2026 Pre-Season Testing

[FittingMechanics]

I'm surprised about comments that using overtake mode hurts you for 5 laps? Why would it, it's just 0.5 MJ more energy allowed per lap? As we saw Lando, he was down to 0 and back over the course of the lap. One thing that rules probably missed is that no one wiill be using energy at 350 kph, it is just not efficient. Better way would be to limit MGU-K to 300 kW in normal mode and then overtake mode gives you 350 kW so you can power out onto the straight faster.

I would also expect overtaking to be easier, or at least initial move will be easier (you may lose it afterwards). For example, in Bahrain everyone is harvesting before T1 and T4. If you decide to not harvest, you can easily overtake on brakes the car that was harvesting with super clipping or coasting. Then you are ahead, now you need to defend, to be able to do that you need to either have some energy already or be able to harvest energy in subsequent corners. Some drivers who are good defensive drivers will probably be able to do this much better than others. In Bahrain, maybe you need to defend (and harvest) until T10 and then power out of that corner will a lot of energy. If you manage to do that, overtake is probably done.

I really think that these electrical systems will lead to more overtakes. They may be result of one car charging but it should happen more often and lead to more track action.

I could be very wrong, we'll see soon.

Drivers are probably talking about overtaking normally, without using these new systems. To line up a car close to the car in front and then overtake through slipstreaming on the straight. This is probably harder because everyone is low drag in the straights and then everyone wants to harvest at the end of straight so no one divebombs.

[upsidedowntoast]

I'm a bit skeptical about Antonelli's race sim, he only did two stints due to the session running out. We are assuming he was fully fueled at the start of his first stint but he may as well have been starting with less fuel and doing the final two stints, or somewhere in between. Given the times he set relative to Russell and the others that may be the more likely scenario.
https://i.postimg.cc/qM4R3J10/2026-02-1 ... A-%28s.png The point about race sims in testing is to completely eliminate fuel as a variable, and you can only do that if you can verify the full race sim. This one still has a ? to me.

this chart was very hard to read, I couldn't tell the difference between the antonelli and russell blue
also i forget which time of day everyone was running on so there should be an asterisk or difference in the dots for the people who ran in the morning vs evening

[TeamKoolGreen]

3 years of this crap? Kill me now.

You don’t need to watch it…

While this is true, by just perusing these forums, you can tell that it's far from being just me that is feeling this "don't need to watch it", in which case something might be quite wrong with the sport. It also seems the highest rated drivers are also coming out and saying much the same, even a leading figure of the WDC team is now calling for quick changes.

Do you think this might amount to something, or it's "just me"?

This very much amounts to something. But some people just go along with and support whatever the thing is because we have no choice in it anyway. And that is an understandable mentality. But everyone will draw a line somewhere.

F1's TV viewership broke records in all markets last year. They picked up a record numbers of sponsorship deals. Even the F1 movie did very well. F1 could see a collapse in interest. It could be a mockery.

How Liberty and the FIA thought that what the fans wanted meant literally nothing and what Audi wanted means everything will live in corporate infamy.

Now they have to try and weasel their way out of this mess. And there's many roadblocks to it.

They could have postponed the rules for a year as they did last time , and all sat around the table like adults and sorted these things out. But they didnt.

[AR3-GP]

They could have postponed the rules for a year as they did last time , and all sat around the table like adults and sorted these things out. But they didnt.

They wouldn't have been able to, since Honda wouldn't have been able to supply Red Bull this year. Supply chain is not there for the old PUs.

[TeamKoolGreen]

Speaking of mockery, this is going viral

https://x.com/i/status/2022797311307305005

[TeamKoolGreen]

Speaking of mockery, this is going viral
(Sam Collins talking about Ferrari's faster starting ability and then the car proceeds to scream and groan seemingly forever)

https://x.com/i/status/2022797311307305005

[AR3-GP]

I'm surprised about comments that using overtake mode hurts you for 5 laps? Why would it, it's just 0.5 MJ more energy allowed per lap? As we saw Lando, he was down to 0 and back over the course of the lap. One thing that rules probably missed is that no one wiill be using energy at 350 kph, it is just not efficient. Better way would be to limit MGU-K to 300 kW in normal mode and then overtake mode gives you 350 kW so you can power out onto the straight faster.

