‘My DNA is in this car’: Lewis Hamilton revved up for Ferrari in new F1 season
Lewis Hamilton believes he is in the “best place” he has been at Ferrari with a new car that carries his “DNA”.Hamilton’s debut season with Ferrari was disappointing, with the seven-time champion failing to take a podium for the first time and finishing sixth in the drivers’ championship, behind his teammate Charles Leclerc in fifth.By the end, he was clearly disenchanted, describing his season as a “nightmare”.Ferrari have looked promising in pre-season testing and at the third and final test in Bahrain Hamilton, who has regrouped over the winter, presented a buoyant figure, optimistic about the forthcoming challenge.“I’ve gone through quite a bit and left everything, all of last year behind me,” he said.
“I spent a lot of time rebuilding over this winter, refocusing, really getting my body and my mind to a much better place,I generally feel personally in the best place that I’ve been in a long time with rearranging things within my team,”Hamilton joined Ferrari at the end of a stable period of regulations and with the car already designed but this season, having been in place with the team, he has had the chance to help shape the new model,“Last year we were locked into a car that ultimately I inherited,” he said,“This is a car that I’ve been able to be a part of developing on the simulator for the last 10 months, eight months and so like a bit of my DNA is within it, so I’m more connected to this one for sure.
”The British driver was also clear that, despite the travails of 2025, he was committed to a long-term project at Ferrari.“My belief in the team is still absolutely the same,” he said.“I understand the faith in this team and what they’re capable of and that’s why I joined the team.“I knew it wasn’t going to be an overnight thing where we’d have success immediately, that’s why I signed a longer deal, because I knew it was a process and I feel like we’ve also learned a huge amount from last year as a team.”The FIA, sport’s governing body, will attempt to end the ongoing row over Mercedes’s controversial use of a loophole in the regulations involving the compression ratio of their engine.
It is believed Mercedes have stolen a march on their rivals by exploiting a higher ratio than the 16:1 mandated when the engine is running because it is measured when “cold”, or at ambient temperatures,The other engine manufacturers have been aggrieved at what they see as an unfair advantage, if one that is still within the letter of the regulations and after a meeting of the power unit advisory committee, the FIA has allowed a proposal that as of 1 August – after 13 of the season’s 24 races – the rules would be changed so that the compression ratio would also be measured at a representative operating temperature of 130°C,The vote on the proposal will be decided in the next 10 days and requires a super-majority of five of the seven on the committee, which consists of the FIA, F1 and the five manufacturers, Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, Audi and Honda,
Palantir moves headquarters to Miami amid tech’s growing retreat to Florida
Palantir announced on Tuesday that it has moved its headquarters to Miami from Denver. The data analytics company, criticized for its role in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, joins a host of other businesses and billionaires that recently moved to Florida in search of a more business-friendly climate.Palantir’s move across state lines comes after its chair, Peter Thiel, announced on 31 December that he opened a Miami office for his private investment firm. Thiel already has a mansion in Miami Beach. The company, previously headquartered in Palo Alto, announced the move on X but did not provide further details or respond to a request for comment
AI’s workplace revolution is here – and anxiety is rising with it
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, The Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you while cheering on Team USA in the Winter Olympics.Throughout 2026, The Guardian will publish a series of stories about how artificial intelligence is affecting modern labor. We’re calling it Reworked: A series about what’s at stake as AI disrupts our jobs.Our first story published this morning
Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing
Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report.Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector’s explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found.The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot were leading to a “material, verifiable, and substantial” reduction in planet-heating emissions.Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry’s tactics were “diversionary” and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to “greenwashing”.He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture
TikTok creator ByteDance vows to curb AI video tool after Disney threat
ByteDance, the Chinese technology company behind TikTok, has said it will restrain its AI video-making tool, after threats of legal action from Disney and a backlash from other media businesses, according to reports.The AI video generator Seedance 2.0, released last week, has spooked Hollywood as users create realistic clips of movie stars and superheroes with just a short text prompt.Several big Hollywood studios have accused the tool of copyright infringement.On Friday, Walt Disney reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance which accused it of supplying Seedance with a “pirated library” of the studio’s characters, including those from Marvel and Star Wars, according to the US news outlet Axios
Google puts users at risk by downplaying health disclaimers under AI Overviews
Google is putting people at risk of harm by downplaying safety warnings that its AI-generated medical advice may be wrong.When answering queries about sensitive topics such as health, the company says its AI Overviews, which appear above search results, prompt users to seek professional help, rather than relying solely on its summaries. “AI Overviews will inform people when it’s important to seek out expert advice or to verify the information presented,” Google has said.But the Guardian found the company does not include any such disclaimers when users are first presented with medical advice.Google only issues a warning if users choose to request additional health information and click on a button called “Show more”
Starmer to extend online safety rules to AI chatbots after Grok scandal
Makers of AI chatbots that put children at risk will face massive fines or even see their services blocked in the UK under law changes to be announced by Keir Starmer on Monday.Emboldened by Elon Musk’s X stopping its Grok AI tool from creating sexualised images of real people in the UK after public outrage last month, ministers are planning a “crackdown on vile illegal content created by AI”.With more and more children using chatbots for everything from help with their homework to mental health support, the government said it would “move fast to shut a legal loophole and force all AI chatbot providers to abide by illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act or face the consequences of breaking the law”.Starmer is also planning to accelerate new restrictions on social media use by children if they are agreed by MPs after a public consultation into a possible under-16 ban. It means that any changes to children’s use of social media, which may include other measures such as restricting infinite scrolling, could happen as soon as this summer
Brazilian butt lifts should be banned in UK amid ‘wild west’ industry, MPs say
UK shoppers warned over spread of harmful and illegal skin lightening kits
‘It’s soul-crushing’: young people battle to find any work in bleak jobs market
Fostering target brings hope for thousands of children | Letter
Developers will only bring us more car-dependent sprawl | Letters
Health support needed to tackle joblessness | Letter