Are 2026 F1 regulations broken? How to fix them?

[ScottB]

Agree, we need LESS battery, battery is the source of all problems atm. If we have sustainable fuels, I don't even get what batteries are doing in these cars.

The batteries are there because the car industry needs to sell us all hybrids, and convince the population that smaller, turbo hybrids are still a sporty option. What's powering the new F80? a hybrid turbo V6.

So marketing, essentially. But then 'sustainable' fuels are also just marketing, given they aren't a viable mass market solution, or even a good use of energy. It is useful to help with F1's image, along with the batteries, when pitching up in countries, especially the new revenue generating street races, that F1 is green / sustainable / on the road to carbon neutral etc etc.

The problem was chasing a 50/50 split, that, again, is a marketing point rather than any meaningful need, that wouldn't be diminished by being 60/40 or similar. We've moved away from pushing the technology, via the MGU-H, for something easier / less complex, because ultimately the engine makers just want the link to the road cars they need to sell.

It's the same reason I remain to be convinced that F1 would ever return to a pure combustion formula, certainly without risking a lot of manufacturer involvement.

Realistically modern F1 engine regulations shouldn’t be about using less fuel. They should be about making the most out of the fuel available.

There are three important metrics for a good PU formula. Fuel flow, fuel efficiency and aero efficiency. You can cut one metric and get a good formula by making up for it with the other two. If you for some god forsaken reason decide to cut two metrics, you will either get slow cars or weird compromises. Cut both enormously and it will be a total mess.

30% less fuel and reduced efficiency was never going to work if you wanted cars pushing, even if the lack of power was band-aid fixed with more aero efficiency. Even if massive torque and active aero managaes to keep them fast, they were always going to be make difficult compromises with the MGU-K and ICE so grossly out of proportion with each other.

The worst part is that more fuel flow will likely be unable to rectify the situation, since the fundamental issue of being unable to charge the battery suffienctly without slowing down on the straights remains. They really needed 400kW of front regen or an MGU-H (preferably both) for this formula to work without the excessive slowing down on the straights. Now they are locked into this for at least 4 years, even if additional fuel flow and reduced MGU-K output/harvesting might make it workable.

It’s just such a shame what politics did to this formula, since it could have been so good if they chose to increase fuel efficiency and keep active aero. I’m sure many lap records would have fallen by 3+ seconds if the fuel efficiency went up instead of down.

But then worth remembering periodically slowing the cars down is also a thing. This new formula being 2 seconds ish a lap slower than the last one would have been a successful outcome, without all the clipping / recovery problems.

[DChemTech]

F1 needs to have a really long and hard think on what it wants to be. A sport, entertainment series, or a technology development platform.

The simple truth is that ICEs have no future in commuter cars. Electric is superior on every front except weight and associated safety for other road users (duly negated by ICE-SUVs also being ridiculously tall and heavy) and range - but if you need to commute so far that that is an issue, you live too far from work anyway. And yes, I include heavy users like sales reps there, if your battery capacity is an issue you are taking irresponsibly little breaks.

Liquid fuel ICEs (and perhaps fuel cells, but not fully convinced) are relevant only for long haul freight and heavy duty utility vehicles. Want to be a development platform for that? Go ahead. But don't pretend it's road relevant consumer tech. Want to be relevant for everyday people? Only one choice: become FE.

Do you want to be a sports? Then fairness should be central. A true, structural cost cap. A maximum spending that includes driver- and engineer salaries such that teams truly need to chose where to put there emphasis. And clear, SMART technical rules that do not change during a season. Did one team figure out something brilliant and demolish the rest? Is what it is. Better luck next year.
Ofc. you can add competition enhancing regulations in such a formula, and probably should to avoid everyone from just making walls of dirty air to screw the competition. But what is clear is that if you are setting specific design measures such as floor-focus or specific bargeboard or wing geometries, teams will find ways around it and make overtaking worse than expected. So maybe regulations should focus on ends rather than means, e.g. certain criteria for wake strength as measured in standard wind tunnel conditions. Yes, harder to measure and enforce - but if done well, better for competition. It leaves more design freedom to the teams, as long as they adhere to the limits.

Do you want to be an entertainment series? Then by all means add boosts, fan-voted action, whatever. But don't complain if the classic fans are upset and leave to other series.

Oh, and synfuels? As an environmentalist, i dont really care. Truth is the cars hardly contribute to the overall impact of F1. Logistics are much more important, and there is much to gain there in race planning and transportation.

[Stu]

F1 needs to have a really long and hard think…

Whole post, well said sir!

[gromajor]

f1 is more than that : it's a sport, an engineering competition, and an entertainment
and these new regulations deliver way more than the previous ones on all points in my opinion.
the overtakes were almost completely restricted to the DRS zones before.
this is not the case anymore, and the drivers can be "creative" in their attacks / defense.

[DDopey]

f1 is more than that : it's a sport, an engineering competition, and an entertainment
and these new regulations deliver way more than the previous ones on all points in my opinion.
the overtakes were almost completely restricted to the DRS zones before.
this is not the case anymore, and the drivers can be "creative" in their attacks / defense.

