Are 2026 F1 regulations broken? How to fix them?

[Seanspeed]

Hmmm. Would a rule like
“no deployment above 225 km/h”
solve 80% of the critique while preserving 80% of the lap time gains from deployment and still making the electric part crucial?

And would a rule like
“no harvesting over 20% throttle”
or
“no harvesting over 250 km/h”
take care of the other 20% of complaints?

Most of the gains are made in the initial acceleration phase anyways, and this could be implemented with no hardware changes.

There's a lot of solutions if we're willing to slow down the cars by a further 4-5 seconds a lap.

Most of the gains from energy deployment are during acceleration, but 500hp and DRS are still gonna leave the cars plateauing pretty hard and early in terms of top speed if energy deployment cuts off past 225kph(140mph). They reach that kind of speed quite quickly. For reference, in Suzuka, they're hitting 225kph pretty much right as they go by the pitlane entrance. lol Basically, we're still talking pretty big chunks of time being lost overall given how regularly they hit those speeds around most tracks.

[basti313]

Wow, this race really showed how broken the rules are....I just had a second look at the lap chart as I wanted to make sure that my feeling holds true. Besides some Bananas (or Mushrooms) there was simply no overtaking:
- Mercs out of position because of the Banana at the start. Or Shroom for Ferraris, whatever you want to call it.
- Banana for Russel.
- Bananas for the Audi at the start
- Shroom for Lindblad at the start.
- Shroom for Ferrari at the restart.
- Both Audi lost a bunch of positions after the SC... not sure what happened there?

Besides these strongly-out-of-position cars, there was no overtaking at all.

And: The Q times are so close between teammates. The driver is not playing a big role anymore.

Hmmm. Would a rule like
“no deployment above 225 km/h”
solve 80% of the critique while preserving 80% of the lap time gains from deployment and still making the electric part crucial?

Yes. Even more so like 200km/h.
I think that would solve the overtaking issue, as the charging would be enough to use the boost mode and the boost mode would be more efficient. Basically a mushroom, that it was not in Japan.

And it would allow to push more into corners as it would strongly reduce the energy usage, and, thus allow less recovery.

But I fear this is not everything. Currently we are missing any "arbitrary factor". The driver is not making a difference, the tires are rock solid. I think they need to force Pirelli for softer tires. It looks like they can just go with the softest tires to any race and this will not be enough.

[hollus]

Hmmm. Would a rule like
“no deployment above 225 km/h”
solve 80% of the critique while preserving 80% of the lap time gains from deployment and still making the electric part crucial?

And would a rule like
“no harvesting over 20% throttle”
or
“no harvesting over 250 km/h”
take care of the other 20% of complaints?

Most of the gains are made in the initial acceleration phase anyways, and this could be implemented with no hardware changes.

There's a lot of solutions if we're willing to slow down the cars by a further 4-5 seconds a lap.

Most of the gains from energy deployment are during acceleration, but 500hp and DRS are still gonna leave the cars plateauing pretty hard and early in terms of top speed if energy deployment cuts off past 225kph(140mph). They reach that kind of speed quite quickly. For reference, in Suzuka, they're hitting 225kph pretty much right as they go by the pitlane entrance. lol Basically, we're still talking pretty big chunks of time being lost overall given how regularly they hit those speeds around most tracks.

Yep, half baked idea, more like medium rare. The 225 km/h limit would also make overtaking tricky.
What if we change it to 275 km/h? It would still preserve that Broooom sound feeling and the last meter braking after a long straight. Change it to 300 for the car in ovetaking mode.

Are there any huge downsides to
“no deployment and no harvesting over 275 km/h”?

You keep your lap time gains where lap time was meant to be gained.
And you keep the visceral feeling in the most crucial points.
There would still be “shenanigans” in medium speed corners, but less of them and less visible.
And the 8MJ limit would become impossible in most tracks, but so what?

[Seanspeed]

Yep, half baked idea, more like medium rare. The 225 km/h limit would also make overtaking tricky.
What if we change it to 275 km/h? It would still preserve that Broooom sound feeling and the last meter braking after a long straight. Change it to 300 for the car in ovetaking mode.

Are there any huge downsides to
“no deployment and no harvesting over 275 km/h”?

You keep your lap time gains where lap time was meant to be gained.
And you keep the visceral feeling in the most crucial points.
There would still be “shenanigans” in medium speed corners, but less of them and less visible.
And the 8MJ limit would become impossible in most tracks, but so what?

I actually think the 225kph thing would help overtaking, all else being equal, given there's a bit longer drivers spend down the straight.

And going from 225kph to 275kph seems to take roughly 2 seconds in these current cars. We'd need to look more into what 2 seconds more of energy deployment means in terms of total battery usage and whether that can made up for in normal braking/cornering to remove the need for superclipping.

