MegaRide develops physics-based tire models that describe how grip, temperature and wear evolve during a lap and across a race stint. Used in desktop simulations and driving simulators, these models help drivers and engineers assess tire response, compare setup options and prepare qualifying and race strategies. Race support activities provide track data acquisition and analysis to characterize tire behavior and support simulation work.

VESevo measures the viscoelastic properties of racing compounds directly on the tread, without removing samples or damaging the tire. Teams can compare compounds, assess their consistency and track changes in material properties before and after track use. Repeated tests on the same tire provide data to support tire selection and management throughout a race weekend.

RIDEsense develops virtual sensors to estimate grip, sideslip angle, internal tire temperatures and wear in real time. The software platform provides data for vehicle and tire dynamics analysis, particularly in championships with limited onboard instrumentation.

Visit us at stand 4080 to meet the MegaRide Group team and discover our technologies for motorsport and automotive applications.

Max Verstappen took his first win of the 2026 season ahead of Kimi Antonelli, second at 2.3 seconds, and Lewis Hamilton, third at 4.9. Weather and neutralisations heavily shaped the race, with rain delaying the start, a Safety Car on Lap 9, and another late neutralisation after Albon stopped. Russell, who had been running in podium contention, retired with a power-unit issue.

The most relevant phase for pure pace comes after the first Safety Car. Verstappen switched from Intermediate to Soft, while Antonelli moved to Medium. After the restart, Verstappen passed the Mercedes and progressively opened the gap, reaching around 5 seconds by Lap 21 and more than 10 seconds before the neutralisation on Lap 43.

The fuel-corrected analysis helps explain that advantage. Between roughly Laps 15 and 32, Verstappen’s fitted pace moves from about 1:38.3 to 1:40.4, corresponding to an observed increase of around 0.12 s/lap per lap. Antonelli shows a very similar trend on the Medium, close to 0.10 s/lap per lap, but his corrected pace remains roughly 0.4 to 0.6 seconds per lap slower through much of the stint.

This suggests that Red Bull’s main advantage was not a dramatically lower degradation rate, but a lower performance baseline. Verstappen was simply operating in a faster lap-time window while maintaining comparable tyre evolution.

Hamilton provides another useful reference. Once slick conditions were established, his long first Soft stint shows a much flatter corrected trend, moving only gradually through the mid 1:39s to low 1:40s. That points to relatively limited degradation in that phase and helps explain why the Soft remained viable for such a long stint.

Leclerc’s first dry stint should be interpreted more carefully. His corrected lap time rises more sharply, but that phase is also affected by traffic and the consequences of the opening laps. It would therefore be misleading to attribute the full slope directly to tyre degradation.

The team median ranking places Red Bull at around 1:41.5, Mercedes at approximately 1:41.6, and Ferrari close to 1:41.9. McLaren is more than one second per lap further back in median pace, although its race was heavily conditioned by strategy and by spending long phases on the Hard.

The late Safety Car erased the gap Verstappen had built, but it did not create the performance advantage. The decisive phase came earlier, when the combination of lower corrected pace, strong Soft performance and consistent tyre behaviour allowed Red Bull to convert the compound choice into track position and race control.

George Russell converted pole into his third win of the season, beating Max Verstappen by only 0.2s. Isack Hadjar completed the podium at +10.7s, with Charles Leclerc fourth. Russell had built a clear lead before two successive Safety Cars compressed the field.

The opening stint already separated pace from compound choice. Russell and Verstappen started on the Medium, Hadjar and Leclerc on the Soft. Russell was nearly ten seconds clear of Piastri around halfway, while Verstappen reported that the Medium lacked grip. Fuel correction reinforces Russell’s advantage: his fitted pace rises from roughly 1:44.8 to 1:45.2 by Lap 30, about +0.01 s/lap, with a steeper trend for the other three.

That slope should not be read directly as degradation. Wear on C4 and C5 remained low and no significant graining emerged, allowing teams to extend the opening stint while waiting for a neutralisation.

The first Safety Car then created the most useful comparison. Russell and Verstappen switched Medium to Soft; Hadjar and Leclerc went Soft to Medium. After the restart, Russell and Verstappen improved towards 1:44.7–1:44.8 corrected pace, while Hadjar remained around the mid-1:45s and Leclerc drifted towards roughly 1:45.9. The Red Bull comparison matters: same car, opposite tire sequence, and the gap grows through the stint.

The Soft was not simply a short-life option. In these conditions, it became the stronger race tire. The main restart issue was how quickly the front axle returned to its operating window. Piastri’s race fits that picture: after the second Safety Car he locked up into Turn 1 on the Medium and lost a potential podium, while that compound appeared more difficult to bring back into the right temperature window in that phase.

