How seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton spent his winter break may not have been so different from your own…at least in some ways.
Besides the company, the multi-millionaire lifestyle and all that sets Hamilton apart from us ordinary Joes, he too enjoyed playing board games over the Christmas break.
Although, while some of us spent Christmas with their borderline overweight cat and a Perry Como record, Hamilton was in the company of one A-List star.
Actress Anya Taylor-Joy, best known for her role in The Queen’s Gambit, attended the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend with her Super Mario co-stars after their press tour in Japan.
Taylor-Joy accompanied Lewis Hamilton in the paddock and even made an appearance on the grid, where she was interviewed by the world media including Sky Sports and Viaplay.
Speaking to Dutch broadcaster on the grid, Taylor-Joy revealed how she spent the Christmas break with Hamilton, and said: “We’ve played chess over Christmas. It took many days.”
When asked who won she responded: “Lewis. I’m dead serious. We’re both very competitive though. He’s been teaching me backgammon. Monopoly is where he really shines. I don’t think he’s forgiven me for our last monopoly match.”
Taylor-Joy also starred alongside co-stars Jack Black and Chris Pratt on the grid, where they were interviewed by Sky Sports presenters Jenson Button and Natalie Pinkham.
Button then asked the question Taylor-Joy has been waiting to be asked for her whole life. If you were to give a mushroom booster to any driver on this grid, who would that be?
To this she, naturally, responded Hamilton, before Pratt and Black did what they do best and siphoned the attention back towards themselves.
An F1 icon has shed light on exactly why things didn’t work out between him and a future champion during their time together at Mercedes.
Jock Clear is a renowned British F1 engineer who is able to boast working with some of the sport’s biggest names, including two seven-time champions.
Clear worked as Lewis Hamilton‘s senior performance engineer between 2013 and 2014, having just come off the back of working with Michael Schumacher through the twilight of his career with the Silver Arrows.
You wouldn’t know it on paper given that Rosberg managed to outperform F1 legend Schumacher during his first season racing alongside one of the sport’s greats, but Clear and Rosberg did not get on.
In a recent appearance on Peter Windsor’s YouTube F1 Livestream, Clear delved into his tricky relationship with Rosberg, highlighting what it was about the German-Finnish racer that rubbed him up the wrong way.
“It just didn’t click, we just didn’t click,” Clear said about working with Rosberg during the 2010 season.
“I really value the relationship that I have with my driver, and it needs to be right, it’s a sporting environment and you need to understand each other, and Nico and I just didn’t understand each other at all, we just didn’t have any synergy.”
Further detailing the fallout of his position alongside Rosberg, Clear told F1 journalist Windsor that as soon as Schumacher heard the news that Rosberg would no longer be using the Brit as his engineer for 2011, the seven-time champion said: “Well if Nico doesn’t want him I’ll have him.”
Rosberg was instead reunited with Tony Ross who he had worked well with at Williams, with the German benefitting from the Mercedes reshuffle for the 2011 championship.
The childhood home of McLaren F1 star Oscar Piastri is available for you to buy, if you have a spare $6.5million lying around.
Piastri has become somewhat of an Australian superstar, taking over the Aussie mantle from Daniel Ricciardo, who retired in 2024 having been replaced by Piastri at McLaren in 2022.
But despite having claimed nine grand prix victories so far across his career, Piastri has not had much success at his home race in Melbourne, Australia.
And after that disastrous moment, it is understood that Piastri went back to his family home in Melbourne, Victoria to relax and unwind.
Piastri grew up in the glitzy Brighton suburb of the city in a house that, according to RealEstate.com, was sold in 2009 for $1.27million, when Piastri was just nine years old.
It is owned by one Nicole Piastri, Oscar’s mother, and has been lived in by Oscar and his sisters Hattie, Mae and Edie as they grew up.
Now, following some renovations, the Melbourne-based property is up for sale with Nick Johnstone Real Estate, for $6.5million.
The Piastri family home is a six-bedroom house with a pool outside that has been installed by the current owners.
Said pool also has a stunning water feature, making it an incredible place to unwind after a tough F1 race – or just a tough day in work if you’e a normal person.
It has a home office which is complete with a ‘waiting area’ not too dissimilar from a doctor’s waiting room, but cool nonetheless.
The house also has a home theatre, the norm these days for people with mega expensive houses, while a car garage in the basement has room for six cars and a turntable.
To make things even better, the house is close to the Brighton Public Golf Course and is a short trip away from Brighton Beach and local train stations which will take you into the centre of Melbourne.
A five-day ban has been threatened by authorities for drivers ahead of the 2026 F1 Monaco Grand Prix.
F1 heads to the principality in June for the sixth round of the 2026 season, with it being later in the season than the iconic event usually falls.
This is to eradicate the previous clash between the Monaco GP and Indianapolis 500, another iconic motorsport race that has been clashing on the racing calendar with Monaco for many years.
The later date of the Monaco GP is also designed to streamline the sport’s global logistics and help F1 move toward its sustainability goals, including its target of reaching Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030.
But ahead of this year’s event, which organisers are hoping will see more overtaking compared with previous years due to the smaller, more nimble F1 cars brought about by the recent regulations overhaul in F1, the Monegasque government have introduced new guidance for road car users.
They have announced that an immediate five-day vehicle immobilisation will apply to any road traffic offence that is committed during the Monaco GP weekend, as well as the Top Marques Monaco automotive show which takes place in May.
Owners caught committing a road offence at these times will have their cars seized by police and will not be able to get them back for five days.
These measures have been brought in because of unauthorised gatherings of sports cars that authorities have noticed are pretty common during these two events which spill onto public roads and can generate dangerous driving, traffic violations and noise disturbance for residents.
The five-day vehicle immobilisation period has previously been used in past years, and will act as a deterrence for organisers of these impromptu events.
Previous editions of the iconic race around the streets of Monaco have not provided fans with much excitement, as the width of modern-day F1 cars make it almost impossible to overtake.
In 2025, F1 tried to shake things up by introducing a mandatory two-stop strategy to at least bring more variation when it came to strategy.
But most teams and drivers opted to pit on exactly the same lap on both occasions, and very few actually risked doing something a little different.
This year, however, that rule has been scrapped, and we will not have the mandatory two-stop race around the principality.
However, the new regulations might just increase the excitement of the race.
So far in 2026, we have seen drastically increased amounts of overtakes at the three grands prix compared to the same events 12 months ago.
While the boost and overtake modes have at times made overtaking too easy for the drivers, in Monaco this could prove to be a God send for fans hoping to see more overtakes around the streets of Monaco.
Couple this with the fact that F1 cars are much narrower and lighter than they were in 2025, and we could actually see an exciting Monaco GP.
The track signed a contract extension last year, and will remain on the F1 calendar until at least the 2035 season.