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When Steve Tandy announces his first squad for the autumn internationals, Steve Tandy will realize how significant his position will be as Wales’ head coach.

Tandy will announce his players for November matches against Argentina, Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa at the Principality Stadium on Tuesday.

Wales, which defeated Japan in a series of 18 Test defeats in Kobe in July, put an end to an 18-game losing streak in the world rankings.

The Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) is expected to make a decision on changes to the professional game by the end of October, so Tandy will also be welcoming the players. There is a lot of uncertainty off the field.

Tandy left Wales in 2018, coming home after serving for six years as the Ospreys’ head coach.

Before moving to Scotland in 2019, he began his coaching career with the Waratahs in Sydney.

In addition, Tandy served on Warren Gatland’s backroom staff for the British and Irish Lions during the summer of 2021.

Tandy made the decision to move back to Wales in July, and he has already met some well-known faces in his new role, including former Ospreys team-mate and Dragons boss Filo Tiatia.

Tiatia, who spent five years playing with the 45-year-old former flanker, said, “I can only speak highly of Tandy, he’s a beautiful man.”

He is a very upbeat coach who is also very compassionate and demanding when things are going wrong.

With all this success, I wish him the best of luck because he can only be good for Wales. He will need support for his four difficult tests.

Tiatia thinks that Tandy will benefit from changing his ways to improve his coaching abilities.

He “added Tiatia,” and “he’s a big learner.” He has accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He wants to continue to improve both himself and those around him.

Steve left his comfort zone and moved on as the Ospreys coach, where he saw opportunities in Australia.

Tandy’s ability to work together is praised by Tiatia as “wonderful,” and the Wales coach has already made efforts to create a spirit of cooperation.

The Wales manager has hired Danny Wilson and Matt Sherratt as permanent assistants for the backroom staff, who have visited the four professional sides frequently.

There is definitely a skill set that many people can learn from, said Tiatia, and Tandy is very good at working with people.

What’s great about this is that Steve and the coaches are attempting to collaborate a little bit more round the clubs.

“It’s amazing to see the Welsh international coaches.” They can learn a little bit more about the coaches and players they are unfamiliar with.

When your Welsh international coaches are seen as both people and people, “it can only be a good thing.”

Aaron Wainwright, the eighth Dragons and Wales player and projected to be one of Tandy’s senior players, echoed Tiatia’s sentiments.

Wainwright said, “Steve entered the room and introduced himself to the group, which I thought was nice.”

I believe it’s important to “get out there and have relationships with the regions.”

Tandy is the first Welshman to lead Wales’ permanent head coach since Gareth Jenkins in 2006, having previously taken over from Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Gatland, and Wayne Pivac.

This week, Tandy appointed former internationals Rhys Patchell, Dan Lydiate, and Duncan Jones as special coaches on loan from Dragons and Ospreys, who completed their duties.

The trio’s only involvement with the upcoming autumn campaign is with Welshmen or those with knowledge of the Welsh system.

Welsh coaches are crucial, according to Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel.

For Welsh coaches, the opportunity to work at international level is fantastic because you are always striving to be successful.

There are numerous reputable Welsh coaches both domestically and abroad. The more exposure they receive while performing at the highest level will benefit the game as a whole.

*All games take place at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Sunday, 9 November – Argentina (15: 10 GMT)

Saturday, 15 November – Japan (17: 40 GMT)

Saturday, 22 November – New Zealand (15: 10 GMT)

After the US Grand Prix, Max Verstappen declared for the first time in his entire career that a world championship victory was a real possibility.

Because Verstappen has been refuting the concept for a while, it seemed like a significant moment.

That made sense during McLaren’s imperious form from the beginning of the year to the end of the summer.

Verstappen’s points gap to the McLaren drivers was so great even when the four-time champion didn’t want to discuss it in public even though he might have been considering it in private when he first started winning races in September. He claimed that he was just going with it and not thinking about the championship.

Verstappen said the same thing at the start of the weekend in Austin, even though he had won two of the past three grands prix and finished second in the other. Since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, A McLaren had not finished ahead of him.

Verstappen could have said it again after a weekend of racing where he won the sprint and the grand prix on the same day. He might even have been expected to. But by this point, he almost had faith in him.

Verstappen remarked, “There is a chance,” adding that. “We just need to try and deliver these kind of weekends to the end. We’ll try. It is fascinating.

