2026 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 06 - 08

[djos]

Increasing fuel rate probably means redesigning the engines. I don't think it's a simple change at all. Battery size increase is probably simplest way you can "solve" qualifying. Bigger battery would be heavier and require more cooling but these seem simpler and quicker then engine fuel flow change.

720hp + 400hp (300kw) would make these cars too fast.

Letting the teams run to a compression ratio of 18:1 would also help, but effectively require the OEM's to dust off last year's ICE design. Audio would need to build a new ICE from almost scratch.

[langedweil]

It is easier to increase the fuel flow rate to the ICE. Slowing the cars down or front wheel braking is too much of a change for this year.

More ICE power would solve most of the issues.
Previous rules in qualifying trim it was ICE 840hp MGUK 160hp; that is a ratio of 83% to 17%.
Now it is 540hp to 470hp; a ratio of 53% to 47%.

The ICE fuel flow rate increase might roast the turbos lol but that can be solved with new turbo wheels. Not a hard thing. Let's sat increase ICE power to 720hp. That might actually be super punchy and gives more scope to cut the MGUK peak power down to say 300 kW (stop us from slowing the cars down).

Increasing fuel rate probably means redesigning the engines. I don't think it's a simple change at all. Battery size increase is probably simplest way you can "solve" qualifying. Bigger battery would be heavier and require more cooling but these seem simpler and quicker then engine fuel flow change.

720hp + 400hp (300kw) would make these cars too fast.

Well, cap the elctric side on 225kw then ?
That would lead to 720+300 = 1020hp, same thing as last year. That would be an hybrid increase from 84/16 to about 71/29
But I doubt the ICE's can beef up from 540 to 720 without major overhaul.

Current state is really bad for this sport, and I can imagine a lot of ppl walking away, and any newcomers (even the ppl that have watching for ages) will not be able to understand anything that is going on. Split times are no longer telling us anything, and might as well get dropped (useless information).

Ridiculous no one in a decisive position understood all these simulations of what would happen .. and now it's here, there is no easy way out. Might even have murdered the sport. Just for Audi to join ...
It is truly absurd, almost Monty Pythonesque.

Last but not least; I don't think I can mentally handle a Rus season .. but that's probably on me.

[LM10]

Mercedes is much faster on all corners

This comparison is useless as RedBull is not the second fastest car out there, but Ferrari is. If not for deployment issues which Ferrari had from Q2 on, they would have easily finished as second fastest.

Ferrari in Q2 was faster than Mercedes in all corners as can be seen on telemetry data and was hugely losing out on the straights relative to Mercedes.

[upsidedowntoast]

It is easier to increase the fuel flow rate to the ICE. Slowing the cars down or front wheel braking is too much of a change for this year.

More ICE power would solve most of the issues.
Previous rules in qualifying trim it was ICE 840hp MGUK 160hp; that is a ratio of 83% to 17%.
Now it is 540hp to 470hp; a ratio of 53% to 47%.

The ICE fuel flow rate increase might roast the turbos lol but that can be solved with new turbo wheels. Not a hard thing. Let's sat increase ICE power to 720hp. That might actually be super punchy and gives more scope to cut the MGUK peak power down to say 300 kW (stop us from slowing the cars down).

Increasing fuel rate probably means redesigning the engines. I don't think it's a simple change at all. Battery size increase is probably simplest way you can "solve" qualifying. Bigger battery would be heavier and require more cooling but these seem simpler and quicker then engine fuel flow change.

720hp + 400hp (300kw) would make these cars too fast.

Well, cap the elctric side on 225kw then ?
That would lead to 720+300 = 1020hp, same thing as last year. That would be an hybrid increase from 84/16 to about 71/29
But I doubt the ICE's can beef up from 540 to 720 without major overhaul.

Current state is really bad for this sport, and I can imagine a lot of ppl walking away, and any newcomers (even the ppl that have watching for ages) will not be able to understand anything that is going on. Split times are no longer telling us anything, and might as well get dropped (useless information).

Ridiculous no one in a decisive position understood all these simulations of what would happen .. and now it's here, there is no easy way out. Might even have murdered the sport. Just for Audi to join ...
It is truly absurd, almost Monty Pythonesque.

Last but not least; I don't think I can mentally handle a Rus season .. but that's probably on me.

Can probably allow higher fuel flow rate to the same ICE and decrease electrical deployment rate.
Or if they're insistent on electric, make MGU-H a spec part to reduce cost and then allow both front and rear axle regen.

Also why do y'all hate Russell so much, the dramatics around him are puzzling to me...you'd think he was like Stroll or Mazepin. To me he's no different from any of the other drivers.

