🔥 F1 2026 Predictions | Championship Picks, Biggest Fall Off & Wildcard Chaos

0:00Ready, set, go get your Toyota today, with great deals on your favorite trucks at your local Toyota dealer, like a full-size Tundra, or check out the off-road ready to coma. Visit toyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them. By voting yes, by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes, by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Now. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the F For me, America podcast where you host Curtin Dillon.

1:00And it's it. This is it. Dillon is one. It's race week. For two, we've got the today is going to be our pre-season predictions. We've got our pre-Milborn race predictions coming up, Melbourne race predictions coming up and we're also dropping and after dark this week we've got a busy week. We got a very busy week. Hopefully people actually listen to them all. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. But one thing I'm doing like one podcast every two to three weeks over the winter break, and here's three all at once. Yeah, you can space it out better. Look, we've been busy. We've had a lot going on and we're ready for the season and to get back on a regular schedule. But before we get into this preseason prediction pod, there is something that I want to discuss of a bit of concern right now because I just realized that both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are less than a month away. And both of them have been affected by everything that's going on over there. And I think there's a good chance that this could cause a potential issue for the races. Yeah, they're definitely could. They're actually right now for this week running into issues because everyone

2:00was at Bahrain for testing, getting to Melbourne. There's still some team equipment there. And so I was watching a news article this morning. They're routing people through Singapore that are trying to get people back to London and doing straight Heathrow to Perth. And like they said, it's a bit of anarchy right now. Everything is on track to get to Melbourne on time. But they said it's definitely cutting it a little closer than they wanted to. And Formula One is already a logistics nightmare. And can you imagine now you're throwing in airspace closures the entire Dubai airports shut down. That's the busiest international airport. Like there's a lot of issues right now. So yeah, it's going to be interesting. I'm curious as to what they're going to do. I know they're having meetings. They're trying to figure it out. But I mean, both of those areas are kind of hot right now. And so there's a good chance those races can either be canceled or changed. But man, that's a nightmare as well if you're changing dates on the calendar. Yeah. So that'll be that'll get interesting. But

3:03yeah. But we are here for preseason predictions. We are. I think I have scribbled through everything on my book at least once, sometimes twice. I've been given it a lot of thought. And like we keep saying, how do you know right now? Everything's up in the air. These are these are complete unknowns, I feel like. But we're going to do our best to predict them. I'm sure most of these are not going to age very well. They never do. They never they never do. Our points are never high on the predictions. So we're going to go over constructors, our top three and bottom three. We're going to pick the top three drivers, surprise podium or stand out or fall off in our wild card for the year. That's that's what we're doing. All right. You want to hop right in? Where should we start? Sort of the constructors. I think everything kind of it'll be interesting to follow the teams first, I think. Okay. So constructors, let's start with our bottom three, which I had to remember

4:06how many teams we had. I had to scratch that number out. There are 11 teams. It's going to say 19 11, not 19 9 to 11, which it wigs me out like I'm I need a nice round number. And we're sitting on 11. We got to add another team here real soon. Christian Horner. Yeah. Come on, buddy. All right. So in the bottom, 11th place, who do you have coming in last? This is when I've actually scratched out twice. And I don't want to do it. But I'm not changing it again. Cadillac. Yeah. Cadillac, you know what? They they had a decent enough testing because they are for a brand new operation. I mean, you can't really expect them to be too high. They've got that for our engine. But yeah, you're right. They are brand new. I, uh, they've got Botos and Checko, which I think are both, you know, really good drivers. None of them. I don't think either one of them is the standout going to get the surprise podium style style of drivers. I think they're

5:10really good development drivers, really aged, very experienced, but they're not a wild card. I don't think so. I think that's going to play into this. Yep. And I also had Cadillac. And I'm not going to change it because my other two, I have some confusion around. So I don't want to move Cadillac up. So both of us are sitting with Cadillac coming in dead last. All right. 10th place. What do you got there? Haas. Oh, they also had the Ferrari engine. Yeah. The poor Haas. This is when I scratched out. I moved them. They weren't originally all my bottom three. And then I was looking at it was like, I'm unwilling to take a bet on somebody else being lower at this point. Yeah. That was one that I had in my bottom three. And I also scratched it out. I moved them. They are not in my bottom three anymore. But for nothing else, other than I do not want to see the two American teams coming in dead last. Yeah. I don't either. Like I'm like very conflicted.

