Antonelli vs Russell, Hamilton’s charge, Verstappen’s future and more – F1 legends on the 2026 season so far

After a busy first half of the 2026 campaign, F1 drivers and teams are now enjoying a well-earned break. That means it's the perfect moment to reflect on some of the hot topics from the year so far – from the Mercedes intra-team battle to Lewis Hamilton’s resurgence with Ferrari…

Just before the Belgium/Hungary double-header, F1.com individually gathered the thoughts of several F1 legends: namely Emerson Fittipaldi (1972 and 1974 F1 World Champion), Damon Hill (1996 World Champion), Gerhard Berger (10-time Grand Prix winner), Juan Pablo Montoya (seven-time Grand Prix winner), Thierry Boutsen (three-time Grand Prix winner), and Stefan Johansson (12-time podium finisher).

So, what did they all have to say about what’s happened on and off the track over the first 11 rounds? And what are they hoping to see when the racing action resumes? Read on to find out…

How do you view the Mercedes intra-team fight?

Emerson Fittipaldi: “Kimi Antonelli is doing a fantastic job, and he’s showing his potential. I’ve known him since he was racing in karts many, many years ago. I know Marco, his father, very well, and I know the family well. Marco even coached my son Emmo in F4. It’s a great Italian family from Bologna – good people, racing people.

“I think for the sport it’s good to have a new boy on the block, you know? He’s only 19, and he can win the championship. He’s putting tremendous pressure on George Russell, and George, again, has shown he’s strong. If George takes that pressure in a positive way, like he showed many times he can do, I think it will be very interesting for the fans. It’s going to be a dice for the rest of the championship.”

Gerhard Berger: “This is F1. If you are in a top team in F1, you always have to deal with somebody coming in quick. I’m sure Lewis Hamilton also wishes sometimes for somebody other than Charles Leclerc, from a speed point! George had a wake-up call from Antonelli – Antonelli seems to be quite special, no question. George, I can see he’s pushing very much, I can see he puts it very much to the limit.

“I don’t think it’s the right way to put money on it [who wins the title]. One is the risky, young, hot blood, the other is already much more experienced and will play the ball back into Antonelli’s field. Last year, in the beginning, it looked like Oscar Piastri was going to beat Lando Norris, and Norris turned the page around and won the championship. That’s all open in F1. It will be open until the end.”

Damon Hill: “Kimi’s had a season in F1, and over the winter there’s a kind of gestation period where all the things you’ve learned in the year sink in, and you suddenly come out fighting. It’s been astonishing. He clearly has got an incredible talent and maturity for a 19-year-old. I think with George… For me, when Jacques Villeneuve arrived at Williams, it was a little bit of that. He was 10 years younger than me, but he’d also just come off the back of a championship season in IndyCar, and he’d achieved a lot of success in another senior formula elsewhere. So, it’s slightly different, and the outcome of that was I beat Jacques, so George has got to do that somehow!”

Juan Pablo Montoya: “The dynamic is difficult, because Kimi is bloody quick, and he’s also a very likeable guy. When the guy is quick and is an ***hole, it’s so much easier to go against him, and to build that rage to create the momentum to destroy him. But when the guy is so nice… I think George needs to figure out a way to match Kimi. If he matches Kimi, he’s going to put Kimi in an uncomfortable position. If George can get there, Kimi will try to find a way to beat him again. I think it might force Kimi into a difficult situation and making mistakes.”

Thierry Boutsen: “I think if you take George from his first F1 season, he would have been as aggressive as Kimi. But he’s learned a lot, he’s calmed down also, he’s got more maturity. He races a totally different way. I believe that Kimi will be the same in three, four years. He will drive very differently to today. Today, he’s very aggressive and takes every single opportunity, although sometimes it is like Canada, where he went off a few times. Track limits as well. It’s very different moments in their careers that would explain the difference. For the long run, I don’t know who’s going to win. It’s very difficult to say. They’re both very, very good drivers.