Honestly, I dont hate the idea of something like a 225-250kph limit. Yes, it'll slow the cars down and people will complain about that, but if we're really stuck with these power units for the next three years, I'd rather it FEEL like good, hard driving and racing.

[basti313]

Honestly, I dont hate the idea of something like a 225-250kph limit. Yes, it'll slow the cars down and people will complain about that, but if we're really stuck with these power units for the next three years, I'd rather it FEEL like good, hard driving and racing.

Interesting point....is this "slow the cars down" really a factor?

Even if we go by your 5sec above...is this a reason for complaints? F1 would be still the fastest series, so this marketing message would not vanish. Yes, F2 would be within the 107% rule...but who cares? Better than harvesting energy round a track, that is really just BS.

I mean...what is anyways the current marketing message?
Second most eco friendly racing series?
Mario Kart in real life?
Something Colapinto drives?

[NL_Fer]

If we reduce electric output in any way, the drivers will say it drives like a Formula 2 and it still doesn’t prevent the cornering looking like a GT3, as it does at the moment. Drivers still need to brake early to recover energy.

The only proper way, would be increasing the fuel flow. But would manufacturers be ready to change the ICE for this and loose millions of investments.

[gearboxtrouble]

If we reduce electric output in any way, the drivers will say it drives like a Formula 2 and it still doesn’t prevent the cornering looking like a GT3, as it does at the moment. Drivers still need to brake early to recover energy.

The only proper way, would be increasing the fuel flow. But would manufacturers be ready to change the ICE for this and loose millions of investments.

They're already at F2 speeds through most of the iconic fast corners. We've seen the 130R farce, can you imagine the reaction if they took this garbage to Copse and Eau Rouge? I think most drivers would be relieved they can push to the limits of the car in those corners again even if the cars top out at 320kph on the straight with 150-200KW of electric power. I also think people exaggerate the difficulty of making material ICE changes for next season. 750hp would be an evolution of the current engines, not a wholesale new formula. It would be straightforward to boost fuel by 30-35% (both weight and flow) and target higher compression and slightly more boost to get there for 27. Modders do this on road car engines every day and they don't have the sort of resources a F1 manufacturer does. 3 of them even have 850hp designs from last season to reference so I don't think it would be a massive cost increase either and they could sensibly increase the engine cost cap for just next season. It'll certainly be less money than they stand to lose from the already dire looking viewership figures that have made the rounds for certain European countries.

[carisi2k]

Allow a twin turbo system driving an ers-h system or allow an alternator on the front of the motor so the power can be kept going without having to "superclip".

[Farnborough]

Allow a twin turbo system driving an ers-h system or allow an alternator on the front of the motor so the power can be kept going without having to "superclip".

Errrrrr, that's what they have currently (no pun intended) at the front of the ICE ..... the MGU-K is a powerstation of an "alternator " these arguments/debate centre around how and when that unit is driven to its maximum output.

This IS the reality of high proportion of E in storage capability & regeneration.

[bonjon1979]

I’m afraid everything is baked in this year. Don’t quite know what they do, I’m concerned that someone is going to have to be hurt before they take the drastic measures needed. Honestly think they could be looking at a pause to try and reengineer the cars.

[Farnborough]

I’m afraid everything is baked in this year. Don’t quite know what they do, I’m concerned that someone is going to have to be hurt before they take the drastic measures needed. Honestly think they could be looking at a pause to try and reengineer the cars.

Like Jules Bianchi at this circuit, which ultimately gave us, entirely correctly in my view, the VSC method and control in preventing the speed differences under caution, and been very successful too.

Imagine this incident, with Bearman & Colapinto, but with another car in the firing line of Bearman's Haas while entering that corner a little ahead of these two. That's not an accident anyone involved in this sport would want to see played out.

To me, this recent incident was a big, big warning and more importantly should be seen as such. There's "spooky" precedent in this one we've all just watched, underpinned by driver concerns already voiced.

The FIA and all immediate parties need to think long and deep about what they've created in unintended consequential cascade of this potential to bring catastrophic outcome.

Many will have recall of their personal feelings in the events of Ratzenberger, Senna, Bianchi, De Angelis, Villenueve etc, etc and think the warnings (this was a close shave, here in Suzuka) in circumstances leading up to a very bad event are written large on our F1 wall. This situation shouldn't be allowed to propagate any further .

[Farnborough]

Hmmm. Would a rule like
“no deployment above 225 km/h”
solve 80% of the critique while preserving 80% of the lap time gains from deployment and still making the electric part crucial?

And would a rule like
“no harvesting over 20% throttle”
or
“no harvesting over 250 km/h”
take care of the other 20% of complaints?

Most of the gains are made in the initial acceleration phase anyways, and this could be implemented with no hardware changes.

This made me wonder, what are they "telling" us, but telling without admission about just how far reaching the control algorithm are in effect ?