I am still baffled by people who do not see that not driving on the edge through a corner is not a problem. The corners were the essence of the driving. So no, it does not deliver on the sports part.

[Rikhart]

f1 is more than that : it's a sport, an engineering competition, and an entertainment
and these new regulations deliver way more than the previous ones on all points in my opinion.
the overtakes were almost completely restricted to the DRS zones before.
this is not the case anymore, and the drivers can be "creative" in their attacks / defense.

The vast majority of "overtakes" now are completely artificial battery duels. They are also often meaningless, because you will just get flown by on the next straight because you spent too much electric juice.

[LeQuick]

f1 is more than that : it's a sport, an engineering competition, and an entertainment
and these new regulations deliver way more than the previous ones on all points in my opinion.
the overtakes were almost completely restricted to the DRS zones before.
this is not the case anymore, and the drivers can be "creative" in their attacks / defense.

Is it the drivers being creative though or is it just a situation where said driver happens to have more deployment than the driver he's battling?

Why can't we go back to a system like KERS, but change it to where by they have a finite amount of deployment per race?

[delsando53]

One idea that could make racing in Formula 1 more strategic and entertaining would be allowing drivers to see real-time battery deployment information of the car ahead and behind.

Right now drivers often have to guess when another driver is deploying electrical energy from the hybrid system. If the driver had a simple indicator or HUD display showing the energy deployment status offront and back cars, it would open up a much deeper strategic layer.

For example:
If a driver could see the car ahead has already used most of its battery, they may delay their attack and deploy later.

If the chasing car still has full deployment available, the defending driver may conserve energy instead of wasting it early.

It would create energy management battles rather than blind guesses.

This information could be shown as:

A simple battery bar indicator for the car ahead/behind

A deployment status icon (deploying / harvesting / low energy)

A HUD element on the steering wheel display

Since modern cars already transmit huge amounts of telemetry, it seems technically feasible if the regulations allowed limited sharing of this data.

Instead of drivers relying on radio calls from engineers, they would be able to make more tactical decisions themselves, which could lead to more overtakes and more engaging wheel-to-wheel battles.

[LeQuick]

One idea that could make racing in Formula 1 more strategic and entertaining would be allowing drivers to see real-time battery deployment information of the car ahead and behind.

Right now drivers often have to guess when another driver is deploying electrical energy from the hybrid system. If the driver had a simple indicator or HUD display showing the energy deployment status offront and back cars, it would open up a much deeper strategic layer.

For example:
If a driver could see the car ahead has already used most of its battery, they may delay their attack and deploy later.

If the chasing car still has full deployment available, the defending driver may conserve energy instead of wasting it early.

It would create energy management battles rather than blind guesses.

This information could be shown as:

A simple battery bar indicator for the car ahead/behind

A deployment status icon (deploying / harvesting / low energy)

A HUD element on the steering wheel display

Since modern cars already transmit huge amounts of telemetry, it seems technically feasible if the regulations allowed limited sharing of this data.

Instead of drivers relying on radio calls from engineers, they would be able to make more tactical decisions themselves, which could lead to more overtakes and more engaging wheel-to-wheel battles.

Or just give them a finite amount of deployment per race and let them use it when they feel fit?

[Badger]

There used to be a saying that success in F1 was evenly split between chassis, engine, and driver. You could argue the details but it was more or less true overall. If you had two of the three nailed you could win, if you had all three nailed you would dominate. The issue with this set of regulations is it feels like the driver has become a footnote. The driver can't push the entry because that's for harvesting, he can't push the corner minimum speed because that's not "efficient", and on the exit it's all about how the throttle pedal is programmed to deliver smooth power and partial throttle recovery at the same time. It feels like 2/3 of what actually made driving a challenge has been subsumed by software. Now all that's left is for them to decide when to hit the "Mario kart mushroom" (boost), and maybe a bit on race starts.

Perfectly exemplified by this Leclerc quote from today.

“The important thing in qualifying isn’t perfection. It’s better to stay within the limit by doing the same thing every time, rather than getting into Q3 and trying something more. It’s a bit disappointing, as it was clearly one of my strengths in the past, but I’ll adapt. It’s not a disaster, but I have to say I’m not really enjoying qualifying at the moment.”

[UlleGulle]

f1 is more than that : it's a sport, an engineering competition, and an entertainment
and these new regulations deliver way more than the previous ones on all points in my opinion.
the overtakes were almost completely restricted to the DRS zones before.
this is not the case anymore, and the drivers can be "creative" in their attacks / defense.

The vast majority of "overtakes" now are completely artificial battery duels. They are also often meaningless, because you will just get flown by on the next straight because you spent too much electric juice.

I totally agree. I've only been watching F1 since 1991, but I will not renew my subscription this year.

The qualifying is now completely mystifying. Until we could see a car challenging for pole picking up purples, asking ourselves if it would be enough, because the other car was so much faster in the last sector. Now it's more like yellow-yellow and that was half a second faster. On top of that, you can't really see if a car is driving fast or not anymore.

