2006 Formula One World Championship

Teams and drivers

Free practice drivers

Manufacturer and team changes

• Three prominent names in the sport disappeared for this season, with Minardi, BAR and Jordan changing names under new ownership, while Sauber changed ownership, and one new team, Super Aguri, entered at the last moment. Minardi were taken over by Red Bull, becoming Toro Rosso, which is Italian for Red Bull. The Sauber name remained, although largely as a sentiment, as BMW had purchased 80% of the team, with Peter Sauber keeping only a 20% share. A year after Alex Shnaider had purchased the team and following a disappointing final season under the Jordan name, Jordan was renamed to MF1 Racing after Shnaider's Midland Group company. Late in the season, the team was bought by Spyker. Honda, who already owned a 45% stake in the BAR team, completed their takeover of the team and changed its name to Honda Racing F1 Team at the start of the season. Super Aguri F1 also entered their first season after having problems entering. They received limited backing from Honda including technology and engines, due to them running Honda factory driver Takuma Sato despite Super Aguri being a Honda customer team. As a result of Honda's expansion of supplying engines to Super Aguri, this marked the first season since 2002 that Honda supplied multiple teams in the sport when Honda supplied both BAR and Jordan respectively.
• Williams introduced numerous changes for 2006, particularly changing to Cosworth V8 engines after they and BMW split. Red Bull Racing had Ferrari engines, replacing the Cosworth power which gained them seventh in the standings in. Williams and Toyota changed tyre suppliers to Bridgestone, due to Michelin's desire to supply fewer teams in the championship. Despite this, Toro Rosso, who under the Minardi name ran Bridgestone tyres, switched to Michelin in line with parent team RBR.
• After Ilmor fully sold its UK engine division to DaimlerChrysler, Ilmor-Mercedes officially renamed to Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines and thus effectively Mercedes-Benz became a sole in-house sport engine builder, assembler and tuner from 2006 onwards.

  Driver changes

• Ferrari replaced Michael Schumacher's longtime teammate Rubens Barrichello with fellow Brazilian Felipe Massa, who moved from Sauber. Massa had previously tested with Ferrari in 2003. Massa was replaced at the newly renamed BMW Sauber team by returnee Nick Heidfeld, who had driven for BMW's previous partners Williams for much of 2005 and Sauber in 2001-2003. Poland's Robert Kubica took up the third driver's role at BMW Sauber.
• Barrichello moved to Honda, where he replaced the outgoing Takuma Sato. The Honda-backed Super Aguri team started the season with Sato and Yuji Ide, an all-Japanese driver line up. Franck Montagny moved from his Renault testing role to become Super Aguri's third driver. His position at Renault was taken by the GP2 runner-up Heikki Kovalainen.
• Williams promoted test driver Nico Rosberg, who had won the inaugural GP2 drivers' title, to their second seat alongside Mark Webber. Alexander Wurz, one of McLaren's test drivers from 2005, joined Williams as a third driver, alongside India's Narain Karthikeyan, who had raced for Jordan the previous season. Gary Paffett was promoted to a permanent testing role at McLaren alongside Pedro de la Rosa.
• Karthikeyan's seat at Jordan, now renamed as MF1, was taken by the 2005 Minardi driver Christijan Albers. MF1 decided to employ a rotation system for their third driver position. Minardi's other driver, Robert Doornbos, took up a test driving role at Red Bull. Vitantonio Liuzzi, who had shared Red Bull's second seat with Christian Klien in 2005, moved to Red Bull's newly acquired sister team Toro Rosso—previously Minardi—where he partnered his fellow Red Bull-backed driver Scott Speed. The Swiss driver Neel Jani became Toro Rosso's third driver.

  Mid-season changes

• After the San Marino Grand Prix Super Aguri's Yuji Ide had his superlicence revoked by the FIA and could no longer race in Formula One. He was replaced by the team's reserve driver Franck Montagny for the next race. Super Aguri hired Sakon Yamamoto, one of Jordan's test drivers from 2005, to be their third driver from the British Grand Prix onwards, in place of the promoted Montagny. Yamamoto and Montagny switched places from the German Grand Prix onwards.
• After the United States Grand Prix, Juan Pablo Montoya announced he was moving to NASCAR for the 2007 season and leaving McLaren. The next day, McLaren announced that Montoya would be replaced in their driver line up by test driver Pedro de la Rosa, ending Montoya's five and a half-year F1 career since 2001.
• Robert Kubica was promoted to a race seat by BMW Sauber at the Hungarian Grand Prix, replacing 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, possibly due to Villeneuve's injuries after a heavy crash in the German Grand Prix. On the day after the Hungarian GP, BMW Sauber announced that Villeneuve had left the team with immediate effect, with Kubica replacing him permanently for the remainder of the season. German Formula 3 driver Sebastian Vettel became BMW Sauber's third driver from the Turkish Grand Prix onwards, replacing the promoted Kubica.
• On 11 September 2006, Red Bull Racing announced that the team officially sacked Christian Klien and thus Red Bull drafted its third/test driver, Robert Doornbos for the final three races of the season as a result of Klien's string of poor results. For the races in China and Japan, Michael Ammermüller replaced Doornbos as third driver.
• Spyker MF1 announced a duo of new third drivers for two of the final races of the year. GP2 Series drivers Alexandre Prémat and Ernesto Viso took part in practice in China and Brazil respectively; Adrian Sutil, who had previously tested in Germany and France, again tested for the team in Japan.
• During the test at the Silverstone Circuit in September, GP2 Series drivers Lewis Hamilton, Nelson Piquet Jr., and Adrián Vallés performed test duties for McLaren, Renault and MF1, respectively. Super Aguri's former race driver Franck Montagny also tested for Toyota.

  Calendar

Regulation changes

Technical regulations

• In an attempt to curb the increasing engine power levels of recent years, the maximum engine displacement was reduced from 3.0 to 2.4 litres and the number of cylinders from 10 to 8. At similar engine speeds, the change was expected to cut peak power by around 200 bhp, which would equate to around three to five seconds on lap times at most circuits.. Initial testing indicated the new engines were six seconds slower than their V10 counterparts, but early in the season, it became obvious that despite the decrease in power, lap times were not far from 2005 figures; on some circuits, the fastest laps set this year were actually faster than the ones recorded the previous year, with the V10 engines.
• Some engine suppliers indicated early that their smaller V8s can rev higher than the 19,000 rpms normal for 2005-spec V10s. Northampton-based engine builder Cosworth had an enviable record of success with V8 engines. It made further history by becoming the first manufacturer to have broken the 20,000 rpm limit on track in December 2005.
• Tyre changes returned to Formula One in 2006. Each driver is limited to 14 sets of tyres per race weekend. This consists of seven sets of dry-weather tyres, four sets of wet-weather tyres and three sets of extreme-weather tyres. The thinking behind this is that the reduced engine size will offset any performance gain. The number of constructors who were supplied tyres by Michelin was down from seven to six while Bridgestone increased from three to five - Toyota and Williams both switched to Bridgestone, and newcomers Super Aguri also ran on Bridgestone, whilst Scuderia Toro Rosso switched to Michelin having run on Bridgestone in their former guise as Minardi. Michelin announced they would withdraw from the championship after the 2006 season.
• All Formula One cars and entrants began to utilise mandatory 7-speed + 1 reverse semi-automatic gearbox configuration from 2006 to.
• To keep costs down, the fuel tank capacity of all Formula One cars were mandatorily standardized to.