Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies says the team is not satisfied with its 2026 progress until it has a car with the pace to win races on merit, after ending the first part of the season fourth in the constructors' standings. Mekies said: "Don't count on me to say that we are satisfied, because we are not. We will not be satisfied until we go back to have a race car that has the pace to win on merit. We don't sign for anything else than winning races."




Liam Lawson says Racing Bulls began the season with “no real idea” how competitive the VCARB 03 would be. Lawson said: "Honestly, I think at the start of the year we had no real idea, and it was probably very open-ended in the way that we were feeling; we didn't know how strong we'd be. And then we very quickly found a lot of performance out of the car, and that's been really working."


Mattia Binotto says Audi is “satisfied, but not happy yet” with its first Formula 1 season at the halfway stage, stressing the priority has been establishing strong foundations rather than chasing immediate podiums. Asked by RacingNews365 to sum up the campaign, Binotto said the R26 is “a good car with no fundamental problem” and “a healthy car… with no big problems”, even if reliability and operational issues have hurt results. He added that recent races show Audi is “going in the right direction”.

A Disney-themed Formula 1 replica helmet has set a charity auction record after selling for £151,000, which organisers say is the highest publicly recorded price for an F1 helmet that was not worn or used during an official race weekend. The Disney x Formula 1 ‘Fuel the Magic’ helmet, created for a Make-A-Wish International fundraiser by Disney, F1 and Memento Exclusives, was signed by 20 current F1 drivers, with the autographs collected at the British Grand Prix weekend. All proceeds will go to Make-A-Wish International.

Toto Wolff said Mercedes “should have had P2” with Kimi Antonelli at the Hungarian Grand Prix and that he remained “glass half empty” about the weekend despite the 19-year-old extending his drivers' championship lead over Lewis Hamilton. Wolff said: "That's great, but I've always been a miserable guy; the glass is half empty. We could have had P2; we should have had P2. In balance, he got the penalties, so overall, maybe on Kimi's side we need to go home and say, 'that's okay in terms of the points'."

Alex Albon says he doubts Williams’ underlying car problems will be solved by its planned upgrade for Baku. Albon said: "We know the weaknesses of the car, we know the directions, I think as a team, this year, the work that's being done at the factory, it's the biggest effort I've seen from the team to really fight these genetic DNA problems that this team has... If it's cured by Baku? I doubt it. I think a lot of the Baku stuff has happened. That upgrade was planned quite a long time ago."

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