Huge tow advantage in Spa to disappear in new FIA rules – Spa Francorchamps is a classic old school Formula One circuit, despite it being neutered from its original nine mile layout which was last raced in in 1979. Such was the fearsome reputation of the track which wended its way through the Ardennes Forrest, that drivers started to refuse to race there, forcing a number of racing categories to find an alternative venue.
In 1969, the F1 drivers agreed to boycott the Belgium Grand Prix due to the extreme danger of the circuit. There were ten racing fatalities in the 1960’s including five in the previous two visits. Safety measures including improved crash barriers were implemented and F1 returned the following year.
The final year before the circuit was slashed to just 4.3 miles, only the Formula One racing series had dared to visit the circuit and so for commercial reasons it was decided to abandon a large part of the layout which was particularly high risk.
The famous Spa “tow”
Over the years there have been tweaks to the new layout. One of the more controversial was reconfiguring the legendary bus stop chicane, so called because in the early days of racing in the region, this was in fact a bus stop on a public road.
One of the features of the big speed ribbon of tarmac threading its way through the mountains has always been the long Kemmel straight which follows the infamous Radillon de l’Eau Rouge corner combination. Here cars from all eras of racing have enjoyed an advantage of following another competitor up the hill along the long straight and gaining from an effect called ‘the tow.’
This is where the car ahead pushes the air out of the way, creating almost a tow line of lower air density in which the following car finds a speed advantage and reels in the driver ahead. At the 2025 Belgium Grand Prix, the tow was plain to see for all as in the Sprint, Max Verstappen sat in leader Lando Piastri’s slip stream, until his overspeed was sufficient to take overtake going into turn 5 at Les Combes.
Similarly in the Grand Prix, pole sitter Lando Norris would find himself a sitting duck to his team mate for the very same reason. The Australian completed the move on lap one which became the decisive moment of the race.
2026 F1 moveable aero changes
Even without the drag reduction system, the tow along the Kemmel straight has demonstrated itself to be a powerful weapon in the racing drivers armoury. Yet come 2026 it will for the first time be gone, due to rule changes instigated by the FIA.
The 2026 cars described by Christian Horner as “Frankenstein” monsters have been redesigned to cope with the immense amount power which the new hybrid powertrains will bring. Both front and rear wings will be moveable at the drivers discretion, with the likely application for them to be in high downforce mode throughout the corners and then low drag mode along the straights.
This will make the cars more efficient through the air racing towards them along the Kemmel straight, but will also mean the tow effect will be much reduced or gone completely. Concerns about a return to processional Grand Prix as we had in the naughties have been headed off by the FIA introducing an Indycar style push to pass system.
This will give the drivers a fixed number of seconds burst of extra hybrid power at a place on the track of their choosing. With the DRS being swallowed up in the new moveable front and rear wing configuration, this allows the drivers a strategic opportunity to use this power boost to either attack of defend.
FIA regulate for new push to pass system
Unlike DRS, the push to pass system will be available to the drivers through the entire lap and not restricted is DRS is currently to certain sections of the circuit.
To a certain degree, the F1 drivers have a kind of push to pass system in place at present, as they can deploy the battery charge as and when they see fit. DRS first arrived in F1 in 2011 as part of an attempt to improve overtaking and prevent drivers being forced to drive up to 2 seconds slower when following another car in the turbulent air produced by the rear wing.
Yet the much despised system intended to improve overtaking opportunities is notoriously difficult for the FIA to setup correctly and not allow cars to breeze by another before the braking zone. Conversely there are other occasions where the DRS appears impotent as the zone for its deployment has been set too short.
Now there is hope of a permanent solution to this age old problem of cars unable to overtake with the push to pass system to be called “manual override” as FIA technical director Jan Monchaux explained at the finalising of the 2026 regulations in June 2024.
Extra freedom with “manual over ride”
“Right now with the DRS you are behind a car, within a second, [and] that ticks a box and you are allowed to open your DRS in a straight line. This will not be the case anymore,” Monchaux revealed. However, the logic will be the same: ‘I’m close enough to another car, I am given an extra amount of energy for that one lap, which I can deploy any way I want’.
“The extra amount of energy is defined, and that will give that boost of energy to eventually give the following car a chance to overtake by the end of the straight.”
The removal of defined DRS areas and the requirement for a driver to be less than one second behind another to activate the rear wing system, will give the drivers complete freedom as and when they use the boost in power. Although as is always with the teams named with engineers and analysts, there will be an optimum way in using the power boost at each circuit and in the early stages of a race, this will be where all the drivers deploy their extra energy.
As the tyre wear differential begins to kick in, clearly some drivers will want to act in a more defensive fashion than others and it is then the system will deliver a more random deployment of the power boost, to where the car is slow on its ageing rubber boots.
Pole position in Spa is booming a farcical handicap, but from 2026 onwards the tow will have a negligible effect if may at all and maybe one again the drivers would cherish being on pole position.
MORE F1 NEWS – FIA face universal criticism over HUGE blunder
Back to back Formula weekends in Silverstone and then Spa, were to suffer the worst of the North European weather conditions. Heavy rain affected both races, but the FIA race control handled the deluge in extremely different ways.
The debrief from the British Grand Prix saw a number of the driver’s suggest the FIA could have delayed the start by 20-30 minutes as the forecast was for improving conditions. The start in Belgium was handled well by the race director, who sent the cars out on a formation lap which was then immediately red flagged which meant the three hour clock for the race to be completed did not start.
Torrential rain returned twenty minutes after the scheduled start and it was plain for all to see that racing at that time was not possible. But the heavy rain cleared up relatively quickly and all that remained for the forty minutes before the actual start was sanctioned by race control, was some light drizzle followed by around fifteen minutes of sunshine which resulted in the track beginning to dry quickly…. READ MORE
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