u/cmi_pledges

I came to Formula 1 late. Five years ago, roughly, which means I walked into a sport that was already deep into the hybrid era and had no real reference point for anything that came before it. And for a while that was fine. Verstappen was dominant, the racing was occasionally brilliant, Toto Wolff was saying things in press conferences that made people angry, all the usual stuff. Then I went down a YouTube rabbit hole one evening, stumbled onto some old onboard footage, and heard a V10 for the first time through decent speakers. That was the end of the productive part of my week. I spent the next six months watching races from the late nineties and early 2000s and asking myself the same question over and over: what era of this sport was actually the best?

I still haven't answered it. So let's try.

The obvious starting point is the V10 era. 1995 to 2005, because it's the one that comes up every time this conversation happens and it comes up for reasons that aren't purely nostalgic. The cars were lighter, 595 kilograms compared to over 800 today. They moved differently through corners, constantly adjusting, sliding, responding to every input in a way that modern cars with their enormous downforce levels and traction control just don't. And the sound. Look, you either know what a V10 at 19,000rpm sounds like through a decent set of speakers or you don't, and if you don't then no description is going to do it justice. It wasn't loud the way traffic is loud. It was loud the way something genuinely alarming is loud. You felt it before you heard it. Trackside footage from Spa 1998 or Monza 2000 sounds like the laws of physics are being briefly suspended. Nothing since has come close.

But here's the complication. The V10 era had Schumacher winning everything from 2000 to 2004, five consecutive championships, Ferrari so dominant that large chunks of the fanbase genuinely stopped watching. The racing was often processional. The 2002 season in particular was so one sided that the FIA literally changed the rules mid season to try and make it interesting. A beautiful era, undeniably. Not always a great one to actually watch week to week.

The V8 era, 2006 to 2013, doesn't get nearly enough credit. It ran straight into a period of some of the best racing the sport has produced. 2007 and 2008 were extraordinary championship battles, 2010 had four drivers going into the final race with a mathematical chance of the title, 2012 had seven different winners in the first seven races. The cars weren't as visceral as the V10s but they still revved to 18,000rpm and they still made a noise that justified going to a race. And the driving, Alonso in 2012 was doing things with a Ferrari that wasn't the fastest car on the grid that should probably have its own documentary. Hamilton versus Massa at Interlagos 2008 is one of the greatest sporting moments I've watched on YouTube at 1am and felt genuinely stressed about despite knowing the result.

The turbo era of the 1980s is the wild card. 1,500 horsepower in qualifying trim in 1986. Drivers talking about the throttle response being almost undriveable, about the turbo lag making corner exits a lottery, about genuinely not knowing whether the engine was going to stay together for another lap. Prost versus Senna, Mansell versus everyone, cars that looked like they were barely controlled rather than precisely driven. It was chaotic and dangerous and produced some of the most dramatic racing the sport has ever seen. Whether chaotic and dangerous makes an era the best is a separate question.

And then the hybrid era, which is where I came in and which is where the argument gets uncomfortable for people who prefer the older stuff. Because the hybrid era has given us 2021, Abu Dhabi controversy aside, one of the most sustained championship battles in F1 history. It gave us 2026, which through seven rounds has been genuinely unpredictable in ways that the sport hasn't managed consistently for years. The cars are faster than anything that has existed before. The racing, since the 2022 regulation overhaul, has actually been good. The sound is worse. The weight is too high. The cars look enormous compared to the V10 machinery. All of that is true and none of it quite cancels out the fact that if you show someone a race from 2024 or 2025 cold, they'll probably be entertained.

So where does that leave us. The V10 era had the best cars and the best sound and the worst dominance problem. The V8 era had the best racing and never quite got the credit for it because it followed something that sounded more spectacular. The turbo eighties were insane in ways that the sport will never replicate and probably shouldn't try to. The hybrid era is faster, heavier, quieter, and occasionally better racing than any of them.

I think the honest answer is that your best era is the one you discovered first, the one that made you feel whatever you felt the first time a Formula 1 car made you care. For me that was the hybrid era. I watched it live, I followed it week to week, I got invested in the championship. And then I went back and watched the V10s and felt genuinely robbed of something I never had. Both of those things are true simultaneously and they don't resolve neatly.

What's yours?

