F1 Silly Season 2026: Winners and losers from a sizzling transfer window

Max Verstappen with his manager Raymond Vermeulen — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Silly Season

Max Verstappen, his manager and more: Winners and losers from F1's sizzling 2026 silly season

Some pretty huge new contracts being thrown around!

Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Tuesday 1 September 2026 20:45

Make us your Google favorite

F1 Silly Season is starting to reach its downslope - the big names are signed (some for longer than others), and key dominoes have been removed from vast arrangements, meaning that even if one does go down...it won’t take any others with it.

That’s something of a disappointment, albeit not for the handful of men who have kept their very lucrative, very rare jobs for at least another 12 months.

2025’s silly season was always shaping up to be a quiet one, with a lot of drivers still having a year or more left on their contracts. This summer, 2026, was meant to be the chaotic one that last year loaded us up for.

Article continues under video

Fans, teams, and journalists all expected fireworks. Instead, we got one confused old man walking around the park with a sparkler.

Unless something comes out of absolutely nowhere, there will probably be just one driver change this year – Esteban Ocon getting shunted out of Haas and replaced by one of half a dozen different hopefuls. Even the Ocon sacking is no sure thing, depending on whether one of their potential replacements can bring in enough money to the team.

The point is, silly season has pretty much wrapped up for the year. Which brings us to the important question: who had a good summer, and who really didn’t?

F1 Silly Season Winners

Carlos Sainz’s accountant

Nobody’s really enjoying watching Madrid’s finest struggle at the back of the field, but it became increasingly clear as the months went by that there just wasn’t another team who would take Sainz on for 2027, at least not one which would represent an upgrade on his Williams purgatory.

What do you do when nobody good wants you and you have, frankly, very little leverage? You somehow convince Williams to more than double your salary to €30m a year out of nowhere.

There’s really no such thing as a poor F1 driver in this modern age, but that is an awful lot of money for a driver who is, currently, 16th in the championship. Nice work if you can get it.

Why is his accountant the winner, and not the man himself? One simple reason: the accountant doesn’t actually have to drive for Williams for the next couple of years. That looks like it’s going to be a slog.

Raymond Vermeulen

One of the key things to have in any negotiation is leverage. Without leverage, you have nothing.

That basic fact makes it all the more impressive that Vermeulen has managed to get Max Verstappen an absolutely stratospheric salary (a reported $107million per season) on a new long-term Red Bull contract despite the Dutchman having no other true suitors and, frankly, never truly looking as though he wanted to leave the team.

Verstappen’s new deal has an extra two years on it, and the reported numbers mean that if he meets certain performance objectives, he could earn an extra $45million per season.

Turns out we had a Max Verstappen money picture already banked

Vermeulen was handed a 2 of Hearts and a 2019 Ryan Shawcross Match Attax card by the dealer at the poker table, and managed to bluff his way to long-term security and a 50% pay rise for his driver. Fantastic work.

Isack Hadjar

Speaking of Red Bull drivers, it looks like Isack Hadjar will still be one next season. Despite very brief rumblings about a premature promotion for Arvid Lindblad, Hadjar’s position as Verstappen’s team-mate for 2027 has never really been in doubt all year.

When you look at how that team has churned through drivers since unceremoniously dumping Sergio Perez - not least Liam Lawson getting thrown overboard after just two races - the fact that the Frenchman looks secure alongside the four-time champion is a huge win.

Health-wise...he has missed a race with a fractured wrist, but he hasn’t been on the radio complaining about his seat belt crushing his balls so much this season. That’s a qualified win.

F1 Silly Season Losers

Fans

Where was the fun? Where was the drama? Where was the chance to convince yourself that ‘trust me bro, this is the move that really pays off for him, this one’s different’?

Ah, maybe it’s for the best. Other sports’ fanbases have become so obsessed with ‘winning’ transactions and ‘winning the offseason’ that the sport itself has begun to feel secondary - and that, at least, hasn’t happened in F1 in the same way.

Also, a little nugget for you: whenever a writer/journalist type tells you that a quiet summer is ‘not great for the fans’, what they’re actually doing is rending their own garments asunder while screaming ‘GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT’ at their laptop screens. We don’t really care if you enjoy silly season that much, it’s just something to break up the slow summer months.

Ollie Bearman

Remember when Bearman was getting quietly put around as a long-shot Verstappen replacement at Red Bull if they wanted to go full reset-mode, or when it looked like after last season Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari stint might only last two years?

That feels like quite a long time ago. Right now, Bearman is a Haas driver, the worst funded team on the grid and going backwards in the development race as a result, for the foreseeable future.

Ferrari tabbed him years ago as their next long-term prospect, but Hamilton’s revitalisation this season means that he’s just going to be left to stagnate at the back of the field for longer than he or Ferrari had originally planned.

Not for nothing, but...are we sure he’s good? Are we actually sure he’s ‘pencil him in for a spot at a title chasing team as soon as there’s a vacancy’ good? Through his first season and a half, albeit while being fed into the Haas meat grinder, he’s shown flashes without being absolutely undeniable. One to keep an eye on.

Yuki Tsunoda

Man, this sucks. Tsunoda was a solid mid-table driver at Racing Bulls, and was rewarded last year with a hospital pass.

In at Red Bull after two races, no pre-season with the team, predictable underperformance - partly due to circumstances, partly because Red Bull were a basket case, partly because he’s good but he’s not that good - and then off the grid entirely.

If he’d performed at his Racing Bulls level for a team like Alpine, Williams, or Haas, the last couple of seasons suggest that he’d probably have been rewarded with a new contract. As it is, he’s relegated to test/reserve duties, because he was decent at the worst possible team.

The lack of grid spots opening up for 2027 means that he’ll almost certainly be spending a second year on the sidelines – and that’s usually game over for an F1 career. Farewell Yuki, we’ll always have The Great Prophecy.

READ MORE: BMW issue statement over F1 return

Written by

Chris Deeley - Editor

View full biography

F1 Red Bull Max Verstappen Ferrari Carlos Sainz Williams