6:13But then I start looking at my other options. And I'm like, well, no, I think they're going to do better. I don't know. Yep. All right. So in 10th place, this is one I have scratched out many times, but I'm sticking with it. I'm putting Audi in in 10th place. Audi's my nine. Oh, okay. Well, my ninth, I will say I have Williams there. Williams was my ninth. And they're the ones I scratched out and put out of there. Yeah. You know, with Audi, it's another almost brand new operation. Yeah, they took over a lot, but they also have a lot of new stuff. Brand new in our unit. Yeah. And I just it tested well. But I mean, 24 races is a lot of races. And I would not be surprised to start seeing some issues, some reliability issues coming up, especially with that powertrain, you know, Gabby Bordeletto and Nico Holcombberg, I think are an amazing team and work well together. But I think they can only do so much with what they're given. And I'm not that high on that car being super reliable. And I think that Audi, I mean, realistically,

7:20cannot expect to come in here and be competing anywhere near the top, right? They know this is you know, great time to get into the sport. Regulation change. Everything is going to be shook enough. You're not coming in while, you know, Mercedes and Red Bull have the last generation of cars pegged down to the, you know, milliseconds. So I think it's a good move. But just like Williams over the past couple of years, they're going, hey, please don't break everything. But like, give us a few years. Yeah. For sure. And I think and I hope that next year we'll start to see Cadillac and Audi kind of moving up in that order a little bit. But I think it's, it's not a far reach to put them both down there in the bottom three. But I didn't put Williams down there. I scratched him out because one, I really like James Vals. I think you got a great team principle in that Mercedes engine is ominous. I think it is. You know, if they've just got a little bit more horsepower, they're going to make it, you know, they're going to clear the bottom three. Yeah. Well, the issue with Williams is they came in first off, they missed Spain because of their issues.

8:23Come to find out the cars overweight, the aerodynamic package, apparently from what the rumours are saying isn't the best. So I just think they got a lot of hurdles to overcome. And I do like James Vals and Carlo signs is probably my second favorite driver right now. And so I think they've got a really good opportunity, but that car again, I feel like the hurdles to overcome with the car are probably a little higher than they would like to have right now. I agree. But those are very solvable problems, I think. So I just, I don't, it'll be interesting. It will. We will find out. All right. Moving on from there. Bottom three. Let's go to the top three constructors. This one has given me a lot of issues as well. I feel like all the categories. I wrote these down straight through and went, I like that. I have not stretched a single one out. All right. Well, you know what? Let's go. Let's hear your top three in, you know, ascending order. You want me to get through all three of them? Yeah. Let's hear it.

9:25All right. At number three, I've got Ferrari. Okay. At number two, I've got Red Bull. At number one, I have Mercedes. Wow. We are completely different. Good. I'm hoping so. Yeah. That's interesting. That's interesting. I mean, I think Mercedes is like the easy choice to win on top in my opinion. There's so much that could, you could argue that seven different ways this Sunday, but they've got a great driver team. The engine is, is ominously good. They're, they're weirdly, weirdly confident. Red Bull is a bit of an unknown, but you have max or seven. So, you know, and then I went, and for my number three was Ferrari and McLaren. And I just, I felt like Ferrari was the right answer. Wow. All right. So my top three, in third place, I have Mercedes. Okay. Second place, I have McLaren. And in first place,

10:29you have Ferrari. I have Ferrari. I am feeling it. I feel the power. I look, man. So first off with Mercedes, I feel like they, they do have a strong package. The only reason I didn't put them higher is because I think that it's going to come down to consistency and point scoring. We all know George Russell is Mr. Consistency. He's going to be scoring the points. I think that Kimmy is very much like how Lando was where his performances are very closely tied to his mental state at the time. And so I think he'll have good points, but he's going to have weekends where he's going to be off. McLaren, on the other hand, I feel like Oscar and Lando are going to be consistent. I don't think they're going to be at the very top, but they're going to be both consistently grabbing enough points to push them up. And Ferrari. I'm really curious about Lando this year. Like Oscar now has something to prove. He needs to get something going for himself. Lando, you know, reached the top. And so all of that weight is lifted off of him,