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I remember watching the living daylights but i couldnt really figure out what bond's car was but it looked a lot like an american muscle car and i thought surely not, surely not, they wouldnt. Thank the heavens it was not. What it was though is a demon. The most powerful aston martin, at the time of course. A mean looking thing with a 5.3 litre V8 doing up to 160mph wearing Cumberland Grey. That's a fancy name for a colour but then again the car had wheel lasers and a bloody rocket booster so yeah.
The car in question is the gorgeous Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante. My God That's a mouthful. I never knew that aston martin made muscel cars. Apparently they have been doing this since 1977. I wasn't made aware of this.
They put the DB5 aside and they said we want something more menacing. Not restrained and elegant like the DB5, no. We want a 5.3 litre V8 with an all alloy engine producing somewhere between 310 and 375 horsepower depending on the spec, a top speed of 160mph and is significantly more aggressive than anything the DB series ever offered. Like complete opposites.

Aston Martin said it was Britain's first supercar when they launched it in 1977. It does zero to sixty in just 5.3 seconds... One tenth quicker than the Ferrari Daytona. They were not being modest  and frankly they had no reason to be.  Genuinely why would they. The car was build to go very fast in straight lines and to look good when doing it and boy did it.

In the film they used convertible a V8 Volante that was cumberland grey with a black leather interior. And get this.. The car Bond drives at the start of the film was actually Victor Gauntlett' s, the chairman of Aston Martin. The man who refused to let aston martin die. That's pretty cool dont you think . Like here you go, you can use it. Now do you thing Jimmy. Spin around and crash it and don't forget to look cool whilst doing it. Imagine giving james bond your car to drive, yeah no chance. Of course they used fake ones in the filming but still.

The gadgets in the film are ridiculous though, in a good way ofcourse. The wheels had lasers that cut a poliiceman's Lada in half for christ sake. The car ends up in a snowbank  though and Bond makes it self destruct. Poor Q.

Honestly i cant be blamed for thinking it was an american muscle car. Its proportions and agression and all that but it is from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, built by hand. It just so happens to be the car  Aston Martin that decided restraint was not at all needed and i am glad because it is a proper Aston

The Bora. A cold, dry, violent wind blowing from the northeast onto the Adriatic coast. Also the name of Maserati’s best car. A fitting name, if you ask me. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro in the late ’60s and unveiled at Geneva in ’71. It looked like it was from the future back then and now it looks like one of the best of the past. Why? Proportions. That long flat nose along with the glasshouse sitting just slightly back from centre, with the roofline dropping in a sleek uninterrupted line to the back. Oh and also the four exhaust pipes sitting below a chromed rear bumper. Very understated. Giugiaro designed the perfect mid-engine car with a drag coefficient of 0.30 in '71. Still impressive even in 2026.

Under that glorious body a 4.7 litre quad-cam V8 mounted longitudinally in the middle, that came from Maserati's 450S racing engine. Strong lineage. Produced 310 horsepower with a top speed of 171mph. Really strong lineage. Also because Citroën owned Maserati at the time, the Bora was equipped with Citroën's hydraulic system on the brakes, the extremely cool retractable headlights, the seat adjustment and the pedal position. Pressing the brake pedal in a Bora feels unlike pressing it in any other car. People who have driven them mention this immediately and with a specific expression. Apparently its like pressing a button..i don't know.

Only 564 were built over the course of seven years. Buying one now requires quite a large budget, A barn find example in Blue Metallic sold for $92,500. That's pretty steep. Blue, grey and red are the colours that really do justice to the car. Deep metalic blue. I find these colours make the chrome work harder and the whole shape pop out with a bit more than it already does but it will be beautiful in any colour, maybe even purple.

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The great little car, they called it, and to be honest they werent wrong. The mazda 323 was launched in January of 1977 in japan and they called it the familia and you can guess why. The americans decided however that it should be called the GLC. Great little car. How nice. Eight hundred and ninety thousand people bought one in three years. Its a hatchback for christs sake, how did that happen. I'll tell you how. They probably had a great marketing team but..but this was the first modern hatchback mazda had made and it was a rear wheel drive which was getting rare especially for 1977. It had a 1.3 litre four cylinder that produced about 60hp depending on the spec which doesnt sound like a lot and thats because ...well it isnt, but it was extremely light and direct and must have been fun to drive. Nevermind it not being fast, it was fun and believe it or not there is a difference. It has four-speed manual, disc brakes up front, drums at the rear, and recirculating ball steering with no power assistance. My uncle owned one and he told me parking was a chore but i dont think he was complaining About the design, it was just a 70s hatchback with smooth lines and an erect glasshouse but the hatch was top hinged which made loading heavy things easy and all.

They also released the five door which came with split rear seats which was innovative for the late 70s and an interior tailgate. In 1979 the design language was already changing and mazda replaced the round headlight with square ones and entered the 80s with a new lens.

The 323 is a legend in its own right, i remember as a kid seeing my uncle's old one in brown and i fell in love with it. Cars like the 323 dont really get talked about as much as sports cars from the same period but it is a very nice car and i wanted to talk about it soe here we are.