“It’s normal also that you have cycles like this in your career where everything goes very well, and then all of a sudden, you lose a little bit of confidence, the car has a problem, then you lose confidence more, and you go through a cycle where everything goes bad. George will be back, for sure. Whenever he gets the opportunity, he will be back. Drivers go through these moments of doubts and psychological difficulties, and Kimi will have the same. Maybe not this year, the year after, maybe two years – we will see.”

What do you make of Hamilton’s charge with Ferrari?

Stefan Johansson: “I think the Barcelona race was a classic Lewis Hamilton win. He had a sniff of a win in practice, he knew that he could maybe make it work, he laid the plan out long before the race, and he just executed perfectly, and that’s really what won it. I frankly don’t think many drivers would have won that race in his circumstances, but he knew exactly what he needed to do and he got it done. That’s the mark of a champion. Those are the guys that can take a 2% opportunity and make it happen. The same as Max Verstappen.”

GB: “In general, we are all so happy if we see a winning Ferrari. Ferrari is Ferrari. I was very happy also for Lewis, because for Lewis, it’s been very difficult. He came to Ferrari and wanted to repeat his success from the past. Suddenly, he found himself in a difficult situation from a technical side, but also from a team mate side – a very fast team mate. For Lewis, last year was very hard, but now it looks like he’s coming out of the corner a bit.”

EF: “I was so happy to see Lewis and Ferrari going fast. I remember last year… it happened to me in IndyCar, and in F1, when you get older people start saying, ‘Well, he cannot drive’, and everybody last year criticised Lewis. ‘He cannot beat Leclerc, he’s too old’. Now he’s going strong. I think for the sport it’s good, for the fans it’s good. Seeing Ferrari winning again, and Lewis winning again, is fantastic.

“One thing that nobody talks about a lot is the new car. It’s smaller, with less downforce, and to me it makes it harder to drive fast. I think it brings [out] more talent. I think that’s one of the reasons why Lewis improved, because of his car control, his feeling for the car – he’s an extremely talented driver. He’s working in his second year with Ferrari, he knows the engineers, and he knows the system.”

DH: “Cream always rises to the top, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s someone who is... you cut him in half and it just says ‘competitor’ right the way through. He’s going to win at anything he does. I don’t think it sits easily with him to back off. He’s been working hard over the winter, clearly, and he’s worked on how he wants the Ferrari to be for him. They signed him, they paid a lot of money to have him, so he’s saying, ‘Okay, I’m not going to just sit here and do what you do. I’m going to tell you what I do, and you’re going to make it suit me’. The power he has, the reputation he has, he’s putting to work, to protect himself. He’s right to do that.”

TB: “It’s fantastic. Lewis is Lewis, and he deserves to be on top. He’s been on top all his life, and then he suffered last year. Lewis had the same problem as George last year… self-confidence, the car not going very well, and the addition of all these details made it look bad, very bad, but Lewis is still Lewis. As soon as the car gets better, he makes it, and he won the race in Barcelona. I was very happy for him.

“Niki Lauda said that you never learn anything from winning. You learn a lot when you lose, because there’s a lot of things that you need to improve, so you work and work and work to improve. Sometimes winning is not [possible]. Then it’s time to think about what happened, analyse yourself, analyse the problems of the car, analyse the problems with the team, the relationship with the team. It’s very complex. Once you get over that, you win again. You can’t win all the time – there are too many people around you for that!”

What about Verstappen’s future at Red Bull?

EF: “It’s always difficult to give an opinion on what’s going on. I don’t know his relationship. I don’t know what they are doing for next year. Max is an incredible talent. He carries his car on his back. I think he has a big loyalty to the team, and I like that. I always liked to run many years on a team, as much as I could go. I think he has this loyalty. But possibly, he can leave. If that happened, it would be musical chairs. It’s going to move everybody. I think this part of F1 is exciting. The fans, ‘Who’s going to be [there]? Where are they going?’ It’s part of the sport.”

