Are 2026 F1 regulations broken? How to fix them?

[bananapeel23]

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.

Honestly they should consider giving the drivers quali-only batteries. They all have a decent amount of capacity headroom built in to better handle the many thousands fof power cycles expected of them.

If the drivers could get an additional battery or two every season, specifically for quali, I’m guessing they could probably bump nominal capacity up to 5 MJ without changing any hardware, albeit at the cost of battery lifespan. It would allow them to have the same amount of deployment for quali and the race, since the driver would start with 1MJ extra, while the driver would have to harvest 1 MJ less (and thus push more).

This would obviously never happen, but it would be cool.

[hollus]

Wow, cut the politics guys. As usual and you know why.
It took one "faux naive" baiting post to trigger, half an hour later, a post mixing physics, engineering and politics to be followed 40 minutes later by another post that went a bit sport and lot POLITICS!
The posts are gone, in case you are wondering what-where they are. The posters know who they are.

Once it turns to politics, too many users cannot respect opposite opinions, or even the people posting them. And it escalates THAT quickly.
Hence, politics off.

Repeated offenders ocassionally get a forum warning, so please don't go there.

[JordanMugen]

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.

Even 6s/lap slower would be OK.

The lap time doesn't matter, targeting lap time in the 2026 regulation design makes no sense -- it is corner speed that is visible to fans. Fans generally don't seem to mind the low downforce concept of the 2026 cars too badly, so that's fine, making the time back on straights is not necessary at all.

A reduction to max. 200-250 kW electrical DC power and max. 4-5 MJ/lap harvesting seem the logical fixes to the regulations.

The FIA already have the authority in the rules to limit qualifying to 5 MJ/lap, so they can implement that in four weeks and for all subsequent qualifyings.

Well the FIA made it subject to Article B7.2 -- why on Earth didn't the FIA give themselves the authority to change MJ/lap and electrical power at will. Anyhow, B7.2 just mandates four weeks notice.

B7.2 also gives the option to reduce electrical power but "only if deemed necessary by the FIA for the sole purpose of
ensuring the maximum speed of the Car remains compatible with the design and construction of the relevant circuit"...

Surely the FIA can just abuse this provision and reduce electrical power anyway?

(Why did they give themselves restrictions when they could have easily anticipated that some drivers and some pundits would want to "fix" the rules quite promptly to restore normal ICE racing car behaviour‽)

[stewie325]

If we thought DRS created artifical "push-to-pass" overtakes , then Overtake Mode is actually much worse.

The advantage it creates seems incredibly overpowered when the car in front is doing Lico or getting clipping.

They need to significantly reduce the power advantage and duration of Overtake Mode.

The 2009-style KERS at least had some transparency of how it affects performance - they should implement that and give the driver much more control instead of relying on automated deployment maps.