F1 LIVE | The McLaren 'genius cooling trick', as Kelly Piquet shares first ever picture of Penelope and Lily together

Nico Rosberg has revealed just how toxic things got at Mercedes in 2016 when he and Lewis Hamilton were locked in a brutal title fight. The tension didn’t stay between them, it trickled down to mechanics and engineers, causing major division inside the team. According to Rosberg, the situation got so bad his own crew would sometimes keep reliability issues from Hamilton’s side. Toto Wolff eventually stepped in with a bold solution: he swapped both drivers’ mechanics overnight. It was a shock to everyone involved, but Rosberg says it worked.

Looking back, Rosberg said the relationship with Hamilton didn’t break all at once, but rather fell apart slowly. The crashes, the finger-pointing, the lack of any real conversation between them, all added up. Rosberg admits the relationship spiraled out of control and couldn’t be fixed.

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Since late 2024, McLaren’s tyre preservation has gathered attention up and down the paddock. While the FIA hasn’t found anything illegal, several teams have asked whether Woking might be using tricks that are outside of the confines of the regulations. After repeated checks turned up nothing beyond innovative, yet legal, solutions, scepticism still lingered among rivals, prompting the World Motorsport Council to step in.

The FIA has now updated the tyre heating and cooling regulations that will be implemented in 2026. The changes clarify that any device intended to heat, cool, or maintain the temperature of the complete wheels is banned. The added language, especially the words “cool” and “complete wheels,” seems tailored to either close any possible loopholes teams like McLaren might have been exploring or to appease the minds of its rivals. Whether this rule change is reactionary or preventive remains unclear.