[langedweil]

Also why do y'all hate Russell so much, the dramatics around him are puzzling to me...you'd think he was like Stroll or Mazepin. To me he's no different from any of the other drivers.

Don't hate him, he's just an annoying corporate bs product, literally risen to fame by a powerpoint.

Dunno .. it's the whining, moaning, sneakyness, the voice, the Woody resemblance .. all that added together.
He's no slouch and absolutely deserves his seat, but he just annoys me.

[Chuckjr]

Mercedes is much faster on all corners

This comparison is useless as RedBull is not the second fastest car out there, but Ferrari is. If not for deployment issues which Ferrari had from Q2 on, they would have easily finished as second fastest.

Ferrari in Q2 was faster than Mercedes in all corners as can be seen on telemetry data and was hugely losing out on the straights relative to Mercedes.

Not so much. Red Bull is second fastest. Premier #1 driver Leclerc and has-been Lewis just got out qualified by a first year at Red Bull driver, Hadjar. Go ahead and blame deployment, blame this, that, and the other circumstance. Keep living in denial. Next race Max will also out qualify Leclerc even with proper deployment. Watch. Ferrari fans are living in denial right now of what is actually happening. It is what it is.

[LM10]

Mercedes is much faster on all corners

This comparison is useless as RedBull is not the second fastest car out there, but Ferrari is. If not for deployment issues which Ferrari had from Q2 on, they would have easily finished as second fastest.

Ferrari in Q2 was faster than Mercedes in all corners as can be seen on telemetry data and was hugely losing out on the straights relative to Mercedes.

Not so much. Red Bull is second fastest. Premier #1 driver Leclerc and has-been Lewis just got out qualified by a first year at Red Bull driver, Hadjar. Go ahead and blame deployment, blame this, that, and the other circumstance. Keep living in denial. Next race Max will also out qualify Leclerc even with proper deployment. Watch. Ferrari fans are living in denial right now of what is actually happening. It is what it is.

Can’t help you living in your own world of Ferrari and especially Lewis hate.

I don’t think Max will out qualify Leclerc. I’ll watch it. No worries.

The deployment issue is a simple fact, btw. It was mentioned by both race engineers. Having deployment issues surely won’t make you go faster in current formula.

[Vettel165]

Will just watch the highlights in the morning. I predict a big chaos with just 13-15 drivers finishing the race, 3 safety cars and 1 red flag. Mercedes will dominate the race. Its not f1 anymore its an arcade game. Very sad what has happened to f1, last year was much much better.

[Seanspeed]

Not so much. Red Bull is second fastest. Premier #1 driver Leclerc and has-been Lewis just got out qualified by a first year at Red Bull driver, Hadjar. Go ahead and blame deployment, blame this, that, and the other circumstance. Keep living in denial. Next race Max will also out qualify Leclerc even with proper deployment. Watch. Ferrari fans are living in denial right now of what is actually happening. It is what it is.

Surely this is sort of posting is beneath what this forum should tolerate, no?

Seems like the sort of thing you'd read in a Youtube comment section.

[upsidedowntoast]

Also why do y'all hate Russell so much, the dramatics around him are puzzling to me...you'd think he was like Stroll or Mazepin. To me he's no different from any of the other drivers.

Don't hate him, he's just an annoying corporate bs product, literally risen to fame by a powerpoint.

Dunno .. it's the whining, moaning, sneakyness, the voice, the Woody resemblance .. all that added together.
He's no slouch and absolutely deserves his seat, but he just annoys me.

You're perfectly entitled to find any of the drivers annoying/whiny/sneaky (they all are imo -- except for Stirling Moss, 100% of those drivers would throw each other under the bus for an extra tenth). The powerpoint thing's a bit backwards to me though; I'd rather have skilled drivers get sponsored through than pay drivers, and Merc already had their eye on him as a junior karting champion before the powerpoint.

[Paa]

It is easier to increase the fuel flow rate to the ICE. Slowing the cars down or front wheel braking is too much of a change for this year.

More ICE power would solve most of the issues.
Previous rules in qualifying trim it was ICE 840hp MGUK 160hp; that is a ratio of 83% to 17%.
Now it is 540hp to 470hp; a ratio of 53% to 47%.

The ICE fuel flow rate increase might roast the turbos lol but that can be solved with new turbo wheels. Not a hard thing. Let's sat increase ICE power to 720hp. That might actually be super punchy and gives more scope to cut the MGUK peak power down to say 300 kW (stop us from slowing the cars down).

I also don't get why they are not trying to recover more energy if they want to give so much emphasis to electric power.
Raising the electric power ratio and dropping MGU-H at the same time seems mental. I know they wanted to cut expenses/complexity, but this is just physics.
They could supply a standard spec MGU-H to all teams, just to recover some more energy. Also front axle recovery.
If they want more energy these two would be a no-brainer.

