This year’s F1 championship introduced the biggest rule change in the sport’s history, with new aerodynamic and engine regulations.
While the chassis rules have generally been a hit – even if the cars are a little slower than last year – the new engines most definitely have not.
The nominal 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power (more like 53-47 in reality) combined with the architecture of the engines, has left them energy starved.
And when the battery is empty, the cars have only about 540bhp – as four-time champion Max Verstappen puts it, “less or more or less than an F3 car but with F1 downforce, so you can imagine that is not very exciting to drive”.
The need to constantly charge the battery has neutered many of the best corners on many of F1’s greatest tracks, reducing them to what Fernando Alonso has called “charging stations”.
The flip side is the energy starvation has led to some interesting battles, known as “yo-yo racing”, with cars swapping positions repeatedly over a number of laps.
But the drivers point out this is artificial, and that overtakes are often happening simply because one driver suddenly has 350kW (470bhp) more than the other.
Verstappen says: “Sometimes people say: ‘Ah yeah, but this was a great race.’ I say: ‘Yeah, but it’s not really realistic the way we are racing.’
“And then you arrive to some tracks and you’re driving on not a lot of horsepower for F1 standards. And it’s a little bit painful, which I could see coming already for years. So, it’s then, of course, not the most exciting.
“At one point I’m also a little bit fed up with repeating myself, because it’s already hard enough just having to drive it.”
The drivers – especially Verstappen and Alonso, but most of the others, too – were very vocal about this from very early in the season. The sport as a whole recognised there was a problem, and has reacted.
Tweaks to the rules to lessen the problem were made after just three races, and the engine split will be modified to become 60-40 by 2028, with an intermediate step for next year.
That will significantly reduce these issues, but not eradicate them completely.
F1’s governing body the FIA was warned repeatedly in the years leading up to 2026 that this energy starvation issue would happen.
This has left an easy target for FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, to propose a return to naturally aspirated V8 engines for 2031.
It’s an idea with distinctly limited support among F1’s stakeholders. It lacks imagination and analysis, comes with its own set of problems, and is effectively turning the clock back 15 years.
The issue is not hybrid engines or turbos per se; it is the lack of energy recovery possibilities.
It’s a situation F1 forced on itself by removing the MGU-H, which recovered energy from the turbo and exhaust, and not allowing recovery from the front axle.
The sport needs to take a pause, intelligently and rigorously analyse what it wants from its engines in the future.
Then it needs to come up with a package that satisfies the manufacturers, has road-relevance, embraces concerns about the climate crisis, does not create a noise-hazard threat to some of the sport’s most high-profile races, is cheaper, allows the drivers to almost total access to full power, and gives a facility for overtaking.
