2026 Hybrid Powerunits

[liuzka]

One more question about power delivery. Do rules mandate that they must deploy 350kw? I was wondering that does it make any sense to first accelerate to lets say 340 and then super clip to 300. While you could accelerate to 330 and super click less because you would face less drag and therefore use less energy.

[michl420]

One more question about power delivery. Do rules mandate that they must deploy 350kw? I was wondering that does it make any sense to first accelerate to lets say 340 and then super clip to 300. While you could accelerate to 330 and super click less because you would face less drag and therefore use less energy.

For rules please read the FIA regulation. It is in my opinion the simplest way to understand it. The minimum deployment (which is never 350kw) vary since this in-season-adjustment from corner to corner and are made public only on the FIA hompage mostly 1 day before the raceweekend (POWER UNIT INFORMATION).
About your clipping question.
Your first example reduce laptime, the second reduce energy. Because they are racing, the teams would like to do the first one but some old school racing fans don´t like clipping and so the FIA reduced the allowed energy harvesting and so sometimes the teams must go to the second example.

[Cold Fussion]

One more question about power delivery. Do rules mandate that they must deploy 350kw? I was wondering that does it make any sense to first accelerate to lets say 340 and then super clip to 300. While you could accelerate to 330 and super click less because you would face less drag and therefore use less energy.

For rules please read the FIA regulation. It is in my opinion the simplest way to understand it. The minimum deployment (which is never 350kw) vary since this in-season-adjustment from corner to corner and are made public only on the FIA hompage mostly 1 day before the raceweekend (POWER UNIT INFORMATION).
About your clipping question.
Your first example reduce laptime, the second reduce energy. Because they are racing, the teams would like to do the first one but some old school racing fans don´t like clipping and so the FIA reduced the allowed energy harvesting and so sometimes the teams must go to the second example.

Does the 2026 regulations document accurately reflect what the current rules are today with all the changes that have already occurred? As far as I know technical directives don't get publicly published (god only knows why).

[diffuser]

One more question about power delivery. Do rules mandate that they must deploy 350kw? I was wondering that does it make any sense to first accelerate to lets say 340 and then super clip to 300. While you could accelerate to 330 and super click less because you would face less drag and therefore use less energy.

For rules please read the FIA regulation. It is in my opinion the simplest way to understand it. The minimum deployment (which is never 350kw) vary since this in-season-adjustment from corner to corner and are made public only on the FIA hompage mostly 1 day before the raceweekend (POWER UNIT INFORMATION).
About your clipping question.
Your first example reduce laptime, the second reduce energy. Because they are racing, the teams would like to do the first one but some old school racing fans don´t like clipping and so the FIA reduced the allowed energy harvesting and so sometimes the teams must go to the second example.

Does the 2026 regulations document accurately reflect what the current rules are today with all the changes that have already occurred? As far as I know technical directives don't get publicly published (god only knows why).

If you get the latest. In short, you don't not have to deploy the max. In fact sometimes you're not allowed to deploy the max.

[chipengineer]

Seems to me that a solution would be to implement complete driver control, but limit battery capacity to just 1 to 2 MJ. That would:
reduce weight,
give great acceleration for a couple of seconds (but only to a speed that the ICE could still provide some acceleration),
and easily allow recharging just with braking.
More ICE power should be provided, though.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/what- ... /10845777/
Pat Symonds:
"When discussing electrification, we must distinguish between power and energy. I would propose a high-power, low-energy system. Why? Well, the answer is that using high power to enable overtaking is a good thing but relying on energy to reduce lap times is not. I would propose keeping around 250kW of electrical power but reducing the available energy such that there was to around six to eight seconds of electrical boost available, enough to overtake but only requiring a smaller, lighter battery. "

[dren]

Seems to me that a solution would be to implement complete driver control, but limit battery capacity to just 1 to 2 MJ. That would:
reduce weight,
give great acceleration for a couple of seconds (but only to a speed that the ICE could still provide some acceleration),
and easily allow recharging just with braking.
More ICE power should be provided, though.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/what- ... /10845777/
Pat Symonds:
"When discussing electrification, we must distinguish between power and energy. I would propose a high-power, low-energy system. Why? Well, the answer is that using high power to enable overtaking is a good thing but relying on energy to reduce lap times is not. I would propose keeping around 250kW of electrical power but reducing the available energy such that there was to around six to eight seconds of electrical boost available, enough to overtake but only requiring a smaller, lighter battery. "

So...return to KERS. I'm good with that.