11:32which I think is going to benefit him. But I also don't know that he has the hunger to be the best again. And I think that's going to draw it back. So I'm curious week to week where Lando's going to shake out. I wonder how that's going to affect that consistency. Yeah, you're right. I think that it like you said, it could go either way either. He comes and there's no no stress. And he's just out there having fun all the way or like all the time at the front or he's going to come there and just be like, I did it. Like whatever he's like checked out, but I don't know. We'll see. But for Ferrari though, the reason I put them on number one, I feel like we talked about before how Ferrari is this giant ship and takes a long time to turn on the ship. I feel like since Fred got there, he's been yanking the wheel trying to get that thing around. And finally, I feel like they're at a point where they're starting to straighten out. You know, they had last year, they brought Lewis Hamilton, which was a big risk. He obviously, like he said, he inherited a car. So he couldn't really get behind it. But now this year's car, he said it has a ton of his DNA in it. He's excited for this year. They got rid of Ricardo

12:36Adami, his engineer, which we all know. That was a huge point of contention for Lewis last year. And now we've got Charlotte Claire, who's looking happy. We all know that at least in my opinion, Charlotte Claire is one of the better drivers on the grid. He just hasn't had the package to really consistently show what he's got. But Ferrari is exciting this year. I mean, look, they came out with that freaking flippy floppy rear wing that they had, whether it works or not, we don't know, but I mean, just the excitement will find out of bringing something like that and testing it. I feel like Ferrari a few years ago would not have taken a risk like that. And then, you know, for what you're what we're hearing about them, evidently going with potentially a smaller turbo in order to nail the starts, because they realized early on that the starts were going to be an issue with these cars. I feel like there's an excitement around this team. And I think it's going to, I think it's going to show them performance. And I think they're both going to get a lot of points. So Ferrari's taking it this year. Constructors. I'd be cool with that. I won't complain. Everybody's a Ferrari fan. Everybody's not hard. Yep. All right.

13:38One team that we did not mention that I think needs mentioning. Asa Martin. Yeah. Yep. What do you got on them? So I've seen that they are planning a B-spec car in round six, which I think is Saudi. And I'm very, you know, they weren't either one of our top three, which I think we both agree makes sense with the team that you have over there. But what's going to happen? I'm now seeing things they're talking about not even finishing Melbourne because of the power unit. Yeah. I don't know. Like that was a rumor mill thing that going around, but the fact that that's even circulating and you're going, maybe it's like, uh, guys, this is ominous. If you're betting March madness, you should be doing it at my bookie. This is the best betting stretch of the year. Upsets, buzzer beaters. And if you're going to take your shot, you might as well take it where the payouts hit harder. Only at my bookie, you've got the money bag. Money bag gives you boosted odds and juiced payouts on select games. Same fix,

14:41bigger potential returns. When you're staring at that sweet 16 matchup or loading up a final four play, my bookie can turn a good hit into a great one. This isn't the week to sit back and wait. Lines are moving. Futures are tightening. The edge is right now. Head to mybookie.ag, use code NBA SZN and get your first bet covered up the five hundred bucks. If it misses, just activate your bet back bonus token and run it back. March only comes once. But it's smart, bet it big. Only at my bookie. It's like, you're not in the good way, not like the Mercedes engine ominous, ominous, the other direction. Yeah. Everybody had such high hopes. They got so much money. They've been, you know, Lawrence Stroll has been collecting people like Avengers, like getting them over there. And it's just, it's kind of fall and flat. Honda, interestingly, put out a statement recently saying that it's an issue with the parts working together properly that's causing a bunch of vibrations that they didn't anticipate that are causing a lot of issues

