Formula 1 resumes on 21 August 2026 with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, marking the end of a four-week summer break. Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli arrives with a 50-point lead in the drivers' standings, while twelve races remain on the calendar, with doubt still hanging over whether the Qatar and Abu Dhabi rounds will proceed given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Our F1 correspondent Andrew Benson addresses reader questions on the teams making headlines during the break, chiefly Cadillac and Haas.
What prompted Cadillac's leadership change?
Cadillac chief executive Dan Towriss confirmed last week that he had long anticipated a moment when Graeme Lowdon would step aside as team principal, though he acknowledged the switch arrived earlier than planned.
sooner than expected
Lowdon and Towriss spent the previous four years building Cadillac's operation under considerable pressure, not least because the team lacked an official grid entry until March 2025 — barely a year before its first race. Towriss praised Lowdon's work in assembling a team from nothing while facing uncertainty right up until the last moment over whether the outfit would even compete. Even so, it is evident the American businessman was dissatisfied with results across the opening 11 races, prompting him to remove Lowdon and install the highly experienced Marcin Budkowski in his place. According to Cadillac's own communications, Budkowski has now formally taken over as team principal for the remainder of the campaign, replacing Lowdon as the squad heads into its final stretch of races (Cadillac's official team site).
Lowdon had consistently tried to temper expectations for what Cadillac could realistically achieve in its debut seasons, yet a gap appears to have opened between his own timeline for progress and what Towriss was hoping to see.
How bad has Cadillac's on-track performance been?
Setting aside Aston Martin's troubled opening ten races, Cadillac has trailed the next-slowest team, Williams, by an average of 1.2 seconds — and Williams itself is already enduring a difficult year, sitting 0.4 seconds behind Haas. With Aston Martin now having rolled out a significant upgrade package, Cadillac risks spending the rest of the season isolated at the back of the field. Compounding matters, the team has suffered persistent reliability failures, most visibly brakes catching fire — a scene that has become depressingly familiar, often occurring early in races or practice sessions.
Formula 1's team standings currently place Cadillac 11th in the championship, according to the sport's official team page, underlining the scale of the challenge facing Budkowski as he takes charge.
When pressed on whether a blame culture and internal silos had taken hold, Towriss conceded both were genuine issues, though he characterised them as growing pains rather than deep-rooted problems.
early stage business issues
He said the team now needs what he called a structure built around a technically strong team principal — the approach that has paid off for McLaren under Andrea Stella and, more recently, for Red Bull under Laurent Mekies.
a model with a very strong technical team principal
Towriss stressed the change was driven less by mechanical failures and more by a broader need for clarity of direction.
about just having a clear vision on what we're building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that matches the ambitions of ownership
What can Aston Martin expect from Honda's new engine at Zandvoort?
The significance of Honda's revised power unit, due to debut at the Dutch Grand Prix, lies less in immediate results and more in whether it demonstrates the manufacturer has diagnosed its underlying problems. Aston Martin's engineers believe their engine has been costing roughly 1.5 seconds a lap compared with the fastest units on the grid for much of the season so far. Neither Honda nor the team has publicly quantified how much performance the Zandvoort update should recover, but internally Aston Martin hopes it will close around a third of that deficit.
The broader question is whether Honda can show it understands where it went wrong and has genuine solutions in place, particularly as it continues developing its engine for the new 2027 regulations. That matters most of all to Fernando Alonso, who is reportedly waiting to see how the upgraded Honda performs before committing to remain at Aston Martin beyond this year.
One encouraging sign is the return of several engineers who previously worked on Honda's title-winning partnership with Red Bull, now reassigned to this project. However, Alonso has been here before — during his time at McLaren, Honda both misjudged its own engine's competitiveness and failed to deliver promised gains through upgrades. The fact that Honda has avoided making bold predictions this time suggests it may have learned from the first mistake; Alonso will be watching closely to see whether it has also learned from the second.
Why is Haas slipping down the order?
As the smallest team on the grid in terms of both staff and budget, Haas faces structural disadvantages that are difficult to overcome. The team entered 2026 fresh off its best-ever points haul in 2025 and had its new car ready on schedule — a contrast with several bigger-name rivals it has continued to beat this season. Remarkably, Haas is achieving this while not even spending up to the full budget-cap allowance, making its performance relative to its size genuinely impressive.