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How the 262C came about is one of the interesting stories about the '70s, besides the pet rocks that is (can't believe people actually bought into that shit honestly). Apparently, when Ford executives visited the Volvo factory, they brought their Lincoln Continental Mark IVs with them, no no hold on, they shipped a fleet of them for their "transport," as if they couldn't find that in Sweden. When Volvo's design team saw the Continentals, they were taken by the sheer size, low slung opulence and bold styling of the American "land yachts." So they called Bertone because they couldn't justify heavy internal retooling for a low volume coupé. Jan Wilsgaard designed the car in Sweden and Bertone built it in Turin.

The roof was lowered 60mm from the standard 264 saloon it was based on, the windscreen was raked more steeply, and the C-pillars were made extremely wide and thick, and that gave the 262C its character. Those pillars are enormous and they divide people, naturally. Some find the proportions strange. Those people are wrong.

The inside is where Volvo and Bertone made their real statement. They put leather everywhere: the seats, the headrests, the door panels, and even the door handles..... The door handles. Wood trim throughout the car. This was Volvo's flagship and it was dressed accordingly. The PRV V6 engine, developed jointly with Peugeot and Renault, was smooth, refined, and entirely appropriate for a car built around travelling long distances in significant comfort rather than going quickly around corners.

The then CEO of Volvo Pehr Gyllenhammar had his own personal 262C painted entirely red, inside and out. It had a turbocharged four-cylinder instead of the V6 and a matte black body trim. That is a rather nice company car.

It was an unusual car. The C-pillars are enormous, the roofline is almost too low, and the whole thing has a formal heaviness that divides people. But see, it is completely committed to what it is and cars that are committed to what they are are always worth the attention.

The collaboration that made the 262C come alive is the kind that should be happening more often. But it doesn't, because manufacturing logistics are complicated and no one wants to do the paperwork.

I need to talk about the Mercedes 350 SL in red. Not because it is the best Mercedes ever made, not because I am about to make some grand argument about where it sits in the history of the automobile. Just because I walked past one parked on a street a few days ago and I stopped completely and stood there for longer than is probably socially acceptable and I have been thinking about it ever since. There are cars you know from screens and cars you know from life and the gap between those two things is enormous in general but with the 350 SL in Signal Red it is not a gap, it is a different dimension entirely.

I had it on my wishlist for a long time before that moment. Had seen it on Instagram, the way you see everything on Instagram, in the curated way that classic car accounts present these things with the right light and the right angle and the right background, always making them look good but never quite making them feel real. You scroll past and you think yes, that is a beautiful car and you double tap and you move on. That is the Instagram version of the 350 SL. It is fine. It is not the same thing as seeing one parked next to ordinary cars on an ordinary street on an ordinary afternoon, because in that context there is nothing managing the presentation. No photographer, no golden hour, no careful composition. Just the car and the world around it and the car making the world around it look slightly worse by comparison.

The red is the thing. Not all reds are the same red and anyone who tells you otherwise has not looked at enough red cars. The Signal Red on the R107 is not aggressive, not the Ferrari red that is trying to tell you something about itself before you've even seen the car properly. It is a deep, serious red that sits on those long flat panels and those wide haunches and those chrome details and just glows. It does not shout. It does not need to. The proportions of the car do enough on their own, the long bonnet and the short tail and the soft top and the way the whole thing sits low and wide and completely confident about what it is, and the red just sits on top of all that and makes it complete in a way that no other colour on this car manages.

The R107 ran from 1971 to 1989. Eighteen years in production, which tells you something about how completely Mercedes got it right the first time. They built it, the world looked at it, and the world continued wanting it for nearly two decades without Mercedes feeling any particular pressure to change much about it. The 350 SL specifically, the 3.5 litre V8 version that started the whole run, is the one I keep coming back to. Not the biggest engine, not the rarest variant, not the most collectable in the strict sense. Just the one that looks right and sounds right and feels like the car that should exist if you were asked to design the perfect grand touring roadster for the early seventies and you had both the budget and the taste to do it properly.

I want one. I have wanted one for a long time and seeing it in person has not helped with the wanting, it has made it worse in the way that seeing something beautiful in real life always makes the wanting worse rather than better. The Instagram version was manageable. I could scroll past. The real one, parked on a real street, in that red, in afternoon light, is harder to scroll past because you cannot scroll past a real thing. You just have to stand there and look at it and accept that some objects exist at a level that makes the rest of the street look like it is apologising for being there(the street was absolutely filthy).

 I will get one eventually. That is not a plan so much as a certainty that has been in the background for a while and got considerably louder the other day. When I do it will be red. There is no other choice. Whoever parked that one on that street did me a kindness and a cruelty simultaneously and I am not sure I have forgiven them for either.