15:43with the electrical power unit. And the chassis vibrates and it's messing with things apparently. Right. So I feel like they have all these awesome components. They just haven't found a way to get them to kind of come together and work properly. And I feel like they're going to figure it out. I don't think they're going to be in the bottom. I think they're going to figure it out. I think it's going to be kind of like how McLaren had the B-Spec car two years ago or whatever it was, where they start out the very back of the pack. And then by Miami or Silverstone, one of them, they brought my new car. And then all of a sudden, they're winning races. And so I think Ashton Martin will probably be doing something similar. It's just I agree. Right now it's kind of shocking. It makes me think about when the RB19 came out and everyone was talking about how fancy the floor is and how Adrian Neue put that floor together. And then I believe it was like Monaco or something when Checo crashed it and they lifted the car up and everyone was taking pictures of the floor. They asked Christian Horner afterwards. They were like, you know, are you worried? Everyone just got to see your floor. And he's like, I don't care. He's like, it's way more than the floor. You

16:46need the entire package. You can put that floor on another car and it won't work. It is a full package that works together. It's a system. That's kind of to your point, like how I feel about this Ashton Martin, like, you got all the ingredients. Now, how do I put the package together right to make them all work together? Yep. And I don't doubt that they'll figure it out. And one thing is Fernando Alonzo is notoriously vocal when he's not happy and when things aren't going his way. I feel like he hasn't been as vocal about this. So it almost lets me know at least, or leads me to believe that he knows that something's coming. Yeah. L plan. Remember those days of that? Yes. All right. Drivers. Yes. Drivers. Top three. This one's exciting. I didn't change these. I wrote these down. Didn't touch them. I've been thinking about these for days. I had to put a little bit more thought into this than I did in my top three constructors. But yeah, I didn't scratch a single one out. So I've been leading off. Let's hear your three top three.

17:49All right. My top three. Third place. Lewis Hamilton. Okay. All right. Second place. Max, we're stepping. First place championship 2026 world drivers champion. Charlotte Claire. It's gonna. He just got married. He's got a new and that beautiful Ferrari 11 million dollars. They said it worth his worth. But yeah, Charlotte Claire, I think is I think this is his year. Those boys are going to get it. And of course, Max. I'm fine. You'll be up there. Yeah. So I've gotten P3. Charlotte. P2. Georgie Boy. Okay. P1. Max for staff. Oh, man. See, Red Bull, which I know we've mentioned it before. Red Bull is a big question mark right now.

18:51And I don't know if it's going to be fast enough. But again, you can never count Max out. I feel like that could be the fourth fastest car in the grid. And yet Max is still going to be there enough times to do it. He did last year. Exactly. That was the fourth fastest car on the grid. Maybe the fifth. We're not really sure. Exactly. You got him in first place. I got him in second place. I don't know. It's going to be any one of those. Who knows? I'm a little bit relying on the fact that I've become a Laurent Meckys fan. I like his style of management a ton. And I think that's going to go a long way. They've had a lot of people harvested from them for sure. They're a big question mark. They had to, you know, do their own power unit. They got a good one at the helm. It's kind of like having total wolf at the top. Like I feel strongly that that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. I do agree. And I think the reason I did not put them on my constructors list higher is because they also got Isaac Hajar who I think is

19:57a great driver, but kind of untested. I feel like. And we all know even though it's a brand new car that Red Bull second seat, it's got it's tainted. And I don't know if he's going to be the one to come in and cleanse that right away or what? But we'll see. I'm also relying. I think the young guys are going to perform well. The video gamers are going to do well in these. And so to your point, I'm not arguing, but I'm kind of arguing that I think Hajar's got a better chance of breaking the second car curse because you're playing a video game right now. And he's probably pretty good at yeah, exactly. But then you also interesting counterpoint to that is people like Lewis and Alonzo who like Lewis famously does not like simulators and things like that. And he did really well when the cars were a little bit more analog. I don't know. Hopefully he can get hopefully he has the mental capacity to get behind it. But yeah, you're right. It's like giving these old guys a controller and seeing what happens. Yeah. We'll see. All right. Surprise podium. Let's do it.

