The five drivers most at risk in F1 2026 ‘silly season’

We’re calling it early that the F1 2026 campaign has plenty of potential for some significant moves on the driver market, and there will naturally be winners and losers from it.

Only a handful of drivers head into the 2026 season with a contract in the bank for 2027, while a broader look at the grid suggests a handful who have it all to lay for in the season ahead.

Liam Lawson

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Franz Tost, the long-serving former Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri team principal, was a big advocate of the notion that drivers stepping up to Formula 1 would need three seasons to show their full capabilities.

Despite 2026 being the fourth season in which Liam Lawson has appeared on the grid, the truncated nature of his career so far will no doubt leave the New Zealander craving consistency this time around.

Five races in 2023, six in 2024, a promotion to Red Bull for the start of 2025 that lasted just two rounds. He was then dropped back to Racing Bulls, and a car with which he was unfamiliar. We’re therefore unlikely to have seen the very best of what he can offer yet.

The encouraging signs from his point of view are that, by the end of 2025, he was matching and beating Isack Hadjar on a more consistent basis.

Despite still only being 23, he now goes into this year with the expectation of being the senior, experienced driver, with a highly-rated rookie in Arvid Lindblad joining him.

With a full pre-season behind him, working with the same team, Lawson should attack the season knowing he has finally had the run-up he will have wanted.

However, Racing Bulls only exists as a vehicle to bring drivers through to Red Bull Racing, so he will also head into 2026 knowing that, even if an extension is granted for 2027, his tenure there will not be forever.

His challenge this year, then, is performing well enough to make sure those at the top of Red Bull know how strong he can be. The alternative is to follow the path that has been taken by the likes of Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz before him, and convincing another team to pry him away from the Red Bull stable.

Franco Colapinto

While Franco Colapinto’s overall contractual deal with Alpine is believed to be on a long-term basis, the nature of his race seat has been somewhat uncertain from the start.

Initially brought in on a six-race stint, Colapinto extended that until the end of 2025 and, eventually, the team confirmed he would continue in a seat alongside Pierre Gasly in 2026.

Executive advisor Flavio Briatore has long been known as a person unafraid to replace ailing drivers, however, and did not hide the pressure on his line-up at the launch of the A526 in Barcelona.

“This year is not an excuse anymore. We have a brand-new car and we have the same drivers,” he explained on stage.

“Franco is here. I promise you, he’s done a very good winter, and I hope he is doing much better results and is ready to compete with Pierre.

“We need two drivers. We need two drivers competing in there all the time and for the team, of course.

“For growth, we need the performance of the driver. Whatever engineering job is doing after, the final beat is done by the driver.

“We expect to have two good drivers. We have a good car. We have a super sponsor. So, all the packages together, we just expect [to be] successful.”

With Gasly having been handed a contract extension until 2028 last season, it appears incumbent on Colapinto to bring himself level with his more experienced teammate.

Highly-rated former McLaren junior, Alex Dunne is also understood to be in talks over joining the Alpine stable which, if he puts pen to paper, would add to the team’s driving options.

Colapinto, like Lawson, has had an off-and-on time in Formula 1 so far, so the opportunity of taking in a full pre-season will be invaluable as the new year comes around.

Colapinto will need to make the most of it and show what he can do more than ever in 2026.

More about the F1 2026 driver market

F1 driver contracts: What is the contract status of every driver on the 2026 grid?

F1 2027 driver line-up: Which drivers are already confirmed for the 2027 grid?

Valtteri Bottas

To be fair to Valtteri Bottas, any potential sense of risk around him is no fault of his own – but, rather, a possible candidate underneath him at Cadillac.

We say ‘underneath’ in this context because Colton Herta, a proven title contender in IndyCar, took a surprise move away from the series to drop back into the feeder categories, doing so in Formula 2 in the hope of finally earning an FIA Super Licence, which would allow him to race in Formula 1.

Herta almost joined the Red Bull stable several years ago, but was denied an exemption to bring him to what was AlphaTauri, which then kept him in IndyCar at the time.

Come year’s end, Herta will have at least 34 Super Licence points out of the required 40, meaning that, if he finishes 8th or higher in the Formula 2 standings, he will have the points needed to race in Formula 1. Cadillac also has the option of running Herta in FP1 sessions through the year, to try and gain him extra points.