There is an optimum deployment strategy around the lap. When you deviate from it (overtake mode active), you start running the remainder of that lap "out of sync". This makes you slower. You remain out of sync with the optimum energy map until you have compensated by "extra harvesting" to put the energy level back in phase with the optimum energy map.

There are two ways to deal with this "extra harvesting". You can attempt to get it all at once, but then you will just waive the other driver back past you, and potentially other cars. If you spread it out over 3-5 laps (either LICO, or superclip, or low gear), you will be slower than optimum in all of those laps, but then have a better chance to defend the position that you have taken and move forwards. You might get stuck in a time wasting exercise if the driver that you pass decides to use the overtake mode to pass you in that time frame.

Overtake mode is going to cause a lot of time wasting and "net zero" overtakes.

[upsidedowntoast]

I'm surprised about comments that using overtake mode hurts you for 5 laps? Why would it, it's just 0.5 MJ more energy allowed per lap? As we saw Lando, he was down to 0 and back over the course of the lap. One thing that rules probably missed is that no one wiill be using energy at 350 kph, it is just not efficient. Better way would be to limit MGU-K to 300 kW in normal mode and then overtake mode gives you 350 kW so you can power out onto the straight faster.

There is an optimum deployment strategy around the lap. When you deviate from it (overtake mode active), you start running the remainder of that lap "out of sync". This makes you slower. You remain out of sync with the optimum energy map on every single corner after using the overtake mode until you have compensated by "extra harvesting" to put the energy level back in phase with the optimum energy map.

There are two ways to deal with this "extra harvesting". You can attempt to get it all at once, but then you will just waive the other driver back past you, and potentially other cars. If you spread it out over 3-5 laps (either LICO, or superclip, or low gear), you will be slower than optimum in all of those laps, but then have a better chance to defend the position that you have taken and move forwards. You might get stuck in a time wasting exercise if the driver that you pass decides to use the overtake mode to pass you in that time frame.

Overtake mode is going to cause a lot of time wasting and "net zero" overtakes.

Honestly to me "overtake mode" seems like a lose-lose situation because there is a penalty for using it, like spending money. It turns the concept of wheel-to-wheel battles into a prisoner's dilemma, where if say P1 and P2 get in a tiff with each other and start spending their energy to fight and defend, they'll just both end up worse off, allowing whoever's chilling in P3 to cruise to the podium. The only scenario I can think of where you would want to use overtake mode is if some part of the track has a lot of turns that lets you harvest more energy than you can store, in which case you're in a "use it or lose it" scenario and it's actually optimal to dump that excess unstorable energy using the overtake mode.

[AR3-GP]

Honestly to me "overtake mode" seems like a lose-lose situation because there is a penalty for using it, like spending money. It turns the concept of wheel-to-wheel battles into a prisoner's dilemma, where if say P1 and P2 get in a tiff with each other and start spending their energy to fight and defend, they'll just both end up worse off, allowing whoever's chilling in P3 to cruise to the podium. The only scenario I can think of where you would want to use overtake mode is if some part of the track has a lot of turns that lets you harvest more energy than you can store, in which case you're in a "use it or lose it" scenario and it's actually optimal to dump that excess unstorable energy using the overtake mode.

Prisoner's dilemma is exactly how I would describe it.

[dialtone]

Honestly to me "overtake mode" seems like a lose-lose situation because there is a penalty for using it, like spending money. It turns the concept of wheel-to-wheel battles into a prisoner's dilemma, where if say P1 and P2 get in a tiff with each other and start spending their energy to fight and defend, they'll just both end up worse off, allowing whoever's chilling in P3 to cruise to the podium. The only scenario I can think of where you would want to use overtake mode is if some part of the track has a lot of turns that lets you harvest more energy than you can store, in which case you're in a "use it or lose it" scenario and it's actually optimal to dump that excess unstorable energy using the overtake mode.