Mercedes and Red Bull are separated by only about a tenth in median lap time, effectively the same performance window relative to the spread. Ferrari and McLaren sit roughly half a second back, although McLaren’s result was distorted by Norris retiring in the restart collision and Piastri’s Turn 1 error.

Russell’s win was not created by the Safety Cars. The lower corrected baseline, the shallowest first-stint trend and the gap built before the neutralisation all point in the same direction. The open question is the late Medium behaviour: Hadjar stabilises, Leclerc fades more clearly, while the Soft runners continue to improve.

Cadence is a leading computational software company, providing tools for electronic design, system analysis and multiphysics simulation. Through Adams, part of its System Design and Analysis portfolio, Cadence supports the modelling, analysis and validation of complex mechanical systems, including vehicle dynamics applications. Adams extends these capabilities to real-time validation workflows, enabling multibody models to be used in advanced virtual testing environments.

RIDEsuite combines physics-based tire models that account for the main phenomena influencing tire-road interaction, including grip behaviour, temperature evolution, road-surface irregularities, multi-contact conditions and tread wear development.

By connecting Adams with MegaRide’s research-based tire modelling technologies, the partnership supports a unified development process for vehicles and tires.

The integration brings tire behaviour directly into the vehicle model, enabling the evaluation of how tire properties, operating conditions and road inputs affect vehicle response. By strengthening the link between tire modelling and digital validation, it enables earlier virtual assessments, helping reduce development time and costs.”

Madrid gave Antonelli the win, but Norris was the quickest of the leading group for much of the race. Once fuel correction is applied, the McLaren trend sits ahead of both Mercedes and Red Bull through most of the long Hard stint.

By Lap 10, Norris had already opened a gap of roughly five seconds over Antonelli. Stroll’s stoppage and the Lap 13 VSC then reshuffled the race. Antonelli and Verstappen stopped under neutralisation; Norris came in once the track was green again and also lost time with a stop of around seven seconds. He rejoined P5, about 14 seconds behind Antonelli. From there, the task was no longer just about pace.

On the Hard, Norris moves from about 1:35.5 to 1:36.8, with a fuel-corrected slope of roughly +0.033 s/lap. Antonelli goes from around 1:35.8 to 1:36.9 (+0.027 s/lap), while Verstappen runs from about 1:36.0 to 1:36.8 (+0.020 s/lap).

At Lap 30, the Norris fit is around 0.24 s/lap quicker than Antonelli and 0.36 quicker than Verstappen. At Lap 40, those gaps are still around 0.18 and 0.23 s/lap. Only in the closing phase do the three curves come very close together.

Norris recovered enough to get back into the fight. Around Lap 45, the first four cars were separated by roughly four seconds, with Leclerc still leading on the Hard he had started on. Ferrari left him out until Lap 48, hoping for a neutralisation that never came. Once Leclerc stopped, Antonelli had clear air in front. Norris still had Verstappen to deal with.

Leclerc’s opening stint gives another useful indication of how far the Hard could be stretched. His fit moves from roughly 1:35.9 to 1:37.1, around +0.038 s/lap across almost the whole race. The late Soft immediately brings him back into the mid-1:35s before the pace starts dropping away. That final run is only nine laps long and comes in a completely different fuel and race condition, so its slope cannot be read in the same way as the longer Hard stints.

The team ranking is less straightforward than the order suggests. Mercedes and Ferrari sit almost together around a 1:38.2 median, McLaren near 1:38.5 and Red Bull around 1:38.7. Those distributions mix compounds, tyre ages, traffic and different race phases. Piastri’s first-lap damage and Hamilton’s early retirement also affect the team picture.

Antonelli eventually finished 4.351s ahead of Verstappen, with Norris another 0.738s behind. Despite track temperatures around 54°C, the Hard still allowed very long stints: the leading trio completed more than 40 laps on it, while Leclerc ran 48 laps on his opening set.

The VSC put Antonelli in control. From that point, Mercedes had enough pace and enough tyre life to keep him there. Norris was quicker for much of the race, but the margin was not large enough to recover the strategic loss and clear Verstappen as well.

MegaRide is a tech transfer holding born from the Vehicle Dynamics group at the University of Naples Federico II, specializing in the development of real time models to simulate the interaction between tires and the road. The company has started a collaboration with Raceyard, the Formula Student team based in Kiel, to provide dedicated training in tire engineering, vehicle dynamics, testing and simulation.

As the contact between the vehicle and the track, tires play a central role in vehicle performance. Understanding their behavior helps engineers interpret the vehicle’s response and assess the influence of tires when evaluating development choices.

The program will cover tire fundamentals, laboratory and track testing, tire modeling and vehicle modeling for data correlation. These activities will help the team relate experimental measurements to simulation results and examine how tire dynamics affect vehicle performance.