With Cadillac being a US brand, Herta’s signing as test driver is an outward sign that the team is looking to place a homegrown talent in one of its seats in future.

Should the American achieve his goal in Formula 2, then, the incentive would be there to promote him and, should that happen, one Cadillac driver will likely need to move elsewhere. All hypotheticals for now, of course – but it is a possibility.

In terms of reasons to sign drivers, alongside their outright ability, any new team will always welcome sponsor funding.

Cadillac has that through Bottas’ teammate, Sergio Perez, and his suite of career-long sponsors having signed with the team ahead of the new season, while Bottas does not quite have that same level of corporate backing.

Without that, if the two perform to a similar level on track in 2026, as brutal as it is, Bottas may be the one to need to look elsewhere.

Of course, everyone’s favourite Finnish-Australian may make any possible decision much harder by beating Perez comprehensively, but as has long been the case in the sport, Formula 1 is a market not always dictated solely by driving alone.

Lewis Hamilton

The seven-time World Champion has previously said he has a “pretty long contract” with Ferrari which may shield him from trouble, but a continuation of last season’s form would not bode well if he wants to keep going with the Scuderia.

Of course, Hamilton has waited for this regulation reset for quite some time and early signs appear positive about the SF-26’s reliability, and with a season under his belt with the team, he will look to get on terms with – and ultimately beat – Charles Leclerc this time around.

However, if, for whatever reason, he finds himself truly off the pace, Ferrari has a long history of being unafraid to move some of the sport’s all-time greats aside.

Alain Prost, for instance, was sacked after making unflattering comments in the press about the team’s 1991 machine.

Kimi Raikkonen, two seasons after becoming World Champion, was replaced by Fernando Alonso – despite having a contract to carry on with Ferrari the following year – and the emergence of Leclerc saw Raikkonen’s second departure in what was an effective seat swap with Alfa Romeo-Sauber in 2019.

After a form dip, Sebastian Vettel was told in no uncertain terms that 2020 would be his last season with the Scuderia, and even Michael Schumacher’s first retirement in 2006 is widely believed to have been a reluctant one. So, if the team wants a change, more often than not, it will happen.

If one thing has been proven over the course of his whole career so far, though, is that Lewis Hamilton should never be counted out, particularly if a strong car is underneath him.

He has spoken positively about how the new generation of car feels to drive, too, so the oversteery nature of the SF-26 may well yet play to his strengths.

In terms of other candidates, though, an option exists for Ollie Bearman to stay at Haas in 2027. But, should the British Ferrari junior build on the potential shown in his rookie season, the Scuderia may look to promote from within.

For pretty much every driver elsewhere, however, the allure of those famous red cars remains powerful.

Esteban Ocon

Ocon signed a multi-year deal with Haas in 2025, taking him until at least the end of 2026 with the team – though being outscored by his rookie teammate Bearman (albeit only by three points), does not look brilliant on paper.

Now coming into his 10th season as a race winner with three other podiums to his name, Ocon was edged in the qualifying head-to-head last year but narrowly held the upper hand in the race head-to-head statistics against the Briton, but he will no doubt have wanted to have stamped his authority on the team upon arrival.

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu offered an intriguing insight as to why this may not yet have materialised for the Frenchman, explaining Bearman’s ability to have operated in a wider working window than his experienced teammate.

Speaking to PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Abu Dhabi about his drivers, Komatsu explained: “What’s really impressive about Ollie is he can drive many different cars, [with] many different, let’s say, characteristics of the cars, he can drive around them.

“Esteban’s the opposite. He wants the car to be behaving in a certain way, and he’s always [been] demanding that from day one, then when he’s got the car that he’s completely happy with, he’s amazing.

“But when he hasn’t got the car underneath that he’s not totally happy with, he cannot get as much out of the car in that scenario compared to Ollie. So that’s been a problem with him.

“Obviously, these guys are driving at such a high level – especially Esteban, he’s very sensitive, so if he’s not 100% confident on certain things, he just cannot get there.”

Having had the opportunity to work with the team on its 2026 challenger, Ocon’s input will likely have been around helping the VF-26 be more to his liking.

Should he find the window Komatsu discussed more often, then, the “amazing” side of Ocon will need to show his capabilities to make absolutely sure of his place on the grid in 2027.

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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