GB: “I’m a fan of Max. I think he’s an outstanding driver. When I look and see Red Bull, they built a brand-new engine. Yes, they got people from other companies, but to compete with the experience of Mercedes or Ferrari, and being competitive already in the first year of doing your own engine, it’s actually quite impressive. That they have some reliability failures in the moment, it’s not nice, especially when it’s wings, but the others also have reliability issues. I think if Max continues to work quietly with the team, and they get some more good people on board, I would say in six to 12 months, I see them again being very, very competitive.”

JPM: “I don’t think Max wants to leave Red Bull. You’re in one of the best F1 teams, probably the best team in the last 20 years, with Mercedes. You’re in the right place. Yes, it’s changed because a lot of people have left, but they’re still performing. Last year, they nearly came back and won the championship. I think he wants to see that from the team, and it’s just about putting pressure on them.”

SJ: “I can understand the frustration. If you don’t have the car, you’re not going to win. There’s never been a World Champion that didn’t have the best car. That’s the reality of it. He’s still creating miracles most of the time, and he’s still unbelievably good, obviously. I’m sure there's no shortage of options [for him]! I think every team would give their right arm to have him in the car.”

TB: “It’s very difficult to say. It’s maybe a good moment to move, but maybe it’s a bad moment to move. It’s his decision, how he feels. The way you feel inside the team is very important. Moving to a new team, for sure, he will feel good, he will have the support of the team. But how long is that going to last? Is that going to last as long as it lasted with Red Bull? I don’t know.

“I cannot advise him – he does what he wants to do. I’d like to see what he does. It will be very interesting for himself, for the rest of F1, and for the rest of the world, I would say. He’s always been in a good position there, and he’s been winning races. He almost won the championship last year, and if he didn’t have the problems in Austria and Britain [this season], it would look much different. So, he’s not far off.”

Finally, what are you looking out for in the second half of the season?

GB: “At the moment, there’s a lot of gossip going on, a lot of discussions going on. Of course, Max needs to see if there is any possibility for him to continue to win the World Championship, already next year. So, that makes always discussions – one of them is McLaren, one of them is Mercedes, one of them is Red Bull. That’s the typical thing at this time of year.

“After the summer break, we will see if Red Bull have fixed their reliability issues, if teams bring a couple of modifications, and who in the second half season is the frontrunner. All that we want to see, and what the fans want to see, is three or four teams on a similar level – and that everybody has a chance to win.”

EF: “I really hope Lewis challenges for the championship. It’d be extremely good to see Lewis and Ferrari running stronger, to dice with Mercedes. I hope so. I have a lot of respect for [Ferrari team boss] Fred Vasseur. When I owned the A1 Team Brazil [in A1 Grand Prix], Fred [and his ART Grand Prix outfit] ran our team and did a great job. He’s a good guy, a top guy. I think now he knows the Italians well! So, it should be good, the second part.”

SJ: “It’s already exciting. It’s obviously more than one team [in the mix] now. I think that’s going to even up even more as the years go by. Mercedes clearly had a pretty big advantage at the beginning of the year, but more and more teams are understanding how you manage the car and everything, because that’s a big part of it. It’s going to close up, for sure. I think the championship is far from over.”

TB: “I’d like to see Ferrari at the top again more regularly. I think they deserve it, as they worked so hard to get there, to get back into a good shape. I would also like to see Charles winning a few races. He’s Monegasque, I’m Monegasque, so I’m the Tifosi for him! But I’d like to see good racing no matter what. Good, fun, safe racing.”

DH: “Well, it’s going to be another season… you think it’s going one way, and then it goes another way, and then we get to the end, people are running out of races, and it all gets a bit critical. So, there’ll be a point where there’s a decider, a tipping point where it’s going to go one way or the other. That’s why we love F1. It’s going to be thrilling, it’s going to be intense, the pressure is going to be huge, and all the things we love!”