21:03I'll go first. My surprise podium kind of leads into a conversation we had a second ago. I think Fernando Alonzo will be on the podium this year at some point. I think they'll get that car turned around and he'll be on the podium. I would really like to see him get that 33rd victory. But I'll stop it podium. Yeah, I think that one might be a stretch. I've got Alex Albon. Nice. They got a lot overcome, but hey, we could have a crazy race. And who knows? Yes, but I originally thought about signs. Signs on the podium multiple times borderline on merit last year. But I was like, I can't put signs on there. That's not really a surprise podium. He was on the podium a couple of times last year. But I was like, I'll throw Albon on there though. That's I mean, that Williams might have a chance. I don't know. Yeah. The the Williams episode of Drive to Survive. It's pretty funny to see how they're going through all Carlos's struggles. And Alex is the one. He's like all there like up there. He's had a P4 finish and all this. And then he starts falling off and cut signs gets the podium. And Alex is like, yeah,

22:05of course, I wish it was me up there. But you know, I had to celebrate. And just the way like they show them on the sidelines sitting there while signs on the podium made you feel for like he is a really good guy. But he'll get his he is a really good guy. That's a good at you. Him and Lando and George, although a little British guys. All right. Moving on from surprise podium. Let's go with standout performer of the year. Now this could be a team or a driver. So who do you have as your standout? Kimmy Antonelli. Kimmy Antonelli. Okay. Okay. Why do you stand out? Why do you what do you think is going on with Kimmy? I think the kids got talent and that Mercedes is going to be good. And he's going to put it to use. He had he had flashes of it last year. But he was a rookie. A lot of figuring things out last year. It's second year. I think we kind of might get some Oscar Piestriism, if you will, because I think that he's going to do well and be much more consistent and probably win a few and do I'm rooting for him. I think that he's going to do really

23:06well this year. I think it's going to he's going to stand out. Yeah. That's another one that was interesting was the Mercedes episode of drive survive. And you got to see. Kimmy had the weight of the world on his shoulders last year. You know, he got put in he he first off, he skipped F3 straight to F2 for a year. Then got put in the F1 car. Replacing Lewis Hamilton of all people. And so he went. But he had Bono as an engineer. He did. He did. He went straight to the big leagues, the big team like star of the show, basically. And unfortunately, you know, the pressure got to him for a bit. But you could see as he started to get more comfortable, then his performance started to come back. But yeah, I think Kimmy's going to do pretty well this year. My standout performance is I'm going to go with Lewis Hamilton on this one. And I'm comparing this off of last year. You know, he did not have a great year. He ended up. That's not saying much. Yeah. Lewis Hamilton had a complete shit year last year. And so he, you know, first year at not getting any podiums finished in P6 and the constructors. I've got him in P3

24:11at minimum this year. So I'm going to go. He's going to be my standout of the year. Cool with that. My fall off is going to be controversial. What do you got? I don't want to say his name. But I think it's it's likely. Okay. What's what's this? Fernando Alonzo. Oh, as the fall off. Things so, man, I think those cars are complicated. Fernando's the past couple of years. He was having a great time. But like you said, they're notoriously outspoken when things aren't going well. Things are not going to go well in the beginning of the season. He's going to think the cars are gimmicky. And he's going to be like, why am I here? Like this isn't fun. And I think it's just going to go downhill. Yeah. Well, he finished P10 last year. You know, it's actually interesting. Isn't it Fernando a while back that had the quotes where he knew he could take somebody in the corner because the other guy had kids or something like that. He said that about Michael Schumacher going around the 130 R and Suzuki. Okay. Okay. And now Fernando just had a kid. And so maybe he'll look

25:18at life a little bit differently and just realize, you know, I've been doing this a long time. Be like four scump when he gets down this road. He's like, I'm tired. I think I'll go home now. I think that's going to, I think unfortunately, I don't want that to happen. I'm a big, I like where Fernando's at. But it's, it seems very plausible to me. I just biologically, I mean, he can't continue much longer. Not at that level. I mean, and not when you're not having fun. And I don't think he's going to have a lot of fun with these gimmicky cars. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Man, Fernando's been around for since the cars were just, I think they, they probably just went to Flappy paddles when he got there. That was in 91, I believe. So maybe not quite that far, but close, close. All right. All right. So my fall off of the year is a team. And I'm going with Williams. They were P5 last year in the championship. A lot of hype, a lot of upward momentum it looked like. And then I feel like the wind has just completely been taken out of their sales this

