2026 Japanese Grand Prix - Suzuka, March 27 - 29

[.poz]

Averaging 50km/h slower through 130R—this 2026 Formula 1 is a complete joke.

[De Wet]

No OFFENSE to f1, but this is the worse year for F1 since I have started watching it in 2001. A big joke, like an arcade game. Yeah will still watch it, but will not lose any sleep time for it.

I watched Piastri's onboard lap. This is beyond ridiculous.

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2026- ... 7316057410

[cplchanb]

Longrun averages from today:

https://i.ibb.co/9HKbFZFF/suz-fp.png
https://i.ibb.co/9HKbFZFF/suz-fp.png

I think Ferrari will still have the second fastest car on race day. But the Mercedes powertrain offers a bigger advantage during qualifying. If I was Ferrari I would just make sure the car can do a single lap and then spend the rest of the time focusing on race pace because its a bigger advantage there.

this is sorta like 2004 when ferrari let williams and mclaren steal the spotlight on saturday with their 1 lap wonders but chased them down and beat them on sunday. except this time they are still just short of beating mercedes for now.

[Seanspeed]

No OFFENSE to f1, but this is the worse year for F1 since I have started watching it in 2001. A big joke, like an arcade game. Yeah will still watch it, but will not lose any sleep time for it.

I watched Piastri's onboard lap. This is beyond ridiculous.

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2026- ... 7316057410

Short of a tragic crash, I dont think I've ever seen anything so horrible in F1 as that 'fast' lap.

Makes a complete joke out of one of the best tracks in the world. They aren't even going full speed into the Degner curves anymore.

[LeQuick]

No OFFENSE to f1, but this is the worse year for F1 since I have started watching it in 2001. A big joke, like an arcade game. Yeah will still watch it, but will not lose any sleep time for it.

I watched Piastri's onboard lap. This is beyond ridiculous.

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2026- ... 7316057410

Short of a tragic crash, I dont think I've ever seen anything so horrible in F1 as that 'fast' lap.

Makes a complete joke out of one of the best tracks in the world. They aren't even going full speed into the Degner curves anymore.

But this is great because the drivers can press a button and they go much faster than the car ahead on a straight, a real showcase of their skills.

[Seanspeed]

I watched Piastri's onboard lap. This is beyond ridiculous.

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2026- ... 7316057410

Short of a tragic crash, I dont think I've ever seen anything so horrible in F1 as that 'fast' lap.

Makes a complete joke out of one of the best tracks in the world. They aren't even going full speed into the Degner curves anymore.

But this is great because the drivers can press a button and they go much faster than the car ahead on a straight, a real showcase of their skills.

Also makes it very clear why teammates seem to be closer this year to each other on average. There's just much less room for drivers to make the difference now.

[F1Schu]

I hate these new regs but I love Suzuka so for anyone like me that can't wait until the race on sunday, here's a little something to pass the time, no super clipping going on here

[fourmula1]

I must be missing something…..what corners are they not driver/grip limited? 130r hasn’t counted as a corner for a long time how long has it been flat out for.

What corners are they driving below the limit because of harvesting???? That would otherwise not be a flat out corner????

Who cares if the straights are slow. Skill is in corners.

I assume I am missing something.

[gearboxtrouble]

Yeah I'm done with these garbage regs. This will be the first year I can recall where I will not watch the Japanese Grand Prix or Quali live. I'm not staying up past midnight to watch cars superclip and lift and coast through corners making the whole thing meaningless. Oh I'm sure we'll see more fake overtakes driven by energy deltas on the straights but I have zero interest in that farce. F1 needs to change the combustion/electric split as much as it takes to ensure that the only harvesting needed to provide full power on demand is under normal braking. It doesn't matter if that makes the cars 5s a lap slower this season because they can boost the fuel flow for 27 to get us back to ~1000 hp.

[AR3-GP]

It's a bit of a mess to be honest, but I won't dwell on that.

A technical point:

I noticed in Verstappen's lap with the halo overlay that they don't do any harvesting between 130R and casio triangle (only in the braking zone). Is it because it's not efficient to harvest when the active aero is closed? Are they afraid of losing too much speed? They lose something like 50-60km/h just with the deployment ending and the wings closed, so if they super clipped at 250kW, would they basically lose 100km/h?


I didn't expect it since it was proposed that harvesting would occur through the 130R in the model shared previously (although MJL admitted to its simplicity). It could also be that Red Bull haven't finalized the harvesting strategy yet

[search]

drivers today still looked more challenged than recently in Suzuka, to be fair, with a lot of mistakes in practice.

[AR3-GP]

drivers today still looked more challenged than recently in Suzuka, to be fair, with a lot of mistakes in practice.

I have a suspicion that some of the issues we are seeing with drivers going deep into the corners is coming from the harvesting at the rear axle doing unexpected things. It makes it harder, but in theory it's more of an idiosyncrasy of new software and bugs.

They are dropping a lot of speed into T1, degner 1, spoon, or 130R because some of these are power limited zones (you can stop deployment to save energy), and others are where they have drained the battery already.

Obviously you still need talent to get around this circuit, but some elements are a bit strange.

I expect that there will be a LOT of overtaking in the race though. With so many places that the cars run out of energy, then having electric boost for 1 extra second will lead to an overtake. Isn't that what we saw in energy starved circuit like Melbourne? It was like Super smash bros in the midfield there

[Rikhart]

Short of a tragic crash, I dont think I've ever seen anything so horrible in F1 as that 'fast' lap.

Makes a complete joke out of one of the best tracks in the world. They aren't even going full speed into the Degner curves anymore.

But this is great because the drivers can press a button and they go much faster than the car ahead on a straight, a real showcase of their skills.

Also makes it very clear why teammates seem to be closer this year to each other on average. There's just much less room for drivers to make the difference now.

Exactly, most sessions are usually classified per teams, so 2 mercs, 2 ferraris, 2 mclarens, etc... They completely destroyed this sport, sad to witness this.

[Rikhart]

I must be missing something…..what corners are they not driver/grip limited? 130r hasn’t counted as a corner for a long time how long has it been flat out for.

What corners are they driving below the limit because of harvesting???? That would otherwise not be a flat out corner????

Who cares if the straights are slow. Skill is in corners.

I assume I am missing something.

Read this:

https://racingnews365.com/fernando-alon ... d-drive-it

[zibby43]

I must be missing something…..what corners are they not driver/grip limited? 130r hasn’t counted as a corner for a long time how long has it been flat out for.

What corners are they driving below the limit because of harvesting???? That would otherwise not be a flat out corner????

Who cares if the straights are slow. Skill is in corners.

I assume I am missing something.

Read this:

https://racingnews365.com/fernando-alon ... d-drive-it

Alonso’s opinion I’m sure isn’t colored in any way by the fact he’s driving a pile of dog excrement right now.

This selective cherry-picking of old quotes (from testing, no less) is growing tiresome already. What about Hamilton’s more thoughts? Nobody cites those because they’re largely positive.