Still thinking about it. It was just parked there. Like it was nothing. It was not nothing.

There is something about the race before the summer break that gives everyone in the paddock a slightly heightened energy. Not just the drivers, not just the teams but the whole ecosystem of people who follow Formula 1 for a living and are about to have three weeks off and really, really want those three weeks to begin with the right result behind them. A bad race before the shutdown sits with you. A good one means you can actually enjoy August. The Hungaroring has hosted this particular pressure cooker since 1986 and it does not make it easier by being a circuit where overtaking is difficult, strategy is everything and the weather is capable of turning a straightforward afternoon into something that requires complete reinvention mid race. Rain is forecast for Sunday. Of course it is.

The championship context going in. Antonelli won Belgium(i swear he makes me feel talentless), which followed Russell's lap one battery failure at Spa which means the gap is back up after the Silverstone weekend briefly made it look like a genuine fight. Eleven races in, six wins for the teenager and a points lead that has oscillated between comfortable and enormous depending on what reliability has decided to do that particular Sunday. Russell is the closest challenger in theory but his season has developed an awkward pattern of strong performances followed by mechanical or racing incidents that interrupt the momentum just as it's building. Spa was the most painful version of that pattern yet. He arrives in Hungary needing a result that isn't compromised before it starts, which given the last three rounds is a more urgent requirement than it should be at this stage of the year.

Hamilton at the Hungaroring is its own conversation and it always has been. Eight wins here, more than any other driver in the history of the circuit at a track that rewards exactly what he does best. Reading a race, making tyres last longer than they should and making the decisive move at the precise moment it opens up. The 2019 win here, where Mercedes two-stopped him and he came through to pass Verstappen in the closing stages is the template for what this circuit can produce and Hamilton is better at executing that template than almost anyone who has ever raced here.

McLaren have been building toward something for several rounds now and Hungary might be where it actually arrives. Back to back 1-2 finishes here in 2024 and 2025. A new rear wing that debuted at Spa more upgrades incoming this weekend and a circuit that rewards chassis quality and mechanical grip over straight line speed. The Mercedes power unit advantage that has made life difficult at circuits like Silverstone and Spa becomes less relevant at a track with one meaningful straight and fourteen corners. If there is a weekend this season where Norris and Piastri both qualify at the front and stay there the Hungaroring is the most plausible candidate. Whether the upgrade package is ready to deliver that rather than just promising it is the question this weekend will answer.

Verstappen needs something here. Belgium after the British GP disaster was not what Red Bull needed and Hungary historically has not been a Red Bull circuit in the same way that places like Bahrain or Azerbaijan have been. But the upgrade package has been incrementally finding pace and Verstappen at a track where racecraft and tyre management matter as much as raw speed is a different proposition to Verstappen at a power circuit where the car's limitations are most visible. He won here in 2022. He knows what a fast lap looks like. Whether the RB22 can give it to him is the thing.

The rain forecast is a pickle because the Hungaroring in the wet is one of those circuits where the normal rules simply stop applying. The lack of straight-line sections means that aquaplaning on the straights is less of a factor but the track surface between the resurfaced sections at Turns 1 and 12 and the older parts of the circuit could create grip differentials that are confusing in the dry and genuinely alarming in the wet. Strategy in a wet-dry Hungarian Grand Prix is where races are won and lost before many of the overtakes even happen. The teams that read the transition correctly and get their driver onto slicks at the right moment tend to end up on the podium regardless of where they started. The teams that get it wrong end up explaining themselves in the post-race debrief for a long time.

A few other things worth watching. Aston Martin have an upgrade coming that the team has been discussing for several weeks as their actual response to a difficult first half of the season. Whether it is the upgrade they've been promising or the upgrade they've been able to deliver are two different questions and Aston Martin's 2026 has been a lesson in the gap between those two things. Racing Bulls have the second new chassis available for Lawson this weekend, levelling the equipment situation with Lindblad who ran the first one at Spa and scored points. A team with competitive machinery on both sides is a different Racing Bulls to the one that's been operating with mismatched equipment.

Last race before the break. Three weeks off after Sunday(three weeks of binging old races) and then the second half of the season picks up where this one leaves off.

Forty points is still a lot by the way. Worth saying that before the momentum narrative takes over completely because George Russell winning in Austria and everyone deciding the championship is suddenly wide open is the kind of overreaction that race weekends produce and that the following two or three rounds then quietly correct. Kimi Antonelli still leads. He has finished on the podium in every race he has completed this season. He was two seconds behind Russell in Austria despite, by his own admission, making mistakes and spending the first stint recovering from a poor start. The gap closed because he retired in Barcelona and Russell won in Austria not because Russell is suddenly faster. Those are two different things and they matter when you're trying to work out what happens at Silverstone this weekend.