26:22year at the beginning and testing. So we'll see what happens. But I'm predicting them as my biggest fall off. That's, that's fair. It's another one. I don't want it to be that way. But yeah, it's, it's fair. Wild card. Okay. Wild card of the season. This one, there's no, no restrictions. We could do whatever we want on this or whatever. Yeah. I'm interested to see where you went. I will, I'll start off. My wild card for this year is that there will be one team principle that will be replaced mid season. I don't know who you want to, do you want to guess at who it won't count? But do you have, do you have a feeling somewhere? I, I, I don't know. I don't know who I, I, I can't even guess who. Um, but I feel like there will be, just love your Breatory count as a team principle if he gets replaced. You know, it's funny. In that conversation, I always wrap in Breatory, Zach Brown, you know, I kind of wrap them in as team principles, even though I know they

27:22also have other team principles, I just look at them as team leadership. So I would wrap them in. So okay. So Zach Brown, even though he's CEO and Stella is principle, but we don't want, yeah, that's how he owned it. Like, uh, okay, all right. All right. I have more of a subjective one, but we can discuss whether it happens or not. We're going to have some fireworks between Lewis and Charles. Oh, because they're both going to be fighting for wins. They are. They're going to be competing at the top. And I, I think that there's going to be some Ferrari inner driver drama. I'm trying to make it as not subjective. I mean, it's a very subjective thing, but I'm trying to like set a bar that like, we're going to see some, some driver fight and going on and we're going to be like, oh, yeah, there we go. That's some drama. It's subjective, but it's one of those things where when you see it, you know it, like, like, imagine, like think back to that time when Lewis threw the hat at Nico

28:25and the Nico wants to hat right back at him. Like, when you see it, you know it. And I feel like that one has a high likelihood. That's, that's a volatile situation. You got Charlotte Clare who, that's his team. He's been there for years, but you also got Lewis Hamilton coming in. He's like, I'm saying Lewis Hamilton coming in. And you know, he's been throwing his weight around trying to get that car to where he wants it. And he's been making some moves behind the scenes. And I'm sure it's starting to get to Charlotte Clare a little bit. And I could, I, I could see that one happening. Yeah. It'll be interesting. Yeah, for sure. It's going to be a weird season. I am so excited for Melbourne this weekend. We've got, I think, quality we're all going to be freaking glued to the screen on who's actually fast. And then that, that Saturday night race start, I think is going to be shenanigans. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I'm super pumped for Q3. Because then we're finally, all the glows will finally be off. And we're going to get to see where everybody's at. I think that wraps up what our preseason. I mean, you've got a lot of predictions here. We'll

29:27see what happens. And we, no, no, I don't think we overlapped it all except for, for, for our EP three constructor. No, we didn't even overlap there. We overlapped on the bottleneck constructors. Cadillac was our only thing that was the same. Yeah, which is surprising. But I think goes to show how everything's all over the board right now. Last year, hang on because I want it. Let me pull it up. Where's Formula America prediction scores? How do we do last year? I believe you won it for the first time. Prediction. No, I pulled it ahead. 40 to 36. Yeah. So the year before that, I won 50 to 34. Last year, you won, or I won 40 to 36 right there at the end. Yeah. This is my score six points in the last two races. And you scored one. And that was why I took it. It was the last two races. Look, me, this year, me and Ferrari are going to have the same trajectory. We've been

30:29showing flashes the past couple of years. But this year, we're taking it. We're taking it, baby. That that's trajectory is going to go straight to the top or straight to the very new lowest bottom that LeClair has found. I'm just fast-forwarding to the end of the year. I was like, how did Ferrari finish P6? I could just say, where did it all go wrong? LeClair is just in the corner crying. So that's where that's that's where we're at. Here we go. Yep, here we go. So it's finally race week. Like we said, we've got after dark about to drop this week. And then at the end of the week, we will have our Australian Grand Prix prediction pod. And then we're hitting the races. We're we're off to the races just like the drivers are. So make sure you follow us on Instagram, formula underscore America. And also on YouTube, Formula America there as well. And make sure if you like this podcast, you leave us a review and share it with a friend, but Dylan, do you have anything else on this preseason prediction pod?

31:32Now I think that's it. All right. Well, on that note, stay classy, America. We'll see you next time.