Haas opened the year with points finishes in three consecutive races, highlighted by Oliver Bearman's fifth place in China. At that stage the team was, on average, the sixth-fastest in qualifying — a position built on an early chassis advantage while rivals were still finding their footing. That edge has since eroded: Haas has dropped to eighth in qualifying pace, now behind both Racing Bulls and Audi, as competitors introduced upgrades and adapted more fully to this year's regulations.
Despite the slide, Haas continues to benefit from its strong start and currently sits seventh in the constructors' championship at the season's midpoint. The team introduced its own upgrade in Canada, bringing a new floor, bodywork and rear suspension, but team principal Ayao Komatsu said the update coincided with the discovery of what he termed a serious shortfall in high-speed downforce.
fundamental weakness
Team owner Gene Haas's long-standing reluctance to invest heavily in facilities has been a source of frustration, though a new simulator — funded through the team's recent partnership with Toyota — is due to come online soon and should offer some relief. Questions remain, however, about Gene Haas's broader intentions: he shows little appetite for further investment, yet no interest in selling the team either, leaving the outfit in something of a holding pattern.
Could Germany return to the F1 calendar?
Formula 1 president Stefano Domenicali raised the prospect of a German Grand Prix comeback during a media briefing at the start of the summer break. The race last featured in 2019 before dropping off the schedule when organisers could not make the economics work.
Germany, for the first time, we are reconnecting with the possibility of having contact with the Hockenheim people to see if in the future, mid-term, not short term, they can have a race back.
Whether Germany returns hinges on organisers assembling a viable financial package, which is not currently in place — though that calculus could shift if Audi becomes competitive enough to give the sport two German manufacturers fighting at the front. Domenicali has also made clear he does not want the calendar to grow beyond 24 races, and there is separate pressure to add new events, notably in Africa.
What about the Middle East races in 2027?
Amid the continuing conflict, the current plan is for the 2027 season to open in the Middle East, as it last did in 2024, after Australia hosted the season-opener for the past two years to accommodate the timing of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
So far, the calendar that will be presented, let's say in autumn, will be as a sort of a normal plan. But of course, in case the situation in the Middle East will be not solved, we have options, [a] different plan. And the trigger for that is at the end of the year. So we have still a lot of time, if I may say, to adjust. We have different plans with different options ready in place that will accommodate the fact that we will keep, in any case, the target of 24 countries also for next year.
Should Bahrain and Saudi Arabia be unable to open the 2027 championship, the likely fallback mirrors this year's solution — starting instead in Australia before moving on to China and Japan.
How did Cadillac join the grid?
Cadillac's arrival followed formal approval from the FIA and Formula One Management in March 2025, confirming the operation as Formula 1's 11th team ahead of the 2026 season (Formula 1's official announcement). The entry, operating under TWG Motorsports and General Motors, was built around ambitions for its own chassis and engine programme in the years ahead (Formula 1's explainer on the entry). A separate Formula 1 feature published in April 2026 noted Cadillac stood as the first entirely new constructor to join the grid in a decade (Formula 1's season review).
General Motors announced on 26 August 2025 that it had signed Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez to multi-year contracts to lead the team's debut campaign (General Motors' announcement), and both drivers remain listed as the team's current line-up on Formula 1's official team page.
What happens next?
The Dutch Grand Prix weekend runs across three days, with sprint qualifying on 21 August 2026, the sprint session and full qualifying on 22 August, and the race itself on 23 August 2026, according to Cadillac's published race schedule. Cadillac's own team calendar likewise lists the Netherlands round for 21-23 August before the championship moves into its remaining twelve-race run (Cadillac's official calendar). Budkowski will oversee his first race weekend in charge at Zandvoort as he looks to address the reliability and performance issues that led to Lowdon's departure, while Aston Martin's revised Honda engine and Haas's response to its downforce shortfall will also be under close scrutiny as the season resumes.
Key Facts
- The Dutch Grand Prix takes place from 21 to 23 August 2026 at Zandvoort, ending F1's four-week summer break.
- Cadillac has replaced team principal Graeme Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski and currently sits 11th in the constructors' championship.
- Aston Martin's revised Honda engine is expected to recover roughly a third of an estimated 1.5-second lap-time deficit.
- Haas has slipped to eighth-fastest in qualifying pace despite sitting seventh in the constructors' standings.
- Formula 1 is preparing contingency calendars for 2027 in case the Middle East conflict prevents races in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Abu Dhabi.
