2025/2026 Hybrid Powerunit speculation

[DickTater85]

Looking at the data so far, the way the car has to be driven……these have to be the worst powertrain rules of all time. This just isn’t what racing in general should be never mind “the pinnacle of motorsports”. The chassis and aero side of things seems to pretty good but I can make any sense of these pu rules….formula one might actually be in a little trouble this time

[Hoffman900]

I’m seeing parallels to NASCAR and its ‘Car of Tomorrow’. 20 years ago NASCAR was huge and was everywhere, at a time when F1 was hemorraging fans after Ferrari’s dominance and lack of action. Then they unvealed the COT and it was a flop, add in some other economic factors, and NASCAR has been in free fall since.

[mzso]

He meant probably it is less than 4 MJ, maybe the calculated amount per cycle/straight.

Exactly. In some braking zones it goes from rather empty to more or less full. That is impossible for 4 MJ in total.

Not really, it's only ever increasing by a little less than half in the biggest harvesting zones, which would require about 5 seconds of continuous max harvest. Sounds unreasonable when you say it but if you actually look at the "harvest/deployment meter" above the gear number you can see how it happens. Using their various engine techniques they can essentially get the full 350 kW from the moment they brake until the moment they go back on throttle on the other end of the corner. In some corners that is easily 3-4-5 seconds when accounting for a bit of LiCo at the start.

See here. I've cut it from the moment he goes to full regen at 46.3s (you can see the green meter above the gear number is fully to the left), then at 51.2s the green meter starts going down. That's 5 seconds of continuous 350kW regen, or 1.75MJ. You can also see the SoC has gone from being at maybe 35-40% to about 80%.
https://i.postimg.cc/xT60NKk6/f1-lico.png
https://i.postimg.cc/KzhFhfVX/f1-lico-2.png

I'm confused the green bar jumps eclectically when shifting gears. Do you mean the blue bar? That's the one visible on your snapshots.

[mzso]

Why did the FIA prohibit using the MGU-K during race starts?? They're not allowed to use the K for the first 50 meters.
Couldn't it have prevented the stall risks, and them hanging to rev for 10 seconds if they were allowed to use electrical power from the start???

Maybe to keep it challenging.

[Badger]

Exactly. In some braking zones it goes from rather empty to more or less full. That is impossible for 4 MJ in total.

Not really, it's only ever increasing by a little less than half in the biggest harvesting zones, which would require about 5 seconds of continuous max harvest. Sounds unreasonable when you say it but if you actually look at the "harvest/deployment meter" above the gear number you can see how it happens. Using their various engine techniques they can essentially get the full 350 kW from the moment they brake until the moment they go back on throttle on the other end of the corner. In some corners that is easily 3-4-5 seconds when accounting for a bit of LiCo at the start.

See here. I've cut it from the moment he goes to full regen at 46.3s (you can see the green meter above the gear number is fully to the left), then at 51.2s the green meter starts going down. That's 5 seconds of continuous 350kW regen, or 1.75MJ. You can also see the SoC has gone from being at maybe 35-40% to about 80%.
https://i.postimg.cc/xT60NKk6/f1-lico.png
https://i.postimg.cc/KzhFhfVX/f1-lico-2.png

I'm confused the green bar jumps eclectically when shifting gears. Do you mean the blue bar? That's the one visible on your snapshots.

The green bar that sits right above the gear number on the display. Not the gear shift lights.

[FittingMechanics]

Why did the FIA prohibit using the MGU-K during race starts?? They're not allowed to use the K for the first 50 meters.
Couldn't it have prevented the stall risks, and them hanging to rev for 10 seconds if they were allowed to use electrical power from the start???

Maybe because cars would start using electrical engine? And switch over as they gain speed. This would look like Formula E and fans would hate it.

About the starts, aren't the cars at the front sitting for a long time already? I can understand that cars at the back will have short amount of time, but cars at most of the grid will surely have enough time to spool it up, they just need to start doing it in advance of last car stopping on the grid.

[De Wet]

The Race:

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mess ... mpression/


Good article.

[Tommi870]

So how much slower would the cars actually be, if all components of the electric power train would simplye be removed? Even without any changes to the combustion engibe, the difference in laptime couldn't possibly be too big.
So what on earth is actually the purpose of these regulations?

-The net gain in laptime is minimal and would even be neglectable if the combustion engine/ fuel flow was a bit stronger.
- The cars are much less eco friendly as compared to a combustion engine only
- The energy recovery procedures have virtually zero correspondance to consumer cars.

[chipengineer]

So how much slower would the cars actually be, if all components of the electric power train would simplye be removed? Even without any changes to the combustion engibe, the difference in laptime couldn't possibly be too big.
So what on earth is actually the purpose of these regulations?

-The net gain in laptime is minimal and would even be neglectable if the combustion engine/ fuel flow was a bit stronger.
- The cars are much less eco friendly as compared to a combustion engine only
- The energy recovery procedures have virtually zero correspondance to consumer cars.

It would be interesting for the rules to allow those components to be removed to save weight (minimum weight correspondingly reduced if they are removed). Might the simpler cars be faster on some tracks?

[Martin Keene]

If the fears of these engine being as bad during a race, and the issues with the start turn out to be true, still not convinced, so TP's will be playing games to get something that helps them.

