2026 F1 Cars - General Thread

[dialtone]

In reality this is stupid though, as renewable energy is expensive to produce and any energy that you spend on making "sustainable fuel" could probably be spent more efficiently on something else, something that doesn't require the conversion of electricity to fuel which is inherently energy inefficient.

This might be a biblically wrong level take.

If you replace the etanol corn fields in the US (about 30% of total corn fields) with solar panels you will make 85% more energy than the US needs daily, measured as using the efficiency of panels in the Chicago area, so quite north.

Solar panels are 97% glass, aluminum and silicon. The remaining 3% is lead and glue and probably other resins.

Solar power is practically unlimited, can easily be used to produce any fuel that F1 needs at the cheapest price of any source of electricity. It also doesn’t need to be active all the time, this isn’t providing energy to a country.

This is a biblically wrong take, full stop.

The closest thing we have to infinite energy is nuclear. Not solar. Solar panels have to be manufactured , installed and maintained and do not have an infinite service life.

There is a reason big oil loves putting money into solar and wind. Because these methods don't have a hope in replacing true energy baseload. Only nuclear does.

You are right, I saw a nuclear power plant sprout off a tree on my way back from work the other day, and uranium and thorium were being sold for pennies in this economy.

LMAO. Are we not all engineers here?

[TeamKoolGreen]

There was literally no reason for any car to pass in 2025 because of the field spread. And there was still mid pack battles front wing to gearbox until someone made a mistake. You can kiss those goodbye. Nobody even remembers what real bad racing is.

And about that pesky thing called physics. If you thought the 2025 car was bad , putting a flat floor on it is going to make it worse.

Let's wait and see. My opinion is that the differences in potential energy usage will allow drivers to overtake, this should lead to some interesting tactical battles and unorthodox overtakes.

We already had this with the 2014 to 2022 cars. Just to a lesser degree. So it isn't something new.

Everyone blamed DRS for easy overtakes when we already had this defacto push to pass. The faster car from behind would use less energy by virtue that it was faster. So it could accumulate more battery power. Then when the time came to pass, it was that much faster when it deployed the power.

[TeamKoolGreen]

This might scramble the field and ppl will say the racing is better in a perverse way. The harder you push the slower you are. The pinnacle of motorsport.

Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu has revealed how the fight for pole could be influenced heavily by small errors made in preparation laps.
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What Komatsu is referring to is that, with cars not having enough battery to run laps flat out, drivers can't waste any energy on the outlap at all.

That means not triggering any more usage of the battery element of the package than is absolutely necessary.

But that is a very tricky thing to achieve properly – because drivers cannot just drive slowly to achieve that aim. The demands to warm the tyres, avoid traffic issues and keep up to the maximum delta time mean there is a requirement to get a hurry on as well. Furthermore, there is no scope in the regulations to simply run a quick outlap on the internal combustion engine alone, as there are strict rules regarding power demand.

Article 5.12.1 of the Technical Regulations states: “At any given engine speed, the driver torque demand map must be monotonically increasing for an increase in accelerator pedal position.”

This effectively means that the trigger for kicking in battery usage is throttle position - not a button on the wheel. So in effect, the only way to avoid burning up any battery is to be very cautious on the accelerator.

There are therefore a host of conflicting demands of what drivers need to do to cover off tyre preparation, traffic, timing deltas and energy.