contact and continued on. No word on whether he has leapt to another person yet.

About 20ish laps in, the breakfast buffet had gone straight through the Ganassi spotter who presumably was cursing the eggs benedict while rushing to the can. This left Palou woefully unaware of the presence of Rinus Veekay creeping up on to his side. Now, it should be noted that Veekay didn't technically own the spot, however, Veekay in no way trended in Palou's direction. It'd been better had Veekay stepped out, however, he wasn't aware of the digestive horrors on-going in the spotter bathroom pavilion, and also Palou is like one of the safest and best drivers in the world. Sadly, Palou continued to drift up, made contact, ending his day and effectively ending Veekay's day as well which seemed pretty solid for both of them otherwise. JHR is working well for Veekay.

Malukas owned the track before the first set of pitstops and then it was kind of hard to tell what the heck was going on, other than Rasmussen was driving the heck out of his car. He passed something like 2,000 cars, made it up to first on a couple occasions and near the end of the race. He made contact with Will Power in an incident close to that of Veekay and Palou which led to another knock to his suspension. I also think his tires were becoming worthless in the last 10 or so laps and he plummeted below the top ten. He would finish just two spots ahead of the guy (first place at the time Will Power) whose tire he would slash and flatten, ending Power's chances at a top five.

Just like that Ganassi breakfast buffet, Penske came on hard at the end while Andretti's Kirkwood was fighting hard to remain in first place that he took from Rasmussen. However, Indycar's deity of the small ovals, Newgarden, plucked spots away until he took first from Kirkwood and won the race. Malukas, who had 'faded' for a bit was able to grab onto third and manage his first podium with Penske. O'Ward and Armstrong finished out the top five.

Sarcastic props to Sting Ray Robb who finished four laps down to Veekay's five (he was 4 down before getting the suspension damage addressed in the pits). Robb must bring in big bucks. The guy isn't that good. Nolan Siegal was showing a lot of potential in IMSA and his class LeMans victory shot him from NXT immediately to Indycar. Sadly, he just isn't coming close to performing at the level needed.

Non-sarcastic props to RLL who managed a goodish outing. Rahal qualified extremely well and finished ninth. Ferucci had a crap car all race "weekend" long and managed a moral victory of 11th.

NASCAR will be taking to the track tomorrow in Phoenix as well. Attendance for the Indycar event seemed low. I just don't get it. Though even NASCAR attendance looks to be dropping.
 
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Apparently, something is happening near Qatar and the WEC 1812 event has been postponed. I'll need to look into the news and see what caused that. WEC will open season in Imola... in April.

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Understandable. Some teams still have hardware that they couldn't extract from Bahrain's pre-season tests, as well.
 
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Indycar switching to needing two sets of alternates has blown open the racing and really keeping things unknown until near the end. A really good decision on Indycar's part. Arlington was an unanimous success, all the way around, up to the catering crew causing a red flag right as the second practice session was starting. Andretti had the cheat code and finished 1st, 3rd, and 4th with Kirkwood driving away from Palou, who finished 2nd. Despite the uniqueness of some of the course and being brand new, the race didn't see a yellow until 4 laps left when Rasmussen's engine cried out "no mas!" and stopped. There were a few spins, but they were in such situations that the cars could right themselves and get moving again without causing a yellow. I think that is in part due to the broken up strategies on the course due to needing two stints on reds.

Veekay wise, it was a very rough three day weekend, but he managed a 14th, which a mild moral victory. He did manage a 1:34.9 during qualifying despite having nearly no time on the track to practice. Dixon finished a ridiculous 8th from being near the back of the field, proving just how he is stupidly awesome with equipment and fuel. McLaughlin finished 11th after starting in the very back. Rookie wise, Collet finished in front of Hauger, which is pretty special.
 
Got an email saying that Carb Day at Indy with have a performance by the "legendary Counting Crows". I question the label "legendary". Their first album sold well, but... what since then?
 
Got an email saying that Carb Day at Indy with have a performance by the "legendary Counting Crows". I question the label "legendary". Their first album sold well, but... what since then?
I think Indy Cars still had "Carbs" back when Count Crows were "legendary"…

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Huge shunt in the Japanese Grand Prix as Haas driver Oliver Bearman survives a 50G crash, walking away from his ruined VF-26 F1 car with just a right knee contusion:

 
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Interesting weekend at Barber. Two very bad crashes, McLaughlin edged too far off the track and spun around and nearly penetrated the crash barrier! One of the scarier crashes I've seen. Power had a rear brake failure and failed to turn at a hairpin, and slammed straight into a crash barrier, thankfully after scrubbing speed on the gravel.

Qualifying was quite something else with six teams qualifying for the Fast six! Some Spanish guy won the pole. Grosjean qualified sixth. He was on a monster lap in the first round of qualifying, but ran into the roadblock known as Sting Ray Robb. Veekay had shown speed in the practices, but missed the right moment window with the alternates.

The race itself, the drama was the rubber, as the alternates which were supposed to be the dogs bollocks ended up not being the dogs bollocks with the slightly cooler conditions. That was about it. Almost no one could pass and everyone was on the same pit strategy. Except Power and Lundgaard who could pass whomever they wanted. Lundgaard was in the running to challenge Palou when the last stops were coming, at least in theory. But on Lundgaard's final stop, the right rear change had problems. Almost became calamity as Lundgaard was about to go without the right rear being on tight. That didn't happen, but he lost 15 or so seconds and that was that. Graham Rahal was the other highlight. He has had a career that screams, "My father was so good at this, I can still race despite not really achieving anything". But this year, the car seems much better, qualified second row, and finished third for the podium after barely holding off Malukus as Rahal struggled mightily with worn tires.

Long Beach is next.

Meanwhile at Sonoma, Sparklefarts (household favorite) began the transition to GT World America... and slammed into the back of the Random Vandals car for whatever reason. I'm thinking there must have been some failure as the contact wasn't too harsh, but they were out.
 
There's no broadcast footage and not many readily available images of what exactly happened, it's possible they wrote that without seeing it. I watched the footage on YT today, they were in the dark for a long time about why there was a red flag, only finally saying it was due to an accident 20+ minutes after it was stopped.

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