[KimiRai]

FIA announces ADUO results following first and second review periods of 2026

Mercedes in the 2-4% window, and will be allowed one additional homologation in 2026 and an additional one in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

Audi, Ferrari and Honda were determined to be above 4%, and will thus be allowed 2 additional homologations in 2026 and 2 in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-announces- ... riods-2026

[diffuser]

FIA announces ADUO results following first and second review periods of 2026

Mercedes in the 2-4% window, and will be allowed one additional homologation in 2026 and an additional one in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

Audi, Ferrari and Honda were determined to be above 4%, and will thus be allowed 2 additional homologations in 2026 and 2 in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-announces- ... riods-2026

That tells us that Ferrari didn't improve much with their SPEC 2. Nobody else changed anything in that window.

[karana]

FIA announces ADUO results following first and second review periods of 2026

Mercedes in the 2-4% window, and will be allowed one additional homologation in 2026 and an additional one in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

Audi, Ferrari and Honda were determined to be above 4%, and will thus be allowed 2 additional homologations in 2026 and 2 in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-announces- ... riods-2026

That tells us that Ferrari didn't improve much with their SPEC 2. Nobody else changed anything in that window.

It just says that no additional homologation upgrades were granted for the second period, it is possible that Ferrari was in the 2-4% window in the second period

[diffuser]

FIA announces ADUO results following first and second review periods of 2026

Mercedes in the 2-4% window, and will be allowed one additional homologation in 2026 and an additional one in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

Audi, Ferrari and Honda were determined to be above 4%, and will thus be allowed 2 additional homologations in 2026 and 2 in 2027, together with corresponding cost cap and dyno testing increases.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-announces- ... riods-2026

That tells us that Ferrari didn't improve much with their SPEC 2. Nobody else changed anything in that window.

It just says that no additional homologation upgrades were granted for the second period, it is possible that Ferrari was in the 2-4% window in the second period

Oh, right, they might have moved up but they already have 1 left anyways so no change.

[bigblue]

Hi, this must have been discussed in the heading towards 300 pages(!) here, but do we have any plausible estimates of ICE power output for the current engines? Say 540bhp-560bhp? More? Less? Outliers (I guess Honda at the moment)? Who produced the estimate (or at least disclosed the rumoured number)? I guess numbers per manufacturer may be rumoured, but an overall likely range may be stated by some generally accepted calculation? Thanks.

[gearboxtrouble]

Hi, this must have been discussed in the heading towards 300 pages(!) here, but do we have any plausible estimates of ICE power output for the current engines? Say 540bhp-560bhp? More? Less? Outliers (I guess Honda at the moment)? Who produced the estimate (or at least disclosed the rumoured number)? I guess numbers per manufacturer may be rumoured, but an overall likely range may be stated by some generally accepted calculation? Thanks.

I don’t know how plausible but reasonably legit Italian F1 journalists released some estimates that showed RBPT at 575hp, Mercedes somewhere in the 560s, Ferrari and Audi both a bit below 550hp and Honda in the 520s.

[mzso]

Hi!

It has been suggested before that Red Bull may have 2+% more peak power than Mercedes, but RBPT has less power outside this peek. How much potential is there to be for such a difference?
Is it credible that Mercedes has 2-4+% more power outside the peak range of the RBPT?

[mzso]

ChatGPT came up with something like this when asked much the same:



And it came up with this when asked for a real world example with engines of a similar configuration:



No idea if it has any credibility.

[chipengineer]

So how does the RBPT engine achieve better thermal efficiency at high rpm?