Prisoner's dilemma is exactly how I would describe it.

Prisoner’s dilemma winning scenario has both winning, this is a pretty fundamental aspect otherwise it’s literally not a prisoner’s dilemma. Unless both cars get to win I don’t see how this can qualify.

Let’s use terminology properly.

On top of it, tire life is already a limiting factor of fights between cars and you are usually worse off after one as you just can’t recover until the pit stop.

It’s hard to understand how you folks argue that drivers can’t go all out, and then also say they will be ok settling for 2nd if they could win. Come on…

[upsidedowntoast]

Honestly to me "overtake mode" seems like a lose-lose situation because there is a penalty for using it, like spending money. It turns the concept of wheel-to-wheel battles into a prisoner's dilemma, where if say P1 and P2 get in a tiff with each other and start spending their energy to fight and defend, they'll just both end up worse off, allowing whoever's chilling in P3 to cruise to the podium. The only scenario I can think of where you would want to use overtake mode is if some part of the track has a lot of turns that lets you harvest more energy than you can store, in which case you're in a "use it or lose it" scenario and it's actually optimal to dump that excess unstorable energy using the overtake mode.

Prisoner's dilemma is exactly how I would describe it.

Prisoner’s dilemma winning scenario has both winning, this is a pretty fundamental aspect otherwise it’s literally not a prisoner’s dilemma. Unless both cars get to win I don’t see how this can qualify.

Let’s use terminology properly.

On top of it, tire life is already a limiting factor of fights between cars and you are usually worse off after one as you just can’t recover until the pit stop.

It’s hard to understand how you folks argue that drivers can’t go all out, and then also say they will be ok settling for 2nd if they could win. Come on…

Prisoner's dilemma means that you have 4 choices of this format, for nonnegative values of k:
1. A and B both betray: A - k1, B - k1
2. A betrays, B does not: A + k2, B - k3
3. B betrays, A does not: A - k3, B + k2
4. A and B do not betray: A + k4, B + k4

k can be zero depending on setup; k3 is commonly greater than k1 but doesn't have to be.

In this case it's a prisoner's dilemma in the sense that:
1. A and B both fight: A and B both lose relative to the rest of the field.
2. A fights, B doesn't: B loses relative to A (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
3. B fights, A doesn't: A loses relative to B (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
4. A and B don't fight: A and B maintain their positions, which might be a positive relative to the rest of the field if everyone else is losing energy from fighting and they are not.

When I say "win" I do not mean the F1 definition of "win = finish P1 in the race", I mean the game theory definition of "win" which means "improving your relative position based on the choices in that round".

[dialtone]

Prisoner's dilemma is exactly how I would describe it.

Prisoner’s dilemma winning scenario has both winning, this is a pretty fundamental aspect otherwise it’s literally not a prisoner’s dilemma. Unless both cars get to win I don’t see how this can qualify.

Let’s use terminology properly.

On top of it, tire life is already a limiting factor of fights between cars and you are usually worse off after one as you just can’t recover until the pit stop.

It’s hard to understand how you folks argue that drivers can’t go all out, and then also say they will be ok settling for 2nd if they could win. Come on…

Prisoner's dilemma means that you have 4 choices of this format, for nonnegative values of k:
1. A and B both betray: A - k1, B - k1
2. A betrays, B does not: A + k2, B - k3
3. B betrays, A does not: A - k3, B + k2
4. A and B do not betray: A + k4, B + k4

k can be zero depending on setup; k3 is commonly greater than k1 but doesn't have to be.

In this case it's a prisoner's dilemma in the sense that:
1. A and B both fight: A and B both lose relative to the rest of the field.
2. A fights, B doesn't: B loses relative to A (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
3. B fights, A doesn't: A loses relative to B (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
4. A and B don't fight: A and B maintain their positions, which might be a positive relative to the rest of the field if everyone else is losing energy from fighting and they are not.

When I say "win" I do not mean the F1 definition of "win = finish P1 in the race", I mean the game theory definition of "win" which means "improving your relative position based on the choices in that round".

