The 2026 racing season is almost here. The IndyCar season kicks off in Florida on March 1sr, and Formula 1 will be in Australia a week later. No surprise that so many cool race cars were on display at the 2026 Canadian International Auto Show.
Retired race cars including a Ferrari 312T F1 car driven by the late, great Gilles Villeneuve were gridded up next to contemporaries from the 1970s. Some lower-formula cars still compete at the Vintage Grand Prix at Mosport each year.
Audi is one of the new names on the Formula 1 grid in 2026. The German manufacturer purchased the old Sauber F1 team and renamed it the Audi Revolut F1 Team. Along with an entirely new chassis of their own construction, Audi has gone the hard route by also building their own powerplant.
Audi brought an R26 show car to the Auto Show, complete with full livery and Pirelli tires.
Another debut at the Auto Show was the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. This is the first entirely new team to join the grid since Haas F1 joined in 2016. Cadillac brought s big, plastic version of their CA01 race car to show off to the public. It had hard plastic tires and no cockpit (just a driver’s helmet, like a toy car) but otherwise looked a lot like the vehicle that will take grid in Australia. The Cadillac race car was a bit of a let-down, as it does not have the actual race livery painted on, just the pre-season testing livery… buy who would even notice such a thing?
Not to be outdone by actual car companies, LEGO also had a booth at the Auto Show to show off its new collaboration with Formula 1. Since 2025, LEGO has produced meticulously detailed F1 car sets. On display were one-off jumbo LEGO cars built by a local team. Very cool!
LEGO Formula 1 sets cost CAD $50 for small models, all the way up to CAD $300 for larger, more detailed sets.
Available models include the championship winning McLaren MCL39, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull Racing RB20, and perennial fan-favourite (before the arrival of evil Lewis Hamilton) the Scuderia Ferrari SF-24.
Thanks for sharing the displays. Happy racing season!