What could the answer be, given the limited fuel volume the cars will have been designed around, you can't simply up the fuel flow to get more power from the ICE...

Could they bin the hybrid battery to allow for more fuel? Twin turbo's?

Or are we likely to be stuck with these engines until the end of the rule cycle?

[dialtone]

So how much slower would the cars actually be, if all components of the electric power train would simplye be removed? Even without any changes to the combustion engibe, the difference in laptime couldn't possibly be too big.
So what on earth is actually the purpose of these regulations?

-The net gain in laptime is minimal and would even be neglectable if the combustion engine/ fuel flow was a bit stronger.
- The cars are much less eco friendly as compared to a combustion engine only
- The energy recovery procedures have virtually zero correspondance to consumer cars.

If you take out the electrical part these cars would be 4-5s slower per lap easily, they wouldn't make the 107% to qualify, you consider this "not too big"?

1. laptime gain is not minimal at all, we're all here discussing how much slower it is that they need to LiCo to recharge, otherwise they would be going at 350kph in the straight in barcelona or bahrain where normally they go at 330 tops. The only reason why these cars are slower in some corners is the LiCo, not the engine technology per se.

2. That's obviously wrong so not much to say here. But I'll take the opportunity to bust this nonsense myth of "BuT tO mAkE bAtTeRiEs YoU uSe MoRe EnErGy AnD Co2", Lithium Ion batteries, aside from being just the current technology, are perfectly recyclable, the typical current recycling technology can recover over 80% of the original material, newer deployed technology brings this to 97-98% and research is getting closer to 100%, in practical terms you can reuse the lithium you mine once almost forever, even at the 80% recycle efficiency and a typical modern battery lasting 5000 cycles we're easily talking about 5+ decades of useful lithium life. Synthetic fuels and biofuels in the spec defined by FIA are net neutral carbon emissions, not much to say here either, it's literally in the rules that they have to be. Hybrid/PHEV/EV is the present including in super/hypercars like the technology marvel that is the F80, but aside from that, even the dumbest PHEV with 50km electric range would make most families in the world need only 3-4 gas tanks a year.

3. LMAO, LMFAO even.

[venkyhere]

Noob question (pardon me if it has been discussed before in this thread) :
- how is FIA going to ensure teams are not going to burn more fuel than allowed ? Since each engine is going to have it's own customized fuel, energy densities may vary, so on what basis is the fuel-use limit defined upon ? surely it can't be volume/second or mass/second, it has to be energy/second. How is the 'measurement' for it done ?

[BrunoH]

Fia standard Fuel flow meter with live telemetry on all cars.

[venkyhere]

Fia standard Fuel flow meter with live telemetry on all cars.

if it is indeed 'flow' (volume/sec) based, does it mean :
a) all fuels are stipulated to have same mass/energy density despite different manufacturers ?
OR
b) the 'threshold' for flow rate will be defined differently for each fuel ?

[Tommi870]

So how much slower would the cars actually be, if all components of the electric power train would simplye be removed? Even without any changes to the combustion engibe, the difference in laptime couldn't possibly be too big.
So what on earth is actually the purpose of these regulations?

-The net gain in laptime is minimal and would even be neglectable if the combustion engine/ fuel flow was a bit stronger.
- The cars are much less eco friendly as compared to a combustion engine only
- The energy recovery procedures have virtually zero correspondance to consumer cars.

If you take out the electrical part these cars would be 4-5s slower per lap easily, they wouldn't make the 107% to qualify, you consider this "not too big"?

1. laptime gain is not minimal at all, we're all here discussing how much slower it is that they need to LiCo to recharge, otherwise they would be going at 350kph in the straight in barcelona or bahrain where normally they go at 330 tops. The only reason why these cars are slower in some corners is the LiCo, not the engine technology per se.

2. That's obviously wrong so not much to say here. But I'll take the opportunity to bust this nonsense myth of "BuT tO mAkE bAtTeRiEs YoU uSe MoRe EnErGy AnD Co2", Lithium Ion batteries, aside from being just the current technology, are perfectly recyclable, the typical current recycling technology can recover over 80% of the original material, newer deployed technology brings this to 97-98% and research is getting closer to 100%, in practical terms you can reuse the lithium you mine once almost forever, even at the 80% recycle efficiency and a typical modern battery lasting 5000 cycles we're easily talking about 5+ decades of useful lithium life. Synthetic fuels and biofuels in the spec defined by FIA are net neutral carbon emissions, not much to say here either, it's literally in the rules that they have to be. Hybrid/PHEV/EV is the present including in super/hypercars like the technology marvel that is the F80, but aside from that, even the dumbest PHEV with 50km electric range would make most families in the world need only 3-4 gas tanks a year.

3. LMAO, LMFAO even.

1. I really would like to see the math behind that. The weight gain would easily be around 100 kilo grams. This would also allow you to run softer tires. That's an easy 4 seconds of laptime. So the electric part of the power unit needs to bring in nine seconds a lap to meet your prediction. A tall order to say the least.
2. Sorry, but an engine with fuel restriction+ the electrical components can never be more eco friendly than that same stand alone engine. That really needs no further explanation.