That said Russell is genuinely in form. Two wins, consistent pace in qualifying, and a confidence that has visibly built across the last three rounds after what was a quietly difficult mid season stretch. Silverstone has been a bogey track for him historically, best result a fifth which is strange for a driver of his ability at a circuit that suits the Mercedes. He knows this and he has said as much. Coming here off the back of Austria though with momentum and a crowd that will be loud regardless of which British driver they've backed, is the best possible preparation for breaking that particular pattern. If there's a weekend where the Russell of the last three rounds shows up, this is it.

The Verstappen situation is worth watching more carefully than his eighth place starting position in Austria suggested. He said afterwards it was the first time all season he genuinely felt he could fight for a win, which from Verstappen is not hyperbole, it's just a description of what the car felt like. The Red Bull upgrade that was supposed to arrive and fix everything actually arrived and fixed something, which is a meaningful distinction. Silverstone's power demands suit the Red Bull engine. If the chassis upgrade has genuinely addressed the rear instability that was causing the braking issues at Austria in practice, Verstappen this weekend could look very different to the Verstappen of the first eight rounds. People are sleeping on this and they probably shouldn't be.

Ferrari and Hamilton are the complicated conversation. Hamilton called Austria a "reality check" which is an unusually direct admission from a driver who usually finds more diplomatic language for a difficult weekend. The issue is straight line speed. Silverstone has more straights and longer deployment zones than almost anywhere else on the calendar and the Ferrari's deficit to the Mercedes on power is most visible exactly there. He won at Barcelona where the corners do the work. Here the straights do a lot of it. He said he hopes the crowd gives him an extra bit of performance, which is either genuine belief in the Silverstone effect or a way of managing expectations before the weekend starts. He knows this track better than almost any circuit on the calendar. Nine wins, twelve podiums in thirteen visits. The history is real. Whether history is enough to close a power deficit is the actual question.

Leclerc needs something to happen this weekend that the last few races haven't provided. A strategy that didn't work in Austria, a retirement in Monaco that wasn't his fault, a season that keeps producing individual moments of pace without converting them into results that reflect where the car is capable of finishing. Silverstone's high speed corners suit him. He qualified P2 at the Ring before the race unravelled. Getting back to that register is what his weekend looks like from the outside though Ferrari will have their own version of what that means internally.

McLaren. Norris won here last year, his first British Grand Prix victory and the scenes were genuinely worth watching even if you don't particularly follow him. He goes back as defending champion at his home race which is a strange and good thing to be. The MCL40 has been faster in race trim than qualifying pace has suggested at several circuits this year and Silverstone's tyre profile, front limited through Maggotts and Becketts, is somewhere McLaren historically manage well. They need a result. The constructors' gap to Mercedes is significant and it is not closing at a rate that suggests it's going to close on its own.

The sprint format compresses everything in a way that makes setup errors expensive. One practice hour on Friday before sprint qualifying runs in the afternoon. The teams have historically struggled more than they'd like to admit with this format at Silverstone, and the data from Friday carries into a sprint on Saturday morning before main qualifying runs in the afternoon. Getting the car right once in limited data time is difficult. Getting it right for two different contexts on the same weekend is harder. The teams that handle this most cleanly tend to be the ones that arrive with a clear setup direction from their simulations rather than trying to find it on track.

The championship picture, the home drivers, the Red Bull resurgence, the Ferrari straight line question, McLaren needing to show what the upgrade is actually worth. Silverstone has a habit of taking a season's worth of storylines and running them all through a single afternoon. Sunday at 3pm. Should be something.

Going into 2024, the reasonable expectation was another year of Max Verstappen winning races from the front while the rest of the grid filed in behind him in a reasonably orderly fashion. He'd won 19 of 22 races in 2023. Red Bull had been untouchable. The only real debate was whether anyone would make it interesting and the pre season answer to that was a polite but unconvincing maybe. And then the season actually started and it turned out to be one of the most genuinely compelling years the sport has produced in the hybrid era. The reasons for that are worth picking apart because they weren't accidental.

The first thing that made 2024 work was the McLaren upgrade at Miami. Not because it was dramatic in itself. Upgrade packages arrive every race weekend, most of them don't change much but because of what it unlocked. Before Miami, Norris had zero grand prix victories from 110 starts. After Miami he had one and suddenly he had a car that was actually the fastest thing on the grid on its day. McLaren went from being a team that finished third or fourth and called it a good race to being a genuine threat for wins. That shift changed the entire competitive picture overnight and it happened in round six of twenty four which meant there was a long way to go with a new variable in play.