To clarify, when they go on throttle and (for example) exit of corner, those spikes seen in CL and Ocon oversteer moments when they "catch" the slide and at same point reflex reduction of throttle, or are they (the "algorithm-ist" ) expecting to pick that up by "grabbing" torque output via MGU-K output ? In other words "traction control" but not by monitoring wheel speed etc, more the available torque "landscape" monitoring, with rate of change in rpm indicating that more output is available to divert into regeneration/clipping, then tripping into a deployment fugg on misunderstandings that we see in the algorithm "artifact" generated seconds rolling out from that.

I know that's not exactly clarification, but put another way in driver terms ..... are the drivers now expected to NOT react to torque induced oversteer at certain phase, but keep throttle FLAT and let the algorithm gather up the whole process ?

[bonjon1979]

I’m afraid everything is baked in this year. Don’t quite know what they do, I’m concerned that someone is going to have to be hurt before they take the drastic measures needed. Honestly think they could be looking at a pause to try and reengineer the cars.

Like Jules Bianchi at this circuit, which ultimately gave us, entirely correctly in my view, the VSC method and control in preventing the speed differences under caution, and been very successful too.

Imagine this incident, with Bearman & Colapinto, but with another car in the firing line of Bearman's Haas while entering that corner a little ahead of these two. That's not an accident anyone involved in this sport would want to see played out.

To me, this recent incident was a big, big warning and more importantly should be seen as such. There's "spooky" precedent in this one we've all just watched, underpinned by driver concerns already voiced.

The FIA and all immediate parties need to think long and deep about what they've created in unintended consequential cascade of this potential to bring catastrophic outcome.

Many will have recall of their personal feelings in the events of Ratzenberger, Senna, Bianchi, De Angelis, Villenueve etc, etc and think the warnings (this was a close shave, here in Suzuka) in circumstances leading up to a very bad event are written large on our F1 wall. This situation shouldn't be allowed to propagate any further .

Could find themselves on a sticky wicket legally speaking if something were to happen, they've been warned, could be considered criminally negligent for them to carry on as if all is fine.

[Tommy Cookers]

.... they "catch" the slide and at same point reflex reduction of throttle, or are they (the "algorithm-ist" ) expecting to pick that up by "grabbing" torque output via MGU-K output ? In other words "traction control" but not by monitoring wheel speed etc, more the available torque "landscape" monitoring, with rate of change in rpm indicating ......

the MGU-K/CE combo measures rotor position in time c. 1000 times/second and recalculates the rate of change of rpm etc ....
undoubtedly they use this eg to continuously recalculate the torque demand ....
(as eg road car suspension responds via changes in hydraulic (damper) force with wheel travel velocity & acceleration)

the MGU-K and CE function as a closed unit - despite their apparent separation by a few inches of cable
to maintain synchrony ie the MG drive angular position always matches the rotor instantaneous angular position
so eg above a certain acceleration of rear wheel spin or slip the MG would automatically work against that spin or slip

the PU would develop over c.70 msec opposition to rear wheel spin or under-rotation
(this presumably amounting to the fixed accelerator vs rpm PU torque mapping for 2014-2025)

[Stu]

Hmmm. Would a rule like
“no deployment above 225 km/h”
solve 80% of the critique while preserving 80% of the lap time gains from deployment and still making the electric part crucial?

And would a rule like
“no harvesting over 20% throttle”
or
“no harvesting over 250 km/h”
take care of the other 20% of complaints?

Most of the gains are made in the initial acceleration phase anyways, and this could be implemented with no hardware changes.

I’ve been giving this some thought and gone back to look at the numbers.
Top speeds of 90’s/00’s 3.0L V10 cars at the old hockenheim were in the region of 350-360km/h (this with around 900bhp), achieved through having the cars trimmed out, making the corners a real challenge both in terms of braking and cornering speed. Monza was similar. At the other end of the scale Monaco was about 280km/h, again with about 900bhp but with ‘kitchen sink’ aero.
What we seem to be seeing currently is that the cars either have roughly 615bhp (ICE only) or an additional 475bhp (from the MGU-K) at maximum delivery, which makes running out of deployable energy a very bad thing!
Each track has been given a regen limit that is specific to the braking demands of the track, but this seems to me to only tackle one side of the problem, there needs to be a similar deployment limit related to maximum full-throttle time for each track - the higher the time the lower the cap on maximum deployment. Obviously(???) the use of the boost button shouldn’t be factored into this (creating an element of driver controlled strategy). I don’t think that there will be any tracks that are viable for the higher limit to be 350kW deployment, without super-clipping - the most dangerous scenario on track, but if it worked out that the range of outputs available were between 150kW - 250kW that would still create powerful (and quick/fast) race cars with between 815-950bhp (600-700kW).