Formula One in 2026 will see the biggest regulation change in the history of the sport. For the first time both engine and chases/aero will be all new, with moveable parts both on the front and rear wing. Electrical power will be increased 300% and bio fuel will debut in the world’s premier motorsport’s competition.
Yet since the publication of the new regulations for 2026 in Canada, the FIA has been under fire for being too restrictive in its prescription of the new rules. As happened in 2022 with Red Bull Racing, one of the teams will likely ace the new regulations, claiming a big lead over the rest of the field. The question is which team will that be?
Mercedes were the masters of the 2014 switch from V8 engines to V6 turbo hybrids going on to win a record eight consecutive constructor titles, before Red Bull put a halt to their charge. Hamilton was defeated in the final race of the season in 2021 and Red Bull claimed the constructors title with ease the following year.
FIA goal more “nimble” cars
The stated goals of the FIA is to create more “nimble” cars, yet despite reducing the footprint of the current monsters, the weight saving will be just 30kg. This less than 5% reduction in bulk will not create anything remotely like a “nimble” car given the battery power is increasing some 300%, and that is where the biggest density of weight sits.
At the recent Grand Prix in Montreal, as hard as they tried, the F1 punters in the paddock could not extract criticism from senior F1 personnel over the proposals which had to be published before the end of June. But now cracks in this agreed wall of silence are starting to appear.
Straight talking FIA director of single seaters, Nikolas Tombazis, now admits there has been a “varied reaction” to the proposals which have yet to be enshrined in law by the World Motor Sports Council at the end of the month.
The FIA released the details of the F1 2026 chassis last week, which included the concept of a more “nimble” car by making the car slightly shorter, narrower and reducing its minimum weight requirements by 30kg come the F1 2026 season.
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F1 drivers critical of 2026 regulations
Drivers have already voiced concerns over the new minim weight target with Max Verstappen calling it “wishful thinking” given the huge increase in electrical contribution together with improvements in safety features which add more weight. George Russel who is a spokesperson for the drivers association has expressed his fears over safety given the new active aerodynamics on the front and rear of the car, designed to increased top speed on the straights.
Tombazis who assumed the day to day running of Formula One last year, when FIA president stepped back from the role, now claims over all the reaction to the new regulations has been on the whole positive. Yet he admits there will be intense meetings over the next two weeks to vary the current proposals before they are ratified by the highest council in motor sport.
“There’s been quite a varied reaction,” Tombazis says. “There’s been a lot of positive reaction in terms of supporting our aims. There’s clearly some concern expressed by some drivers or some teams.
“Let me say a few things here. First of all, these regulations are not yet approved. We are presenting them to the World Council on Tuesday in a very extensive manner – the aim being to have them approved by the World Council towards the end of the month, but that’s still not the case.
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The Italian admits he is being forced to discuss the matters in public before the F1 teams have chance to go public with their criticisms.
“We’re not in the final set of regulations yet,” he emphasises. “We do have quite a few things that we need to define and discuss with the teams.
“We are fully conscious of some of the concerns of level of downforce of the cars or straight-line speed and these are things that we class as the refinements that still need to take place.”
Given the teams are not allowed to begin developing their chassis and aero packages until January next year, the current lack of clarity suits the agenda of the FIA which seeks to prevent anyone getting a jump start on the field.
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2026 rules “restrictive”
“So between the end of the month, when these regulations will hopefully be published, and the start of 2025, when teams can start aerodynamic development – because they cannot start earlier – we do expect a reasonable amount of extra work to be done in full consultation with the teams, with FOM and everybody else,” admits Tombazis.
“Hopefully that will then lead to some refinements that will be submitted to the World Council maybe a bit later in the year and hopefully approved.”
The FIA have interestingly decided to implement a fairly restrictive set of rules for the new cars due in 2026 but Jan Monchaux, the FIA’s single-seater technical director, states discussions will be ongoing after the WMC ratifies the rules before the end of the month and the governing body intends to relax the criteria in certain areas.
“Typically, teams are always a bit reluctant at implementing large changes,” he says, “so it’s a bit of an ongoing compromise that needs to constantly be found.
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“The approach we had, since we needed to respect the framework in terms of date of publication, the regulation as has been presented now and which hopefully will be voted is probably the most restrictive teams will be seeing.
“Because we think also it’s going to be far easier in the next months to start increasing the freedom and review some aspects of the regulation which potentially currently are far too constrained than the other way around, because they will all agree on having more freedom.”
The reasoning behind this approach is to prevent the teams wasting time and resources developing their designs and then later this year being stymied because one particular part of the new rules is not delivering the intended results, forcing them to backtrack.
“If we had gone the other way around and effectively have something like providing a lot of freedom in their ability to design the cars, we would potentially realise in October or November on that one, we don’t necessarily want because it might put at risk some of the targets we want to achieve with these new regs,” Monchau reveals.
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“And I think the process like this will be working because it’s pretty much straightforward because it will always say yes for more freedom.”
The biggest mistake the FIA have made was being persuaded by potential power unit manufactures some six years ago that hybrid was the way to go. F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has already said the future of F1 power will be to ditch the heavy and expensive hybrid technology and return to combustion engines powered by bio fuel.
Hybrid may be the current passion of global auto manufacturers but with 2 billion vehicles in use around the world, technology which modifies these vehicles – which may have a life span of some thirty years – to run on eco fuel should be the focus of the technological developments in F1.
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Mercedes have delayed announcing protege Kimi Antonelli as their replacement for the seven times world champion for three reasons. Firstly they needed to see how he performed in his rookie year in F2. Secondly Toto Wolff was keeping his options open should Carlos Sainz decided to take a one year stop gap contract with the silver arrows which would allow them to blood the Italian rising star in a team further back on the grid for a year… READ MORE