Then there's the Verstappen factor which cuts both ways. Yes he won the championship. He was also, in the second half of the season clearly driving a car that wasn't the best on the grid and winning anyway through sheer bloody mindedness and racecraft that is frankly irritating to watch if you're not a Red Bull fan. Brazil especially. McLaren had the faster car, the better strategy, more of everything and Verstappen won. That kind of performance in a championship context doesn't make the title fight feel less competitive, it makes it feel more so because you're never quite sure whether the gap on the timing sheet actually reflects the gap in the race.

Austria was the moment the season revealed itself properly. Verstappen on pole, Norris directly behind him, sixty odd laps of the most sustained wheel to wheel combat between a championship leader and a genuine rival the sport had seen in years. They collided on lap 64. Both dropped out of the lead. Russell inherited the win. The fallout lasted weeks, stewards, opinions, Verstappen and Norris both absolutely convinced the other was wrong. That kind of tension doesn't happen unless both drivers genuinely believe they can win and genuinely cannot afford to lose. Austria had that. It made everything that followed feel like it mattered more.

Hamilton at Silverstone is the other thing. 945 days without a win, a season where the Mercedes just wasn't where it needed to be and then a wet-dry British Grand Prix that could have gone four different ways and went his. The crowd. The radio. The interview afterwards where he said there'd been days where he wasn't sure he was good enough anymore. That's the kind of moment that transcends F1 and becomes a sports moment and 2024 had several of them. Leclerc at Monaco finally, Norris's first win, Hamilton at Silverstone. Individual storylines that had been building for years paying off in the same season.

And then there was the off track news. Hamilton to Ferrari announced in February, which meant every single race from that point onwards had an additional layer of subtext. Was this his last year at Mercedes? How was he processing it? What did Toto think? The paddock gossip alone kept half the F1 internet occupied for twelve months. Newey leaving Red Bull. The driver market reshuffling completely. Four or five different stories that would each have been the dominant narrative in a quieter year all happening simultaneously.

None of this was guaranteed at the start of the year. McLaren's upgrade could have arrived and not worked. Verstappen could have kept winning from the front and the championship could have been over by August like 2023. The off track stories could have stayed off track. What made 2024 work was that everything landed at the same time. The competitive order shifted, the on track battles were genuinely fierce, the storylines had emotional weight, and the constructors' championship went to the final race.

McLaren won their first constructors' title since 1998. That's twenty-six years. People who were children when they last won it were at the track in Abu Dhabi watching them clinch it. That's not just a nice statistic, it's the kind of thing that reminds you why following a team across multiple seasons rather than just watching individual races means something. 2024 gave people who'd been waiting a long time their moment. It gave new fans a season worth staying for. And it gave everyone else the thing that F1 occasionally produces and can never manufacture on demand, a year where you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next.

That's why it was good. Turns out that's all it really takes.

I came to Formula 1 late. Five years ago, roughly, which means I walked into a sport that was already deep into the hybrid era and had no real reference point for anything that came before it. And for a while that was fine. Verstappen was dominant, the racing was occasionally brilliant, Toto Wolff was saying things in press conferences that made people angry, all the usual stuff. Then I went down a YouTube rabbit hole one evening, stumbled onto some old onboard footage, and heard a V10 for the first time through decent speakers. That was the end of the productive part of my week. I spent the next six months watching races from the late nineties and early 2000s and asking myself the same question over and over: what era of this sport was actually the best?

I still haven't answered it. So let's try.

The obvious starting point is the V10 era. 1995 to 2005, because it's the one that comes up every time this conversation happens and it comes up for reasons that aren't purely nostalgic. The cars were lighter, 595 kilograms compared to over 800 today. They moved differently through corners, constantly adjusting, sliding, responding to every input in a way that modern cars with their enormous downforce levels and traction control just don't. And the sound. Look, you either know what a V10 at 19,000rpm sounds like through a decent set of speakers or you don't, and if you don't then no description is going to do it justice. It wasn't loud the way traffic is loud. It was loud the way something genuinely alarming is loud. You felt it before you heard it. Trackside footage from Spa 1998 or Monza 2000 sounds like the laws of physics are being briefly suspended. Nothing since has come close.

But here's the complication. The V10 era had Schumacher winning everything from 2000 to 2004, five consecutive championships, Ferrari so dominant that large chunks of the fanbase genuinely stopped watching. The racing was often processional. The 2002 season in particular was so one sided that the FIA literally changed the rules mid season to try and make it interesting. A beautiful era, undeniably. Not always a great one to actually watch week to week.