The point is cooperating. The winning strategy between 2 companies is to split the market and gain bigger profits than they would gain fighting one another, this is a win-win scenario, and why companies collude. This isn’t an equilibrium because in both views, if you defect you can improve your payoff, but the best overall system view of the outcome is cooperation.

In this case there is no system view unless both drivers are from the same team. Each driver wants to win and they don’t gain anything by settling for 2nd, you are assuming they for sure will be 3rd if they fight which is hard to understand. The driver behind has nothing to lose. 0.5MJ is a couple of corners of recovery, they can recover 9MJ per lap.

And anyway the driver behind will find themselves in the same dilemma that you just talked about.

In other words you are stating that the optimal strategy with these new engines is to not pass anyone, and that’s just hard to grasp.

And the most important part anyway is that this is in no way different than today. Plenty of occasions drivers lost massive perfomance from their tires because they couldn’t pass in a few laps, they still fought their battle.

[upsidedowntoast]

Prisoner’s dilemma winning scenario has both winning, this is a pretty fundamental aspect otherwise it’s literally not a prisoner’s dilemma. Unless both cars get to win I don’t see how this can qualify.

Let’s use terminology properly.

On top of it, tire life is already a limiting factor of fights between cars and you are usually worse off after one as you just can’t recover until the pit stop.

It’s hard to understand how you folks argue that drivers can’t go all out, and then also say they will be ok settling for 2nd if they could win. Come on…

Prisoner's dilemma means that you have 4 choices of this format, for nonnegative values of k:
1. A and B both betray: A - k1, B - k1
2. A betrays, B does not: A + k2, B - k3
3. B betrays, A does not: A - k3, B + k2
4. A and B do not betray: A + k4, B + k4

k can be zero depending on setup; k3 is commonly greater than k1 but doesn't have to be.

In this case it's a prisoner's dilemma in the sense that:
1. A and B both fight: A and B both lose relative to the rest of the field.
2. A fights, B doesn't: B loses relative to A (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
3. B fights, A doesn't: A loses relative to B (for that lap, we don't know the consequences later).
4. A and B don't fight: A and B maintain their positions, which might be a positive relative to the rest of the field if everyone else is losing energy from fighting and they are not.

When I say "win" I do not mean the F1 definition of "win = finish P1 in the race", I mean the game theory definition of "win" which means "improving your relative position based on the choices in that round".

The point is cooperating. The winning strategy between 2 companies is to split the market and gain bigger profits than they would gain fighting one another, this is a win-win scenario, and why companies collude. This isn’t an equilibrium because in both views, if you defect you can improve your payoff, but the best overall system view of the outcome is cooperation.

In this case there is no system view unless both drivers are from the same team. Each driver wants to win and they don’t gain anything by settling for 2nd, you are assuming they for sure will be 3rd if they fight which is hard to understand. The driver behind has nothing to lose. 0.5MJ is a couple of corners of recovery, they can recover 9MJ per lap.

And anyway the driver behind will find themselves in the same dilemma that you just talked about.

In other words you are stating that the optimal strategy with these new engines is to not pass anyone, and that’s just hard to grasp.

And the most important part anyway is that this is in no way different than today. Plenty of occasions drivers lost massive perfomance from their tires because they couldn’t pass in a few laps, they still fought their battle.

Not necessarily. If you're in a heavy braking zone where you're actually harvesting more than you can store then use the overtake mode all you want because that's "use it or lose it" energy. Or if you know that the person in front used up a bunch of energy a short while ago in a different battle, then it makes sense to deploy then.

But knowing this, on the more energy-starved circuits, it becomes a game of chicken of "who will overtake and lose more energy first". And sometimes the optimal strategy on such tracks *is* to never overtake because doing nothing and ending up P2 is better than trying something and ending up P5.

In my opinion the punishment for wearing out your tyres is not as bad as the punishment for running out of energy. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic and the cost is actually not that bad, but the fact that there is a cost for attempting to overtake at all seems counterintuitive if they were trying to design a regset that encouraged more exciting racing and battles.