Drawing on MegaRide’s experience in automotive and motorsport, the training will connect the students’ academic knowledge with the engineering work carried out within Raceyard. The aim is to give the team’s young engineers a stronger basis for interpreting test data and making informed decisions during the development and testing of their Formula Student vehicle

Monza had been waiting 60 years for an Italian winner. Kimi Antonelli started 19th and ended that wait in 53 laps and had the pace to make his way through the field.

The data give a good measure of the performance behind the comeback. Mercedes had the strongest race-pace distribution of the field, with a team median around 1:25.4, roughly half a second ahead of Red Bull and around 0.6–0.7 s clear of Ferrari and McLaren. Antonelli’s violin is shifted towards the fastest end of the field, with a large concentration of laps between the mid-1:24s and mid-1:25s. His pace during the first stint was superb, but also the tire switch under VSC conditions was decisive.

Indeed, he started on Hard, switched to Medium after the early red flag and then, under the Lap 29 VSC, Mercedes gave him another fresh set of Mediums. Russell went the other way, with the Hard fitted during the stoppage staying on his car until the chequered flag.

Tire degradation at Monza was remarkably low despite track temperatures above 50°C. Long straights gave the rear axle plenty of thermal recovery between traction events, while the amount of graining varied quite significantly depending on the car and stint management. Several drivers actually completed around 50 laps on a single Medium or Hard set.

Antonelli’s extra stop was therefore more about exploiting the VSC window than responding to a tire that was falling away. The reduced pit-loss allowed Mercedes to give him fresher tires and more performance for the final part of the race.

The fuel-corrected trends make it clear. From roughly Lap 30 to the finish, Antonelli’s fitted pace increases by about 0.9 s, with a slope not dramatically different from Russell’s. The main difference is the offset between the two curves: the fresh Medium starts that stint around 0.8–1.0 s/lap quicker than Russell’s much older Hard. That advantage progressively brought Antonelli onto his teammate before the pass on track.

Antonelli crossed the line 3.8 s ahead of Russell, 14.7 s ahead of Verstappen and about 19 s ahead of both McLarens. From P19, after 26 overtakes. Admittedly, the VSC gave Mercedes a useful strategic opportunity, but Antonelli’s underlying race pace had already put him in a position to exploit it.

As the Dutch GP leaves the Formula 1 calendar, McLaren’s recovery is becoming clear. Norris took a second consecutive victory, looking more mature than last season and again showing why he is the reigning World Champion. The Mercedes pair completed the podium, with Antonelli extending his championship lead over Russell and Hamilton to 59 points.

The race was less processional than expected, despite how difficult overtaking remains at Zandvoort. Verstappen’s crash just after the opening lap caused a red flag and, at the restart, Antonelli took the lead from Norris. Their fuel-corrected pace in the first stint was very similar, moving from the low 1:13s towards the high 1:14s, despite Norris running Softs and Antonelli Mediums. Russell was generally three to six tenths slower, but recovered the position lost to Piastri through an early stop and McLaren’s slow pit stop. On the Hard, Norris gradually reduced the gap, but the decisive advantage came from the second pit-stop offset: Antonelli stopped on lap 41, while Norris waited until lap 48 and rejoined on tires seven laps fresher. In only three laps, the gap fell from more than five seconds to around 1.4 before Norris passed around the outside of Turn 1 on lap 54. The following VSC allowed Antonelli to switch to Softs, while Russell stayed out on Hards and retained track position. Mercedes later inverted the cars, with Russell remaining strong enough through Sector 3 to defend into Turn 1 and protect third place.

Ferrari finished fourth and fifth, but their Sunday pace was much stronger than their third-row qualifying positions had suggested. The ranking plot places Ferrari’s median around 1:16.3, in the same overall range as Mercedes and McLaren, although with a slightly wider spread. The violin plot also shows substantial overlap between Hamilton and Leclerc and the leading drivers. However, both plots aggregate laps completed on different compounds, at different tire ages and in different race phases: they show that Ferrari were competitive, but not that the underlying pace was identical. Nor can they isolate grid position, traffic and time spent following another car. Starting from the third row, both Ferraris spent much of the race in traffic: Leclerc lost a position at the restart and later had a slow stop, while Hamilton used a longer first stint to move back ahead. Both switched to Softs under the VSC, but rejoined behind Russell and could not convert the tire advantage into a pass. Hamilton finished only 0.8s from the podium, with Leclerc 1.3s behind Russell. P4 and P5 therefore hide how close Ferrari were, while showing why competitive lap-time distributions do not automatically become track position.

Norris’ advantage was already present in the lap-time trends; the six-lap offset between the McLaren stops gave it room to appear. Piastri’s gearbox failure removed a likely double podium, but did not create Norris’ lead.