And the races. I'm sorry. But if previous seasons felt like bare knuckle fighting with the occational sucker punch, this year it feels more like a sparring match. Sure they overtake and to some extent defend, but it's measured and careful.

Some youtuber put it quite well. "F1 has always been about the braking. Braking later, throwing a car into a corner and making it stick. This is not that"

And why did FIA do this? For us to have two more broke car manufacturers in the sport?

I'm thinking of transitioning to Indycar to be honest.

[Farnborough]

In comment to a yt PW roundup of sprint and Q today, was this contribution:-

"Congratulations to Kimi Antonelli on a superb pole position today. A perfect demonstration of the essential skills of modern Formula 1: precise harvesting, disciplined energy saving, and impeccably timed deployment of the battery.

The elegance with which he managed the charging cycles and orchestrated the buttons on the steering wheel was truly impressive. One can only admire such mastery of high-speed energy management."

Absolutely stunning, just what all true F1 sectors have waited to see

Probably going to head out for some real excitement post race and watch some paint dry

[bananapeel23]

Honestly after watching two races on two extremely different tracks, my opinions sre mixed. It does appear that the cars race really well. The monster MGU-K together with the extra deployment allowance from the overtake mode produces some fun racing that isn’t just blow by DRS passes. The racing is especially good given the comically huge field spread. It’s quite incredible that the Ferraris and Mercedes can have such extended battles despite the massive pace gaps between them.

If they were never energy starved and didn’t have to LiCo and super clip, the racing would be perfect. Overtake mode and the additional 0.5MJ it grants appears to slightly help cars to follow closely, while the MGU-K power rampdown does appear to help them close up without causing DRS blowby passes, since the drivers have to deploy overtake thoughtfully on the straights.

One issue I see with overtake mode currently is that it is doled out on a lap by lap basis. It would be better if there was a way to have more overtake detection zones, so that if you get passed in turn 1, you don’t have to wait almost an entire lap to get the extra energy, while the car in front gets to keep the 0.5 MJ they got. At the very least they should consider cutting the MGU-K allowance back down to normal if you pass the car that gave you the overtake, so that you can’t just blow by in turn 1 and have both clean air and more power.

I’d also love to see them really restrict the harvesting allowance to 5 MJ or something in order to get the cars to push all-out, even if they end up slow. Admittedly I never really noticed the cars superclipping excessively lifting and coasting in China, apart from short moments that didn’t really impact my enjoyment. I think an DRS allowance of 7 or 7.5MJ would be enough that it would be entirely unnoticeable here. I also think the FIA are correct in limiting deployment in quali in order to incentivise pushing, even if the cars end up slower in quali than they should be.

That said, I can’t help but feel like no matter how well they race, they could have had their cake and eaten it too if they just slapped a 350 kW MGU-K on the old engines, cut the fuel flow back to 3000-3500 MJ/h and started counting MGU-H harvesting towards the 9 MJ cap (or limited MGU-H-> MGU-K deployment in some other way). Power tracks would be less of an issue due to the MGU-H, while the addition of it would enable them to push fully on stop-start tracks.

[gromajor]

for the race, I wouldn't touch a thing.
but for the quali, I agree it would be good to see more the cars pushed to their limits.
that would also probably mix up the order a bit more before the race, bringing some more battles.

[McL-H]

There used to be a saying that success in F1 was evenly split between chassis, engine, and driver. You could argue the details but it was more or less true overall. If you had two of the three nailed you could win, if you had all three nailed you would dominate. The issue with this set of regulations is it feels like the driver has become a footnote. The driver can't push the entry because that's for harvesting, he can't push the corner minimum speed because that's not "efficient", and on the exit it's all about how the throttle pedal is programmed to deliver smooth power and partial throttle recovery at the same time. It feels like 2/3 of what actually made driving a challenge has been subsumed by software. Now all that's left is for them to decide when to hit the "Mario kart mushroom" (boost), and maybe a bit on race starts.

Perfectly exemplified by this Leclerc quote from today.

“The important thing in qualifying isn’t perfection. It’s better to stay within the limit by doing the same thing every time, rather than getting into Q3 and trying something more. It’s a bit disappointing, as it was clearly one of my strengths in the past, but I’ll adapt. It’s not a disaster, but I have to say I’m not really enjoying qualifying at the moment.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Once upon a time, F1 was a rough struggle where the driver challenged the limits of physics; the car was an instrument that responded to instinct and courage. Today, the cockpit is more of a control room for an algorithm than a battlefield. Modern regulations have stabilized the car so extremely and programmed the performance so precisely that human impulse is seen as interference. Instead of searching for the point where the tires just begin to slip, the driver now constantly negotiates with the software about energy consumption and traction control. The skill of "feeling" a car and pushing it until it creaks has been replaced by the ability to optimally manage a system within tight digital frameworks. Where we once saw how a driver pushed the car over the edge, we now see someone waiting for the system to give permission to accelerate. The result is a spectacle where technology is the director and the driver merely the performer of a predictable script.