” Of course we know we need to be perfect to the end of the season to have a chance, but we will try, and if we succeed, of course amazing.

The last four races have had quite impressive statistics over the past month and a half.

After the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen was 104 points behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in the championship, and 70 adrift of Lando Norris. He is now 40 points behind Australian, who has lost just 14 points over his team-mate.

Verstappen’s own doubts about what he had accomplished were expressed by him. If someone had told him after Zandvoort this would happen, he said, “I would have told him he was an idiot.

However, the car was in a good location. It’s really that easy. Of course, we put some upgrades on the car, but we just understood our car a bit better, where we wanted it to perform better. “

Its own story is told in a 64-point victory in four races, but how it came about is just as remarkable.

Red Bull won the summer races in Europe before McLaren’s victory at the Italian Grand Prix in early September when Verstappen finally erred over the improvements to the floor and front wing.

Since then, the Red Bull has been the fastest car. That could have been disproven until this weekend in Austin because Monza, Baku, and Singapore are all short, slow corners that call for good braking and traction.

The McLaren’s strengths lie elsewhere: they are in long-duration, medium-speed corners where they outsmart everyone else.

But Austin is a” normal “circuit, a road course not a street circuit, not a high-speed outlier like Monza, with a good range of corners. Verstappen also triumphed once more.

The team has selected Brazil, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi as the potential venues for McLaren’s future circuits.

But Verstappen’s recent form brings everything into question.

The Verstappen-Red Bull combination, according to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, could top the standings this year at every remaining track, according to Stella on Saturday in Austin.

However, Stella’s public tone had gotten more positive by Sunday. He was encouraged, he said, by the fact that Norris” had the pace to win the race today”.

On the few more laps Norris was able to run his pace, Stella claimed, this had been demonstrated. Verstappen reaffirmed.

” As soon as Lando was in clean air, “the Dutchman said”, it was very evenly matched or he was slightly faster. Although it wasn’t very easy, we did manage to gap until the end.

Norris’ issue was that he spent the majority of the race stranded behind Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.

Ferrari were the only team to pick the right strategy. Leclerc gained control as he ran past Norris into the first corner while starting on soft tyres.

Norris’ entire first stint was held back by Leclerc. The McLaren driver stayed off his mediums while the pit man came in first, fitting the medium tyres. When Norris finally pitted, fitting the softs instead of the hards that had been the plan at the start of the race, he emerged behind Leclerc again, inevitably.

He had anticipated being able to pass fairly quickly, but Leclerc let him go once more after catching the Ferrari. Norris backed off to cool his tires, and he only managed to finish in second place five laps later.

Had he held on to it at the start, the race could have been very different”. We are reassured that “Stella said”‘s performance was in line with the victory story.

This was especially encouraging because the McLaren drivers’ collision, which had caused them to both lose valuable lessons on the first lap, had cost them both.

That meant McLaren had had to be conservative with their set-up, especially in terms of ride height, because they lacked the necessary data on a track where other teams have in the past been caught out by the bumps and been disqualified for excessive floor wear.

Verstappen closes on both McLaren drivers, and Norris has been closing on Piastri. He was 34 points behind his team-mate after Zandvoort, and he has now reduced that by more than half.

In Monza, Piastri finished ahead of Norris, missed the weekend in Baku, and was forced to draw a winner in Singapore after Norris barged past him at the corner.

This weekend was different. He never felt at ease with the car, lags about 0.2 seconds behind his team-mate, and never moved at all.

According to Piastri, “I don’t believe there’s an overarching trend that things are going awry.” It’s just that this weekend has been has been tough. We’ll make an effort to understand why that was the case. and make an effort to recover the following week.

He denied that the pressure was getting to him.

No, I don’t believe so, according to Piastri. The pressure has persisted throughout the entire year. This weekend, I didn’t really feel like I made any mistakes. Simply put, it wasn’t very quick.

“Some weekends it just doesn’t work for you. And this was one of those. I don’t believe that’s really what pressure looks like when you think you’ve done a respectable job but only the pace hasn’t changed.

I’ve engaged in fights that have come close to or even close to the present. So I’ve got the evidence for myself that things can still turn out well and I still fully believe that I can win the championship.

There is still a long way to go in the championship, the coach said. With five rounds left, Max obviously has a pretty quick rundown, but the gap isn’t exactly small.

As a whole, Norris, Piastri, and McLaren are entering brand-new territory.