 

The V8 era, 2006 to 2013, doesn't get nearly enough credit. It ran straight into a period of some of the best racing the sport has produced. 2007 and 2008 were extraordinary championship battles, 2010 had four drivers going into the final race with a mathematical chance of the title, 2012 had seven different winners in the first seven races. The cars weren't as visceral as the V10s but they still revved to 18,000rpm and they still made a noise that justified going to a race. And the driving, Alonso in 2012 was doing things with a Ferrari that wasn't the fastest car on the grid that should probably have its own documentary. Hamilton versus Massa at Interlagos 2008 is one of the greatest sporting moments I've watched on YouTube at 1am and felt genuinely stressed about despite knowing the result.

The turbo era of the 1980s is the wild card. 1,500 horsepower in qualifying trim in 1986. Drivers talking about the throttle response being almost undriveable, about the turbo lag making corner exits a lottery, about genuinely not knowing whether the engine was going to stay together for another lap. Prost versus Senna, Mansell versus everyone, cars that looked like they were barely controlled rather than precisely driven. It was chaotic and dangerous and produced some of the most dramatic racing the sport has ever seen. Whether chaotic and dangerous makes an era the best is a separate question.

And then the hybrid era, which is where I came in and which is where the argument gets uncomfortable for people who prefer the older stuff. Because the hybrid era has given us 2021, Abu Dhabi controversy aside, one of the most sustained championship battles in F1 history. It gave us 2026, which through seven rounds has been genuinely unpredictable in ways that the sport hasn't managed consistently for years. The cars are faster than anything that has existed before. The racing, since the 2022 regulation overhaul, has actually been good. The sound is worse. The weight is too high. The cars look enormous compared to the V10 machinery. All of that is true and none of it quite cancels out the fact that if you show someone a race from 2024 or 2025 cold, they'll probably be entertained.

So where does that leave us. The V10 era had the best cars and the best sound and the worst dominance problem. The V8 era had the best racing and never quite got the credit for it because it followed something that sounded more spectacular. The turbo eighties were insane in ways that the sport will never replicate and probably shouldn't try to. The hybrid era is faster, heavier, quieter, and occasionally better racing than any of them.

I think the honest answer is that your best era is the one you discovered first, the one that made you feel whatever you felt the first time a Formula 1 car made you care. For me that was the hybrid era. I watched it live, I followed it week to week, I got invested in the championship. And then I went back and watched the V10s and felt genuinely robbed of something I never had. Both of those things are true simultaneously and they don't resolve neatly.

 

What's yours?

Verstappen went into Turn 9 on his final Q3 lap, lost the rear completely and put the RB22 into the barriers. Yellows out, laps compromised, session over. Russell had already crossed the line, barely and the investigation into whether he'd ignored the yellows lasted long enough to make a few people uncomfortable before the stewards cleared him. Pole stands. 1:06.113, his first pole of 2026 and the first time this season that Antonelli hasn't started from the front row. That last bit is probably the more interesting story going into Sunday.

Antonelli had provisional pole after his first Q3 run. Comfortable, clean, looked like the session was heading somewhere predictable. Then Verstappen crashed and the yellows came out and Antonelli backed off his second lap. Reasonable call in the moment. He said afterwards it was a 'mistake', hard on himself maybe, but drivers ahead of him on track found time through the yellow zone that he didn't so maybe not. Either way he's fourth on the grid. At the Ring, with its long straight and the DRS zones, fourth is recoverable. It's also not where he wanted to be.

Ferrari on the front row in second and third is the headline that didn't quite get to be the headline because Verstappen's crash happened at the same time. Leclerc seven hundredths off Russell, Hamilton a tenth and a half back. Both Ferrari drivers found time on their second runs through the yellow zone,  the stewards looked at that too, cleared them and the result is the best Ferrari front grid position of the season. All weekend the SF-26 looked a bit lost. Then qualifying happened and suddenly they're on row one. Same thing happened at Barcelona. You'd think people would stop being surprised by this.

McLaren are a problem. Sixth and seventh, four tenths off pole, after a Friday where the long run data genuinely suggested they were in this fight. Norris said 'sixth is realistically where we are' which is a concerning thing to say out loud when you've been quick all weekend in race trim. The upgrade isn't doing enough. Or it is doing enough and the qualifying trim just isn't coming together the way race trim does. One of those two things is true and McLaren will know which one by Sunday afternoon.

Verstappen starts fifth after the crash. His team's home race, a brand new upgrade package that still hasn't shown what it's supposed to show and now a grid slot that makes points scoring straightforward but a win basically impossible. The Red Bull Ring crowd will be loud for him regardless. Whether the car gives them anything to actually cheer about is a different question.