The other alternative I see is that the second driver becomes more important. For example instead of risking your championship contender's energy, you send out the teammate as a sacrifice to bait the competition into an extended battery spending fight instead, idk.

[Chuckjr]

I think the sharp end are all are pretty close chassis wise—RB, Merc, Macca, Ferrari. Really proud of all four of the typically sharp end teams. The obvious difference finally is going to be the PU management and efficiency, over chassis, unfortunately.

Imo, RB maybe has the best battery package overall (Ford is greatness imo) and that will overcome the compression advantage, if any, from Merc. I don't have much to back that up other than hunch from what I have seen from RB and Max's demeanor. Over the lap recharge and deploy are the name of the game now.

Seems overtake button is near useless (tho passing lapped traffic will be easier) since the cars cannot sustain power for the following laps to hold the position. Which will be excruciating to watch. With a probable multiple lap penalty for overtaking with the button, it seems will become detrimental to use it as the passed car will simply get the place back on the next set of curves and straights with simply more power to offer. Could we see a situation where the overtake is never used but for lapped traffic, until the last lap and then with everyone using it, the point becomes moot? My god. What is happening.

I think the long term solution to limp these impotent power units over the next 4 years will be to increase fuel flow, increase fuel tank capacity, increase recharge/deploy rates, and increase the ICE power percentage over the battery to allow for complete charging of the battery within a lap without too much PU losses; all while changing the rates, so to put racing back in the drivers hands rather than power management’s hands. It’s the only way I can see them being able to keep this PU racing relevant, competitive, and salvageable.

I guess maybe an upside to find in all of this nonsense is the new mental load that will be unleashed on the driver. It is more of a chess game than the outright fastest, rawest talent, and that will cater to drivers that are of higher IQ (literally), multi-management skills, better in race containment than the raw talent. Just trying to find positives in this…sigh. O__O

[FittingMechanics]

I'm surprised about comments that using overtake mode hurts you for 5 laps? Why would it, it's just 0.5 MJ more energy allowed per lap? As we saw Lando, he was down to 0 and back over the course of the lap. One thing that rules probably missed is that no one wiill be using energy at 350 kph, it is just not efficient. Better way would be to limit MGU-K to 300 kW in normal mode and then overtake mode gives you 350 kW so you can power out onto the straight faster.

There is an optimum deployment strategy around the lap. When you deviate from it (overtake mode active), you start running the remainder of that lap "out of sync". This makes you slower. You remain out of sync with the optimum energy map until you have compensated by "extra harvesting" to put the energy level back in phase with the optimum energy map.

There are two ways to deal with this "extra harvesting". You can attempt to get it all at once, but then you will just waive the other driver back past you, and potentially other cars. If you spread it out over 3-5 laps (either LICO, or superclip, or low gear), you will be slower than optimum in all of those laps, but then have a better chance to defend the position that you have taken and move forwards. You might get stuck in a time wasting exercise if the driver that you pass decides to use the overtake mode to pass you in that time frame.

Overtake mode is going to cause a lot of time wasting and "net zero" overtakes.

I understand the rules, but I disagree with your view here. I don't think it is as negative as you make it. It is not "free" but neither is divebombing or overtaking on the outside, both of those lose you laptime.

Overtake mode is additional 0.5 MJ, so it's 9 MJ per lap instead of 8.5 MJ. So first you need to spend 5 MJ (first part of the lap) and then recharge 4 more to get 9MJ per lap. They already reach 0 MJ throughout the lap.

Difference between using it and not using it is just getting 0.5 MJ somewhere, and as we saw braking on the straight got 2 MJ or more for Lando. I can easily see someone use overtake mode to get an advantage and then "park the car in middle of road" harvesting in a slow corner to get 0.5 MJ back.

Btw if you are 0.5 MJ "lower" you will just be able to deploy less out of a corner where you reached 0. It cannot persist for laps. You will still be harvesting 6 or 7 or 8.5 MJ whatever is the amount you can do at that track.