The drivers and the team have not fought for a drivers ‘ title before, although Norris threatened Verstappen last year. Stella, who has won numerous close fights, is the only exception, who worked as a race engineer for Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, and Michael Schumacher.

His current job is to maintain the team’s and drivers’ a level playing field and to relieve pressure while concentrating on the task at hand.

” We keep talking about the fact that what we are facing in this moment – which is a tight competition to win races, a tight competition in the quest for the drivers ‘ championship – is what Formula 1 is about, “Stella said.

When we were easily P1, P2, or P1, P2, as in Barcelona, Bahrain, and other locations, it was anomalous. Formula 1 is not intended to be about that.

“It’s a process of getting used to this kind of pressure, which we want to live with maximum intensity and minimum stress.

We don’t want to lose the joy of what we do, they say. We just want to make sure we put ourselves in a position where we can perform at our best, which includes having fun and acknowledging that it’s a privilege to be in this circumstance.

“And it’s a privilege that came thanks to the good work that McLaren, the team, the two drivers, have been able to do.

Red Bull were fined 50, 000 euros for a team member’s attempt to remove the tape that marked Lando Norris’ grid position for the US Grand Prix.

The fine was suspended for the remainder of the 2025 season, with the condition that it never happens again.

The Red Bull employee, according to the FIA, had ignored marshals’ instructions to “prevent him from entering the gate well area.”

According to a source, Red Bull did this to a rival team before a race, and McLaren were using stronger tape to stop it from happening again.

The Race first reported the incident, and BBC Sport has verified it.

McLaren inquired with the FIA about using tape to mark their grid positions in this manner at the start of the season.

If a car is placed incorrectly on the grid, drivers are punished. Because drivers can’t see the lines on the track marking their grid box, they are putting tape on the wall next to the track to help them do this.

A Red Bull representative at the hearing called to look into the situation claimed in a stewards’ report that the team member in question had “informed him that he was not aware of the efforts of the marshals to stop him.”

The stewards stated further that it is “absolutely prohibited” to enter the track or interfere with the safety measures used to prepare the track for the race after the grid has been cleared.

Therefore, preventing or putting off the closing of the gates before the race starts must be seen as an unsafe action and a significant fine is appropriate regardless of whether the relevant officials’ instructions have been met by the person concerned.

Red Bull and McLaren both declined to comment.

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said he thought the incident was “a misunderstanding” before the facts were revealed and the jury had rendered their verdict.

We went to the FIA’s video, he continued, “We went.” Yes, we can improve this in the future, but on our end, we don’t feel like we’ve broken any rules or received any particular ones.

Red Bull were fined 50, 000 euros (£43, 500) for a team member’s attempt to remove the tape that marked Lando Norris’ grid position for the US Grand Prix.

The fine was suspended for the remainder of the 2025 season, with the condition that it never happens again.

The Red Bull employee, according to the FIA, had ignored marshals’ instructions to “prevent him from entering the gate well area.”

The team member was in violation of the rules because he shouldn’t have been where he was at the time, so removing a rival’s tape marker is not against the rules.

According to a source, Red Bull did this to a rival team before other races, which is typically their closest competitor’s last race, and McLaren were using stronger tape this time to stop it.

After the formation lap had begun, the Red Bull team member was able to return to where he was thanks to the difficulty of getting the tape off.

The Race first reported the incident, and BBC Sport has verified it.

McLaren inquired with the FIA about using tape to mark their grid positions in this manner at the start of the season.

If a car is placed incorrectly on the grid, drivers are punished. Because drivers can’t see the lines on the track marking their grid box, they are putting tape on the wall next to the track to help them do this.

A Red Bull representative at the hearing called to look into the situation claimed in a stewards’ report that the team member in question had “informed him that he was not aware of the efforts of the marshals to stop him.”

The stewards stated further that it is “absolutely prohibited” to enter the track or interfere with the safety measures used to prepare the track for the race after the grid has been cleared.

Therefore, preventing or putting off the closing of the gates before the race starts must be seen as an unsafe action and a significant fine is appropriate regardless of whether the relevant officials’ instructions have been met by the person concerned.

Red Bull and McLaren both declined to comment.

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said he thought the incident was “a misunderstanding” before the facts were revealed and the jury had rendered their verdict.

We went to the FIA’s video, he continued, “We went.” Yes, we can improve this in the future, but on our end, we don’t feel like we’ve broken any rules or received any particular ones.