Rejoice, Damon Hill fans! The 1996 F1 world champion will be back on your TV screens again this weekend.

Not, of course, in an F1 car. Nor in his old position on Sky Sports! Nope, the former Williams legend will be on Channel 4’s coverage for the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend.

Hill hinted in an interview last year that he had been dropped from Sky’s coverage rather than making the decision himself, admitting: “I felt like the end was coming anyway, because I was kind of pushed back all last year. I was doing the less attractive races”.

The 65-year-old has stayed involved with the sport though, doing some commentary at each of the last two Australian grands prix with Network 10 and clearly following the sport closely, as his social media posts show.

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Hill to join former team-mate on TV

Williams also announced Hill’s new role as a team ambassador last month, and the ’96 champ said at the time: “Williams is truly a special place for me and where some of the defining moments of my career took place.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have been part of this sport and to have achieved what I did, and returning as an ambassador is a real privilege. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the team’s history and help to support its legacy and future.”

Hill will not be on Channel 4’s brief sprint qualifying highlights on Friday, which will see his former Williams team-mate David Coulthard and Ariana Bravo in front of the cameras, but he will make his TV return on Saturday.

Highlights of Saturday’s sprint race and feature race qualifying session will be hosted by Lee McKenzie, with Hill joining the aforementioned Coulthard and Bravo – with the same lineup coming back for Sunday’s race highlights.

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He may well have been joking, but with Max Verstappen and F1’s controversial new regulations you can never truly be sure in 2026.

The four-time world champion has been extremely vocal in his criticism of the new regs, which came into force for last weekend’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. He believes they take the fun out of driving and mean it is now all about ‘management’.

Verstappen started behind the eight ball at Albert Park after crashing in Qualifying, but roared through the field on Sunday to eventually finish P6.

Now the show moves on to Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix, and the Dutchman spoke with media at the track on Thursday. Of course the new regs were front and centre again, and Verstappen joked that he has a genius hack to help him work everything out.

When asked if drivers who spend a lot of time in simulators have an advantage when it comes to energy management, he provided a very Verstappen answer.

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Max ‘swapped his sim for Mario Kart’

“I found a cheaper solution. I swapped the simulator for my Nintendo Switch and yeah, practicing a bit of Mario Kart, actually,” he joked (we think).

“Finding the mushrooms is going quite well. The blue shell is a bit more difficult, but I’m working on it.”

Verstappen is pretty clear that Red Bull is behind Mercedes and Ferrari right now and on a normal day P5 is the best he can hope for. But he does agree there is the potential for improvement as that new power unit partnership with Ford properly beds in.

“Yeah, I mean, for sure there is a lot of potential. It’s just going to depend, of course, on if we can extract that, I guess, throughout the year. The gap, of course, was quite big and also in the race. I think if I would have started, let’s say, a little bit up front, I think the best that I could have done was one spot higher because we didn’t have the pace of the top four cars.

“We also had a lot of degradation and graining. But yes, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens in the coming races, if we can close that gap a little bit.”

Will Red Bull be closer to the front in China?

Verstappen was also asked if the gap to the front two teams was specific to Melbourne, or whether it will be the same in China.

“Impossible to know. I mean, honestly, it’s such a jungle out there at the moment,” he admitted.

“I think that it’s very hard to really know. I mean, I would hope that it gets a bit closer, not even bigger than the gap that it was in Melbourne, but it’s clear that at the moment we cannot fight with those cars.”

READ MORE: F1 fans fume over TV broadcast change for 2026 season

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You would think that when an F1 driver’s day job is to drive cars at nearly 200mph with walls close by, there isn’t really much you can do to scare them.

But it turns out they are mere mortals like the rest of us, and it only took a prank involving spiders to demonstrate that point.

During the Australian Grand Prix, crafty social media admins at VCARB, Red Bull’s sister team, decided to pick on random people inside the Albert Park paddock in Melbourne with an upgrade to the old trick where your finger gets snapped when you pull out a chewing gum stick.

This trick though involved something that ever so slightly plays on people’s fears a bit more. The VCARB admin would offer ‘an Australian sweet’ to members of the paddock, with the recipient pulling on the lid of the box only for a plastic spider to jump out instead of a sugary delight.

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Four F1 stars targeted

Four drivers were targeted including Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas, Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad, Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar and Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg – and there were mixed reactions.

Bottas looks like he can take on anything given his insane Iron Man triathlon escapades, but Lewis Hamilton’s former team-mate is on record for not liking spiders, and his reaction showed it.

After the spider jumps out at him, Bottas wheels away with shock on his face and some profanity too. But he wasn’t alone.

Lindblad jolted saying ‘Jesus Christ’ before reassuringly putting his hand on his stomach, while Hadjar with some Bottas profanity after an initial shock looked annoyed at falling for the practical joke.

Hulkenberg though took the prize for nerves of steel in this case. The German had the slightest jolt with a small ‘woah’, before trying again and acknowledging the prank with a wry smile and a ‘got me there’.

Fans were impressed with the calm and collected Hulkenberg, with one saying: Hulk was ready to eat the damn thing regardless’ and another saying: ‘Hulk wanted to snack it’.

When is the next Formula 1 race?

The next F1 race will be the Chinese Grad Prix that takes place at the Shanghai circuit on Sunday 15, March. The race will be the second of the 2026 season following the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne at Albert Park on March 8.

George Russell and Mercedes currently lead the world championship after finishing one-two in the first race, marking themselves out as early title favourites.

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