Prime Tire: The other sad F1 race clash. Plus, McLaren struggles early in Canada

New York Times

14 hours ago

Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic's twice-weekly F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday.
Welcome back to Prime Tire, where the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix is getting underway on the same weekend as another major motorsport race.
In the week when it was confirmed the 2026 Montreal race will clash directly with the 110th Indianapolis 500, which caused consternation for many motorsport followers, the 93rd Le Mans 24 Hours is also taking place. And next year, this famous race will now run on the same weekend as what could be Formula 1's final visit to Barcelona.
I'm Alex, and Luke Smith will be along later, but here's what fans are missing in motorsport's other frustrating major race clash.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown once told me that if he was being 'really greedy', he'd love for his orange teams to win F1's Monaco Grand Prix, the Indy 500 and Le Mans all in one year. Well, today that dream took a step closer to becoming reality when it was announced how McLaren's 2027 World Endurance Championship entry will work.
Advertisement
The Hypercar squad is going to be run by current Jaguar Formula E team boss James Barclay — a big motorsport fan in his own right and a historics racer to boot. He'd surely love to field either of Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris in McLaren's first Hypercar Le Mans appearance.
But even for motorsport dreamers such as I, Nico Hulkenberg — who famously won Le Mans for Porsche while employed full-time in F1 back in 2015 — reckons the expanded F1 calendar makes this too tough an ask these days. No matter the glorious spread of good-looking cars, an iconic track and the emotion-sapping nature of a 24-hour race.
'Everyone was a lot less busy (in 2015),' the Sauber driver recently told Reuters. '24 races, all the stuff in between, it's a full-time job. I can only talk for myself but, personally, I wouldn't want the extra gig at the moment.'
Fernando Alonso is the most recent full-time F1 driver to win Le Mans — in 2018 with Toyota. But more of the current crop want to follow in his footsteps than have a crack at Indy, which Alonso has also tried (and failed, three times) to win.
Charles Leclerc wants to race at Le Mans with his brother Arthur, while Max Verstappen is committed to one day entering the race with his father.
Ferrari goes into this weekend's race hoping for a third successive Le Mans win since its return to top-flight sportscar racing in 2023, but it's never going to sanction its long-term F1 star moonlighting in another category. Red Bull even once stopped Verstappen demonstrating an F1 car on the Nurburgring Nordschleife because it didn't want him pushing the limits on that fearsome track…
Events directly clashing make dreams of F1 superstars racing elsewhere relentlessly impossible. The hyper-professional modern era means it's a contractual nightmare too. But that doesn't make such wishes any less valid.
Advertisement
F1 is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the formation of the world championship this year and not only were the drivers of yesteryear regular Le Mans entrants and winners, but for 11 years, the Indy 500 was itself on the F1 calendar. Far too quickly, such history is ignored and success in different categories is a brilliant way to demonstrate driving desire and racing versatility.
Now, the annual bumper Le Mans and Indy crowds demonstrate the health of these races alongside F1's current might even with these clashes. That is excellent and this isn't an attempt to pit one series against another. As Jeff Gluck sagely noted, that's just a weird thing to do when you love racing cars.
But one day again having F1 drivers — many endlessly sim racing anyway away from F1 events — blasting down the Mulsanne straight with the sun setting is still a thought worth savouring.
And if in the coming years F1 and Le Mans can be prised apart, Verstappen, sorry, Franz Hermann, with his sportscar team already operational, would be my bet for the next grand prix star taking up the endurance racing challenge.
Now, speaking of Max…
There was always going to be a big crowd for Max Verstappen's media call yesterday in Montreal. It was the first time he'd spoken since the clash with George Russell in Spain that put him on the brink of a race ban. The obvious question was: would that change anything?
It was so packed in Red Bull's hospitality unit that even for Yuki Tsunoda's prior media session, it quickly became standing room only. Once Tsunoda was done, Verstappen took his teammate's seat — and showed zero sign of any mentality shift.
The first thing he mentioned as being different for this week was jet lag, not the fact that even a minor infraction between now and the Austrian Grand Prix later in June could lead to him being benched for a race. He just didn't have a lot to say about the possibility of such a ban, dodging a question about the merits of the penalty point system and then deadpanning it would be 'not ideal' if he were to be temporarily sidelined.
Advertisement
The clear message, both through Verstappen's words and his body language, is that he won't be changing. Yes, there was an acceptance that what happened in Spain wasn't right, as detailed in his social media post in the aftermath of that controversy. But the message was very much that he'll still be racing hard. And it's not like there's even a lot to lose if he were to miss a race, given his own bleak outlook for the 2025 championship given McLaren's advantage.
It was all very predictable. As I wrote after Spain, Max will never change. It's got him this far. Don't expect the potential ban to be anything like enough of a deterrent for his uncompromising approach. But did we really expect anything different?
Last week, I interviewed former Haas F1 team boss Guenther Steiner in The Athletic's London office. No-nonsense as ever — and without a single swear word — we caught up on what he's up to these days, 18 months after he left what will soon be one of two American squads on the grid.
The standout newsline was that he could soon appear more frequently in yet another motorsport sphere. If negotiations with the Tech3 MotoGP team come to fruition on Steiner's investment offer, he could end up being team CEO. This could even end up being a full takeover of the team currently tied to the financially embattled KTM marque.
But, Steiner being Steiner, the conversation was varied. Here's some highlights:
Here are the main takeaways from today's on-track action in Canada:
We're not running an F1 liveblog for this race weekend, but stay tuned when the action resumes at the always exciting Austrian round at the end of June.
💃 The controversial F175 season-opening show seems destined not to be repeated in 2026, according to this report.
💥 It's missing Kevin Magnussen's massive qualifying crash for Haas in 2019, but this rundown of famous shunts into Canada's Wall of Champions is always worth watching when F1 is in Montreal. Magnussen, racing for BMW at Le Mans this weekend, qualifies for that famous list as a Formula Renault 3.5 champion from 2013…
🇨🇦 What to know more about the groundhogs that usually appear during the Canadian GP weekend? Look no further than this comprehensive explanation from your Tuesday PT host Patrick Iversen.
📫 Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic's other newsletters.