Begun, the upgrade war has 2026’s Formula 1 championship now looks far from a foregone thing. Lewis Hamilton goes by in a blur. Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images After an unanticipated five-week break in the season, Formula One resumed action this past weekend in Miami. Held at a temporary circuit around Hard Rock Stadium, the event is emblematic of the Liberty era of F1: a turbocharged marketing extravaganza crammed full of hospitality suites with ticket prices as high as $95,000 . It might be miles from the sea—the original plans to race across a bridge over Biscayne Bay did not survive contact with locals—but the sport is doing its best to make this a modern Monaco, playing up the host city’s glamorous reputation and pastel color palette. As we learned a couple of weeks ago , there have been tweaks to the amount of energy that the cars’ new hybrid power units can regenerate and deploy via the electric motor that contributes almost half of the car’s power output.…