Carlos Sainz got knocked out in Q1. So did both Cadillacs, Ocon and Alonso. Aston Martin 21st and 22nd, Fernando Alonso beat his teammate to the lesser disaster. The promised major development package still hasn't arrived. Whatever it is it needs to hurry up.

Tomorrow, Russell leads from the front with two Ferraris right behind him and the championship leader starting fourth in a Mercedes that is arguably the fastest race car in the field. Should be good.

 

Watched the Verstappen crash live and genuinely didn't know whether Russell's lap was going to stand for about four minutes which is a long time when you've been watching qualifying for an hour. Glad it stood. Makes Sunday more interesting.

The first thing worth saying about Friday at the Red Bull Ring is that nobody's floor caught fire in FP1. This counts as Cadillac's best result of the day. Valtteri Bottas managed that particular achievement in FP2, crawling back to the pits with part of his car dragging along the tarmac, titanium skidblock sparking against the ground until something ignited. Sergio Perez meanwhile, stopped on track in both sessions with electrical issues. Two Cadillacs, zero meaningful running, one fire. Quite the Friday. Kimi Antonelli who topped both sessions and is the first driver this season to do the Friday double, presumably noticed none of this because he was busy going fastest.

His FP2 time of 1:07.014 was two tenths clear of Oscar Piastri in second, with Lando Norris third. The two tenths matter less than how Antonelli found them. Antonelli improved on his second soft tyre run after Piastri had briefly held the top spot, found more time where most drivers couldn't, and generally behaved like a driver who is entirely comfortable in his car at a circuit that suits it. The 53-degree track temperature, the altitude, the uphill braking zones that were causing lock ups further down the field, none of it appeared to inconvenience him. He's making this look normal. It's not.

 

McLaren are the other story of the day and it is a genuinely interesting one. Norris lost most of FP1 to a hydraulics issue and arrived at FP2 with less data than he needed. He still ended up third. Piastri was second and looked quick in race trim as well as over a single lap. The long run data from FP2 suggested McLaren's degradation is still slightly behind Mercedes, Andrea Stella acknowledged as much in Barcelona but the gap is narrower than recent rounds suggested and the Red Bull Ring appears to suit the MCL40 in a way that the previous few circuits didn't. After a run of results that made the word contender feel generous, McLaren suddenly look like they might actually mean it again this weekend. Russell, of all people came out of FP2 more worried about the McLarens than about his own teammate. That is either a strange priority or an honest self assessment of where his afternoon went.

 

Because Russell's Friday is worth examining. FP1 he was second, four hundredths behind Antonelli and it looked like the intra-Mercedes battle was properly alive going into the weekend. Then FP2 happened and he ended up sixth, six tenths behind the same teammate, with two McLarens and a Red Bull and a Ferrari between them. His soft tyre lap was described as messy. He said the session was challenging. He is right that the McLarens look quick. He is probably also right that there are some overnight conversations to be had about a car that seemed to lose more than expected when the conditions got difficult in the afternoon heat.

 

Red Bull debuted their biggest upgrade package of the season here, which is either brave or necessary depending on how you interpret their first seven rounds. The results were cloudy. Verstappen was fourth, half a second off Antonelli, and complained that the rear felt like it was grabbing and locking through Turn 3 in a way that gave him no confidence under braking. Hadjar said almost exactly the same thing. The team believe the issues are unrelated to the upgrade itself, which may well be true and is exactly what a team says when the issues are related to the upgrade and they haven't worked out how yet. Whether that gets resolved overnight is the most interesting technical question going into Saturday.

 

Ferrari are the quiet concern. Hamilton fifth, Leclerc eighth, a combined deficit of nearly a second and a half to the top on a circuit that should at least be neutral for them if not positive. Leclerc only got in the car for FP2 after Dino Beganovic ran the mandatory rookie session in FP1, so his Friday data is limited. Hamilton looked tidy without looking fast. After Barcelona everyone was cautious about reading too much into a difficult Ferrari Friday and then they went and won the race so caution is warranted here too. But eighth and fifth after a session where the circuit should be telling the truth is not what Ferrari's weekend needed to look like.

FP3 tomorrow morning then qualifying in the afternoon. The picture is reasonably clear: Antonelli leads, McLaren are genuinely in this, Red Bull need Turn 3 to start making sense, and Russell needs his car to behave in a way it didn't today. Ferrari need something that Friday didn't show. Bottas needs a floor. Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring on a short lap with tight margins tends to be very good. Saturday should be interesting.

I watched Bottas' floor catching fire live and i spent the rest of the evening reading about Cadillac's season. It has not been a cheerful read. Saturday will be better. Probably. I hope.

Thank you for reading