RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Formula 1 cars will be back on track next week when the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort takes place from 21-23 August.
In the meantime, you can get your F1 fix as our correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.
As a Kiwi, I'm biased - but clearly Liam Lawson's been performing at Racing Bulls so far this year, and he's currently 'best of the rest' in the driver standings. Thoughts on his future in F1, particularly before the 2027 season? - Isabella
Given Racing Bulls have the fifth quickest car on average this season, and Lawson is considerably the more experienced of their two drivers, 'best of the rest' in the championship behind the drivers from the top four teams is exactly where he should be.
However, Lawson's issue - in terms of prolonging his career in F1 - is recent history, and his current team-mate.
Arvid Lindblad is a rookie this year, but he is already proving pretty much a match for Lawson. As team principal Alan Permane puts it, the team have "two quick guys" who are "incredibly close" in performance.
Lindblad is trailing in the championship by 20 points, yes, but on pure pace there is little to choose between them.
Lawson leads the qualifying head-to-head 6-5 at races where a fair comparison can be made but, on average speed, Lindblad is actually slightly ahead - by 0.017secs.
That's impressive for a rookie in this context.
Equally, Isack Hadjar was more impressive than Lawson in 2025 - hence Red Bull's decision to promote him in favour of Yuki Tsunoda for this season.
In terms of whether he is a candidate for a move up the grid, Lawson will not find it easy to recover his reputation from the two poor races he had alongside Max Verstappen at the start of 2025, after which Red Bull took the decision to demote him back to Racing Bulls and swap him with Tsunoda.
Once there, Lawson was pretty comfortably beaten by Hadjar.
As for this season and the future, Permane points out the goal of him and his team is to "develop drivers" for Red Bull.
If Red Bull were still run by the old regime of Helmut Marko and Christian Horner, there would be no hope of Lawson getting another chance in the senior team.
The modus operandi of the new leadership, of Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies and soon-to-be head of the young driver programme Gwen Lagrue, and how they view Lawson in all this context, remains to be seen.
Five things we've learned from first half of F1 season
How does F1/the FIA decide where to have sprint races? Silverstone - with a big crowd in every day - was great this year but other races this season didn't look like they had full stands on the Friday and Saturday. - Phil
The location of the sprint events is ultimately decided by Formula 1 as the commercial rights holder. The FIA - the sport's governing body - does formally approve the calendar, but that's essentially a rubber-stamping exercise.
From F1's point of view, primarily it wants the sprints to take place on tracks that will provide an exciting qualifying session and race.
After that, it's about spreading them evenly through the calendar so there are not too many bunched together.
Of course, there are commercial considerations, too. A track has to pay more to host a sprint. But F1 says it would not take the money if it thought it was the wrong place for a sprint.
Then there is the question of the tracks themselves and whether they want a sprint or not. This will be because they feel they can get more spectators through the gate, and/or provide better value for money.
Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle was keen to have a sprint this year because they want to "deliver as much value as possible for the ticket price", and a sprint means spectators get two races and two qualifying sessions on one weekend.
Pringle said: "We felt it was well worth the additional cost [on the race fee] to give more action."
He pointed out there was a total of 500,000 spectators at the British Grand Prix over the four days in 2025, and 564,000 in 2026.
"The [extra] 64,000 was primarily Friday and Saturday, and we do put that down to the sprint," he said.
Which F1 drivers could consistently challenge for a world title in inferior cars? My wife and I can only come up with four: Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen. Do you agree? - Martin
It's hard to challenge for a title in an inferior car, and the number of drivers who can do it is limited as a result. Essentially, it is only the very best.
At first glance, your list looks decent, but you have left out two huge names - Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost.
Prost's most exceptional season was in 1986, when he beat the two Williams drivers - Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet - to win his second world title in what was clearly an inferior McLaren.
There is also a very strong case that Hamilton did not have the best car with McLaren in 2008 (or he and Alonso in 2007), given what was learned subsequently about the relative performance of Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen when they were team-mates to Alonso.
The point being that Hamilton and Alonso were extremely closely matched, while Alonso comfortably beat both Massa and Raikkonen, so if Ferrari could compete for a title against McLaren in those years, it could only be because their car was better.
Even in 2017 and 2018, when Hamilton won, the Ferrari was the better car for a large part of both those seasons before Mercedes hit their stride.
The stand-out year relevant to this question is 2012, when Alonso drove his best season and took the title fight to the final race in what was statistically the fourth quickest car.
That was an absolutely extraordinary achievement, and it is rightly celebrated. Even more so when you realise that had only one of two incidents for which Alonso was entirely blameless not happened, he would not have lost out to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.
That's a reference, of course, to Alonso being taken out at the start of ...
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