Bold predictions for the rest of 2026 as F1 returns from summer break

Twenty-eight days since the checkered flag fell on the previous stop on the Formula 1 calendar in Hungary, the 2026 season resumes on Sunday with the Dutch Grand Prix. The summer break is officially over and the paddock is reconvening on the shores of the North Sea. With 12 races taking place over the next 16 weeks, there will hardly be time for the sport's stars to catch their collective breath. It's an ambitious calendar for the second half of the campaign, and in light of such adventuresome scheduling, ESPN offers up some bold predictions for the home stretch of 2026. Alonso gets a top-five finish We are starting this with the boldest of bold predictions, the kind that a driver like Fernando Alonso makes you confident making. Aston Martin has had a horrible start to the new regulations with misfiring engine partner Honda, but we saw the first signs of recovery at the Hungarian Grand Prix, as Adrian Newey's first major car upgrade saw the team climb into Q2. Minor steps, of course, but Aston Martin will get a Honda upgrade at the Dutch Grand Prix, while Newey has promised more major upgrades before the end of 2026. No one is expecting Aston to suddenly become a world-beater overnight, but solid progress should be expected from a team that has pumped so many resources into its Formula 1 project. Now a lot of this hinges on Honda's engine for Zandvoort, but Aston Martin has been quietly confident its engine partner has rectified some of the biggest issues it came into the season with. Should Aston's trajectory continue to rocket upward this season, we know it has the perfect driver to make the most of it. Alonso has remained one of the best drivers in F1 even through a decade-plus without a race win; as Max Verstappen said recently, "Fernando deserves to be in the top five, minimum." We agree. On top of his legendary talent is the deep frustration from lack of performance that he has carried with him through this spell of his career. That will be a potent mix if/when the car becomes even remotely competitive. If Aston Martin get itself into half-decent shape by the end of 2026, we expect to see the two-time world champion have at least one mega-drive to that kind of result. A top-five grand prix finish might seem wildly optimistic given where Aston Martin started the year, but if anyone is capable of doing something like that, it's Alonso. Verstappen signs a new Red Bull contract There has been so much noise lately over Verstappen's future, which is perhaps not surprising for one of the sport's biggest superstars. But some of it has bordered on overkill. In the space of 18 months, according to various reports and the social media rumor mill, he's been joining Mercedes, joining Aston Martin, retiring, taking a sabbatical, and most recently, joining McLaren as part of a swap deal with Oscar Piastri. Verstappen's own comments have allowed some of those narratives -- like retirement -- to exist, while Mercedes boss Toto Wolff gleefully stoked the fire last year about a move for the Dutchman. Beyond all the driver market noise, though, it's increasingly difficult to see a scenario where Verstappen does anything other than continue with Red Bull into 2027 and beyond. At the heart of all the rampant speculation has been the Red Bull contract -- spanning through the end of 2028 -- Verstappen signed in January 2022 shortly after winning his first title. Famously, that contract has been packed to the gills with performance-related exit clauses that have allowed the idea of him leaving to become such a big talking point. But one part of Verstappen's contract is regularly overlooked when considering his future and why his future generates headlines so often. The signing of such a long-term deal was, in hindsight, a terrible bit of business by Verstappen. He's won three more world titles since and Formula 1's popularity has boomed to heights that seemed unfathomable even in 2022. It's his own Scottie Pippen moment: it's not unfair to suggest the financial terms of that deal, however lucrative they were, are now also ludicrously cheap compared to what Verstappen could get on the open market today. Verstappen and Red Bull discussed a potential renewal this year but have yet to find an agreement, which helped stoke the fire of exit talk. Sources told ESPN the two sides were far apart on key areas: Verstappen and his team want a much more generous financial package, while Red Bull wanted any new deal to remove the performance-based exit clauses. Those are the two main areas where compromises will likely need to be found. Crucially though, because of his current deal, Verstappen is not negotiating from as strong a position as he might if the situation was based on name alone. It is not coincidental there has always been one team publicly linked to the Dutchman in the media, but when you dig into those links, an immediate move has always seemed unlikely -- take recent McLaren links for instance. That might well be a future destination should he race into his 30s, especially with long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase heading there to become chief racing officer, but a move for 2027 would require a juggernaut deal by McLaren CEO Zak Brown (who, to be fair, is no stranger to rocking the boat, but even the idea of a Piastri-Verstappen swap deal seems fanciful). Recently, Red Bull has seemed more confident about keeping him. The four-time world champion has played