Interestingly, both were considered and both were kind of dropped due to Audi. (Audi did not want MGU-H being afraid to be behind with that, and other teams did not want front axle recovery being afraid Audi would be ahead with that. So they dropped both. But they could have just kept both as well...)

So in short new formula was kind of ruined (partly), in return we have a re-branded Sauber.

[langedweil]

So in short new formula was kind of ruined (partly), in return we have a re-branded Sauber.

Yeah, basically ... and that rebranded Sauber has no F1 history at all.

Aside that we lost an long time brand in Renault. And whilst not entirely related to this ruleset, fact is they never got on top of the hybridization. They were great with the first turbo's late 70's, and later on with the NA V10's and V8's.
So in a sense they were kinda slaughtered by the hybrid-format eversince 2014; they just gave up.

[upsidedowntoast]

It is easier to increase the fuel flow rate to the ICE. Slowing the cars down or front wheel braking is too much of a change for this year.

More ICE power would solve most of the issues.
Previous rules in qualifying trim it was ICE 840hp MGUK 160hp; that is a ratio of 83% to 17%.
Now it is 540hp to 470hp; a ratio of 53% to 47%.

The ICE fuel flow rate increase might roast the turbos lol but that can be solved with new turbo wheels. Not a hard thing. Let's sat increase ICE power to 720hp. That might actually be super punchy and gives more scope to cut the MGUK peak power down to say 300 kW (stop us from slowing the cars down).

I also don't get why they are not trying to recover more energy if they want to give so much emphasis to electric power.
Raising the electric power ratio and dropping MGU-H at the same time seems mental. I know they wanted to cut expenses/complexity, but this is just physics.
They could supply a standard spec MGU-H to all teams, just to recover some more energy. Also front axle recovery.
If they want more energy these two would be a no-brainer.

Interestingly, both were considered and both were kind of dropped due to Audi. (Audi did not want MGU-H being afraid to be behind with that, and other teams did not want front axle recovery being afraid Audi would be ahead with that. So they dropped both. But they could have just kept both as well...)

So in short new formula was kind of ruined (partly), in return we have a re-branded Sauber.

Probably because the people designing the regs are politicians, financiers, and ideologues, not engineers.

At this point I think the only thing they can feasibly do, if there is a significant viewership drop from this, is to reduce the deployment rate to eliminate clipping while increasing fuel flow rate to the ICE to make up for the the resulting power deficit. This would result in something closer to 70/30 than 50/50 electric which realistically is what they *should have aimed for* in the first place the moment they got rid of MGU-H and front axle regen.

Then introduce fromt axle regen and MGU-H as a spec part for the next reg cycle. Unfortunately it's too costly for a full redesign this late.

[Rodak]

bigger capacity battery doesn't just mean weight (well, even for weight there is a point of diminishing returns, where beyond a critical weight, the extra benefit from more stored charge and faster discharge won't be useful because the tyres are non linear and do not offer infinite grip) , the bigger battery also means impossible packaging with current dimensions and will need a bigger car, which in turn contributes to more weight in turn.
The solution is two fold :
1) go back to 80:20 ratio of peak ICE power : peak electrical power
2) go for better battery tech instead of this dinosaur one 'standardized' by the FIA, It will pack more charge for less weight, allowing for smaller and lighter cars

Except that all energy ultimately comes from burning fuel and the fuel load was reduced from 110 kg to 70 kg. There is a finite amount of energy available whether electrical or engine. Seems like the solution, which would not be easy as the monocoques have already been built with 70 kg tankage, would be to increase the fuel load allowing greater fuel flow.

[venkyhere]

bigger capacity battery doesn't just mean weight (well, even for weight there is a point of diminishing returns, where beyond a critical weight, the extra benefit from more stored charge and faster discharge won't be useful because the tyres are non linear and do not offer infinite grip) , the bigger battery also means impossible packaging with current dimensions and will need a bigger car, which in turn contributes to more weight in turn.
The solution is two fold :
1) go back to 80:20 ratio of peak ICE power : peak electrical power
2) go for better battery tech instead of this dinosaur one 'standardized' by the FIA, It will pack more charge for less weight, allowing for smaller and lighter cars

Except that all energy ultimately comes from burning fuel and the fuel load was reduced from 110 kg to 70 kg. There is a finite amount of energy available whether electrical or engine. Seems like the solution, which would not be easy as the monocoques have already been built with 70 kg tankage, would be to increase the fuel load allowing greater fuel flow.

yes of course, (1) automatically includes the requirement for more fuel capacity