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.”

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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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Seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton has insisted he will not stop racing in the sport until the jam-packed calendar finds space for one more event in particular.

There are currently 24 race weekends on the F1 2026 calendar, with six sprint races peppered in to please F1 owners Liberty Media, who recently stated that the shorter race format has gone down well with their growing audience.

What’s more, the idea of increasing the sprint’s presence on the F1 calendar even further was recently floated at the F1 Commission meeting in Bahrain, with it being reported that the FIA had taken part in, ‘discussions around the possibility of increasing the sprint events up to 12 based on the demand from fans and promoters.’

But there are many countries who are fiercely campaigning to see their track either return to the calendar of the pinnacle of motorsport or make the case for a brand new event, with a popular destination being Africa, which Hamilton has frequently championed.

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Hamilton refuses to leave F1 until he’s competed in ‘African GP’

Speaking during Thursday’s FIA press conference ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Hamilton was asked where exactly in Africa he would pick to race.

“I’ve had the privilege, I’ve been to 10 countries now in Africa, there’s still so much more for me to see,” he said.

The 41-year-old has been instrumental in the conversation around why Africa doesn’t yet host an F1 race, going on to detail his involvement in hopefully changing this in the years to come in this week’s media session.

“For the past six years, I think, maybe seven, I’ve been fighting in the background to get a grand prix [in Africa]. Sitting with the stakeholders and asking the question, ‘why are we not in Africa? We’re on every other continent, why not Africa?’

“I know they’re really trying. I think they’ve been to quite a few different countries. The ones that I’ve enjoyed the most so far, I loved Kenya, I don’t think we’re going to have a grand prix in Kenya but Rwanda particularly was spectacular. Two places I felt like I could live. South Africa is stunning. I think those are the ones that I think would be good places for us to potentially go to.”

F1 last raced in Africa at the Kyalami circuit for the 1993 South African Grand Prix and the track near Johannesburg did previously hold a spot on the calendar between 1967 and 1985, and again in 1992 and 1993.

Though it has not returned as a grand prix destination since, the facilities have been recently upgraded to align with the FIA’s Grade 1 standards, hinting that a return could be on the cards in the future.

Hamilton is certainly keeping a close eye on the progress of the project, going on to say in this week’s Melbourne press conference that he refuses to retire without racing in Africa, although he is under no illusions that time is ticking.

“I don’t want to leave the sport without having a grand prix there, without getting to race there. So I’m chasing them like, ‘when is it going to be?’ They’re setting certain dates and I’m like, ‘damn, I’m running out of time’,” he admitted.

“I’m going to be here for a while until that happens because that’ll be amazing, given that I’m half African. I’ve got roots from a few different places there, like Togo and Benin. I went to visit Benin last year, Senegal and Nigeria. It’s something I’m really, really proud of. I’m really proud of that part of the world. I think it is the most beautiful part of the world, and I don’t like that the rest of the world owns so much of it and takes so much from it and no one speaks about it.

“I’m really hoping that the people that are running those different countries all unite and come together and take Africa back. That’s what I want to see. Take it back from the French, take it back from the Spanish, take it back from the Portuguese and the British.

“It’s so important for the future of that continent. They have all the resources to be the greatest and most powerful place in the world, and that’s probably why they are being controlled the way they are.”

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