a bit of a game of chicken with Red Bull about his future and the Austrian team has so far refused to blink. We can see both sides returning to the negotiating table before the year is through to iron out a deal with better financials and fewer reasons for Red Bull executives to have exit-clause-related headaches every summer, especially if the team makes noticeable progress on track after the summer break. McLaren, not Ferrari, emerge as Mercedes' closest rival McLaren and Ferrari went into the summer break with very different vibes. Lando Norris scored his and McLaren's first victory of 2026 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but Piastri's nightmare race meant it was not a perfect weekend. On the flip side, Ferrari squandered the opportunity of the Hungaroring, which on paper had appeared to be the Italian team's strongest circuit of the year, missing out on pole position to Norris and then contriving to finish without either car on the podium. Ferrari has had some mega moments this year -- Lewis Hamilton's emotional win in Spain and Charles Leclerc's superb victory in Great Britain -- and has done well to arrive in a new regulation cycle in good shape in terms of competitiveness, but the team's Budapest weekend had all the hallmarks of the Bad Ferrari we have seen time and time again regress over the course of a championship season relative to its rivals. We know one race weekend doesn't mean that's how the whole season will go, but Norris' win felt significant. McLaren looked like the reigning world champion again in Hungary and appears to be taking good steps forward in terms of car development and understanding its Mercedes engine, something which left the team on the back foot earlier in the year. Early in the year, Ferrari had regularly been the closest challenger to the dominant Mercedes team, but McLaren cannot be discounted from that equation now, while many in the paddock expect Red Bull to find performance coming out of the break. Let's not forget Verstappen dragged Red Bull onto the podium at Ferrari's expense in Budapest, too. Ferrari has placed a huge emphasis on the engine upgrade it will bring to the races immediately after the summer break, but its rivals are not a stationary target either, with Mercedes also afforded extra engine development leeway under the controversial ADUO rules. We'd love Ferrari to prove us wrong here, but Hungary left us with a very familiar feeling of dread. Russell gets himself back into the title fight The Australian Grand Prix must seem like it happened in a different lifetime for George Russell. After winning the season opener in March, the preseason favorite declared over his Mercedes radio, "I love this car! I love this engine!" There's no way he still thinks either of those things: his hopes of a maiden F1 title have crumbled since leaving Melbourne. Runaway title leader and teammate Kimi Antonelli has emerged as a superstar. Russell is behind Hamilton in third, 59 points behind Antonelli at the midway stage of the season, a mammoth gap in Formula 1, and one that can be put down to two things: Antonelli being better more often, but also an unfortunate mix of situations outside of Russell's control has made it look like a very lopsided title fight. But has Russell suddenly become a bad driver? No. He's up against a generational talent in Antonelli and needs to up his own game to make a fight of it, but a lot of the past two months felt like Russell going into a boxing match with a supremely talented younger fighter, all while having one hand tied behind his back as well as being outmatched on raw talent. Mercedes appears to have a broader issue with reliability, and if that starts shifting over to Antonelli's side of the garage, a golden opportunity might open for Russell to start eating into the title gap. Let's not forget last year, either. Norris looked dead and buried after the Dutch Grand Prix and came back to beat Piastri to the title -- his deficit was 34 points, not 59, but it demonstrated how quickly fortunes and form can flip around in Formula 1. We at ESPN still think Antonelli will win the title, but Russell surely has to back himself to make the Italian teenager work for it down the stretch. Racing Bulls score a podium One of the feel-good stories of the year has been how Racing Bulls, for so long overlooked as simply "Red Bull's junior team," has fared with Liam Lawson and rookie Arvid Linblad. The team went into the midway point as best of the rest in fifth, one place behind Red Bull, and five points ahead of Alpine. The junior team has never finished a season higher than sixth in the championship, so 2026 so far has felt like a breakthrough season. Lawson's career revival since being canned by Red Bull so brutally last year has continued into 2026, and he is making a great case that he deserves a long career on the grid, while Lindblad has regularly demonstrated why there's been such excitement about him internally since Red Bull signed him as a hotshot karting prodigy at the start of the decade. We don't think Racing Bulls are suddenly going to become podium contenders in terms of raw pace, but F1 seasons have a habit of throwing up one or two completely random, opportunity-filled races, and Racing Bulls have regularly put themselves in the best spot to capitalize should one of those happen before the end of the year. Isack Hadjar scored a Racing Bulls podium at the Dutch Grand Prix last year, Zandvoort hosts F1's season-resuming race this week.