Cadillac leadership change and Haas struggles headline F1 Q&A ahead of Dutch Grand Prix

After a four-week summer break, Formula 1 returns this weekend with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, and Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli leads the drivers' championship by 50 points. Cadillac are the only team yet to score a point this season.

There are 12 races remaining on the 2026 schedule, though uncertainty remains over whether Qatar and Abu Dhabi will go ahead because of the conflict in the Middle East. Before racing resumes, F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answered readers' questions on team reorganisations, engine upgrades and calendar options. The Q&A examines developments at Cadillac and Haas alongside broader calendar planning.

Cadillac chief executive officer Dan Towriss said he had always envisaged there would be a time when Graeme Lowdon would be replaced as team principal and that the time had come "sooner than expected". Towriss and Lowdon had worked together to set up Cadillac over the past four years and Towriss paid tribute to Lowdon's efforts in building a team from scratch after Cadillac did not have an official entry until March 2025. Towriss decided to replace Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski after expressing dissatisfaction with the first 11 races of Cadillac's competitive season. On-track performance has been poor: Cadillac were on average 1.2 seconds off the next slowest team, Williams, who are themselves 0.4secs behind Haas, and the team have suffered repeating reliability problems, most notably overheating brakes that have led to cars stopping with their brakes on fire, often early in a race or session. Towriss admitted "blame culture and people forming silos" were present and described them as "early stage business issues", saying the change was driven by the need for "a model with a very strong technical team principal" and was less about reliability and more "about just having a clear vision on what we're building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that matches the ambitions of ownership".

The Honda upgrade due at Zandvoort is intended primarily to demonstrate the engine programme is moving in the right direction after an earlier deficit of about 1.5 seconds in lap time compared to the best. Honda have not published expected numbers for the upgrade, but Aston Martin hope the new unit will close the gap by about a third and provide clear evidence the manufacturer understands and can address its issues as it works on the 2027 engine. Fernando Alonso is said to be waiting to see how the new Honda performs before deciding whether to stay in F1 with Aston Martin next year, and the team point to the return of former engineers who worked successfully on Honda when it won championships with Red Bull as a positive sign. Alonso's previous experience at McLaren, where Honda did not accurately assess its own engine performance and upgrades did not deliver, adds context to his caution, and Honda's reluctance to predict a specific performance step suggests a more measured approach this time.

Haas, F1's smallest team in personnel and budget, entered the season on the back of their highest-ever points total in 2025 and began the year with a car ready on time, which helped them outperform some higher-profile rivals. The team collected consecutive points finishes in the first three races, highlighted by Oliver Bearman's fifth place in China, and early-season form left them on average the sixth-fastest team in qualifying. Since then Haas have slipped to eighth in qualifying, falling behind Racing Bulls and Audi, and sit seventh in the constructors' championship at the mid-point of the season. The team's Canada upgrade brought a new floor, bodywork and rear suspension but, as team principal Ayao Komatsu said, it coincided with the discovery of a "fundamental weakness" in the car relating to a lack of high-speed downforce. A longstanding reluctance by owner Gene Haas to invest in facilities has been a frustration, though a new simulator, funded through Haas' new partnership with Toyota, is coming on stream shortly; "He doesn't seem interested in investing, but he's also not interested in selling. So they're a bit stuck, really."

Formula 1 president Stefano Domenicali raised the possibility of a return for a German Grand Prix, saying: "Germany, for the first time, we are reconnecting with the possibility of having contact with the Hockenheim people to see if in the future, mid-term, not short term, they can have a race back." The German race was last held in 2019, having fallen off the calendar because organisers could not make the event work financially. Domenicali reiterated he does not want the schedule to extend beyond 24 races and noted pressure to add new events, especially in Africa, while describing current planning for the upcoming season: "So far, the calendar that will be presented, let's say in autumn, will be as a sort of a normal plan. "But of course, in case the situation in the Middle East will be not solved, we have options, [a] different plan. And the trigger for that is at the end of the year. So we have still a lot of time, if I may say, to adjust. "We have different plans with different options ready in place that will accommodate the fact that we will keep, in any case, the target of 24 countries also for next year."

In the scenario that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cannot open the championship in 2027, the solution suggested in the Q&A would be to follow this year's contingency and start the season in Australia before moving on to China and Japan. Send your questions to F1 correspondent Andrew Benson.