The fuel-corrected plot separates pace from degradation. Norris’ opening regression moves from around 1:21.6 to 1:22.7, Verstappen’s from 1:21.8 to 1:22.6 and Antonelli’s from 1:22.1 to 1:23.1. Their slopes are about 0.08s, 0.07s and 0.05s per lap: Norris has the fastest baseline, not the flattest curve. On the first hard stint, Norris runs from 1:22.1 to 1:23.2 at 0.06s per lap. Verstappen approaches 1:24.0 at 0.08s; Antonelli remains flatter but starts four tenths slower.

The strategy and gapper plots show how this became track position. Piastri stopped on lap 33; Norris remained on the same compound until lap 39. Once the cycle closed, Piastri was two to three seconds behind. The gap grew to six seconds by lap 45, reached ten around lap 50, and exceeded twelve before the retirement. Traffic and the Sainz contact mattered; the gearbox did not decide which McLaren was ahead.

The VSC changes the final tire picture. Norris fits used softs, Verstappen stays out on a set that completes 29 laps, and Antonelli retains the hards fitted on lap 54. Norris’ closing trend runs from roughly 1:22.3 to 1:23.1; Verstappen’s from 1:22.6 to 1:23.7. That six-to-nine-tenth difference opens the gap from around six seconds after the VSC to 15.080s at the flag. Antonelli finishes 18.728s behind.

The ranking plot places McLaren around 1:24.7 and Ferrari at 1:24.8, with Mercedes and Red Bull near 1:25.2. The violin distributions of Norris, Leclerc and Hamilton also overlap heavily between 1:24 and 1:25.5. Their separate lobes mostly reflect compound, fuel load and stint position; they are distributions of lap times, not degradation curves.

Ferrari therefore had representative pace, but did little with it. The soft-hard-hard-soft sequence required three stops, while the initial soft stint left both cars behind Verstappen despite Ferrari topping Friday. The final deficits, 23.8s for Leclerc and 24.5s for Hamilton, describe track position and execution more than a slow car. Hamilton’s five-second penalty reversed their order.

Norris gives McLaren its first win of 2026. The team links the performance step to its new floor and corner package; the plots confirm the step without identifying its source. Antonelli enters the summer break 50 points ahead of Hamilton, with Russell a further nine behind.

Spa made Antonelli win this race twice. He started from pole, briefly lost P1 to Verstappen, and recovered it before Les Combes. Then the Virtual Safety Car put Leclerc ahead through the pit cycle. With ten laps remaining, Antonelli had to pass the Ferrari on track and keep it behind. The winning margin was 1.9s; for part of the closing phase, it was closer to half a second.

The opening stint explains why the race never fully stabilised. Antonelli, Leclerc, and Verstappen stayed in a narrow window on the medium tire. In the fuel-corrected plot, their trends begin between roughly 1:47.6 and 1:48.0 and reach the high 1:48s near the pit window. Verstappen’s curve rises more sharply, and Antonelli’s is the cleanest, but nobody builds enough margin to remove strategy from the equation.

The decisive sequence came between laps 18 and 20. Verstappen stopped first. Antonelli covered him after the initial, short VSC and retained the net lead; a second VSC then gave Ferrari the cheaper stop it needed. Leclerc emerged ahead.

The recovery was shaped more by stint timing than compound choice, as both Antonelli and Leclerc ran the same tire. Leclerc’s slightly fresher set, gained by stopping later, helped him initially maintain track position, but it did not translate into a lasting pace advantage. Antonelli progressively closed the gap and completed the pass around lap 34. His fuel-corrected regression stays generally one to three tenths below Leclerc’s during the second stint, including late in the race. Leclerc remained close at times and kept the Mercedes under pressure, but never created a real opportunity to attack.

Verstappen’s third place followed a different path. He led briefly, passed Leclerc early, and forced Mercedes to react by stopping on lap 18. On the hard, Red Bull could not match the leading pair. The gap opens progressively after lap 30 and reaches 11.5s at the flag; his fuel-corrected trend is also the steepest of the three in the final stint.

The ranking plot keeps the margins clear. Mercedes has a median around 1:49.9, Ferrari 1:50.2 and Red Bull 1:50.3; McLaren follows at roughly 1:50.7. Mercedes’ sample is effectively Antonelli alone after Russell retired on lap one, so this is not a clean two-car comparison. The quickest package still takes the win, without controlling every phase from the front.

Antonelli secures his sixth win of the season and joins the group of drivers who take their first Monaco and Spa victories in the same year. For 2026, Russell’s first-lap retirement leaves him 50 points behind. Hamilton becomes the closest challenger, 45 back.