Last Updated on April 28 2026, 12:23 pm
It would have been hoped in the upper echelons of Formula One that having suffered five weeks of no race action, the talk of the Miami paddock would not be dominated by the 2026 engines. Since the last race weekend in Japan, a crisis meeting was held to improve the ‘fake’ and dangerous on-track racing fans have endured since the start of this season’s campaign.
“Tweaks” have been made to how the electrical energy from the all-new 50/50 hybrid engines could be better harvested and deployed, and fans together with F1 analysts alike are waiting with bated breath to see their impact when the cars hit the circuit this Friday in Miami.
The discussions over the new era of F1 power which began back in 2017 were dominated by the manufacturers’demands, with the FIA failing to set the direction of travel in their desperation to attract more OEMs into the sport.
“A strong internal combustion engine… that’s motorsport”
Electrification was deemed to be the future of the road car and so the manufacturers turned F1’s future into a large R&D laboratory to test their ideas. Yet already this idea will be dropped for the next cycle of F1 power following comments made by F1’s CEO, Stefano Domenicali, speaking to The Race.
“I definitely see personally… a sort of sustainable fuel for sure at the centre of the future, with a different balance of what could be the electrification with a strong internal combustion engine. Because that’s motorsport,” claimed the Italian. He further called on the FIA to be the body that proposes the future of F1 power, rather than allowing the tail to wag the dog.
“What is clear is that the regulator is the FIA, so the FIA has the responsibility to propose a package,” said Domenicali. “It’s pretty clear that the attention on full-electric in the automotive industry has gone out, so the fact that we were the first to focus on hybrid and sustainable fuel could [allow us to] take that direction further in the future,” added Domenicali.
Yet for now, F1 and its fans are stuck with behemoth-sized cars due to the massive weight the hybrid and battery adds to the racing machines, and despite the FIA attempting to mitigate some of this season’s farcical racing, the resistance to cutting the electrical power contribution remains.
Manufacturers rejected a cut in electrical power
In the spring of 2025, a big meeting was held between the teams, the FIA and F1 over the distribution of power in the 2026 engines, but proposals to cut the electrical contribution were unanimously rejected by the manufacturers. The debate is about to resurface as the FIA considers which power unit suppliers are eligible for their ‘catch-up’ programme expected to begin post the Miami Grand Prix.
However, the exact details of how the FIA will implement this scheme are yet to be announced. The FIA’s single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said this week: “The fact that engine power is not just a single number has been obviously known. We had approximately, I would say, in the spring of 2025, quite long discussions with them [the manufacturers].
“We offered whether we wanted to consider certain things like the turbo pressures, or the turbo diameters, or the operating of the plenum temperature, for example, and such like,” Tombazis continued. “The universal position by the PU manufacturers back then was that we should keep it simple. So the fact that it is the current horsepower measurement of the internal combustion has been appreciated right from the start.”
F1 engine “Catch up” programme measures being assessed
Of course, the power output of the cars as a totality is not merely based on the horsepower produced by the internal combustion engine. And as Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies observed, the FIA does not have the simplest of tasks when evaluating the final ‘power number.’
“The objective difficulties of evaluating who is where, including for the FIA, is high—is very high,” he said. “The objective complexity of trying to get it right is big, for reasons like the ICE [versus] battery, and fundamental choices: small turbo, big turbo, exhaust blowing, no exhaust blowing. So back pressure, no back pressure. It’s not a nice job to have to do that.”
Tombazis agrees that the power evaluation of the engines to be assessed by the FIA should consider a wider range of parameters than mere horsepower. “I would be personally quite open to the idea of complicating the parameter bit,” he said. “But that discussion was had back more than a year ago, and it was quite clear what it concluded.”
Yet it seems the FIA may yet override the decisions of the manufacturers in terms of the 50/50 balance of power from the electrical hybrid and the internal combustion engine. Tombazis admits the current split level has created far more problems than imagined. “First of all, it is true that when you have a percentage of electrical to internal combustion energy and power of that ratio [50/50], that the whole energy management becomes more challenging.”
Scrapping the 50/50 power contribution may happen this year
Tombazis believes the ratio of electrical power contribution may have to be lowered for 2027, due to unforeseen circumstances. “One of the reasons it hasn’t been right there from the start, is that the cars are going a bit faster, have found a bit more downforce than we were expecting, and therefore their energy recovered during braking is a bit lower than it would normally be, so we have a bit more of a challenge than we would have liked to have.
“We did propose the reduction of [electrical] power about a year ago, and it was rejected. The point there was that we were going to wait for the first few races, which is what we did. Now, is that the final time we talk about it? I don’t think so. We will continue monitoring whether there will be extra additions that would have to be further discussed.”
So impending decisions are being made in the coming few weeks over the specifications of the 2027 powertrains. Further, should the ‘tweaks’ agreed since Japan fail to address fully the issues of ‘yo-yo’ racing and safety, the contribution from the hybrid may yet be cut this season to just 40%, as the FIA proposed in 2025.
To compensate the internal combustion engine power could be beefed up, by allowing the fuel flow rates to rise from the 75kg/h to the 2025 levels of 100kg/h.
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A.J. Hunt is Senior Editor at TJ13 and a career journalist with experience in both print and digital sports media. Having trained in investigative journalism and contributed to several European sports outlets, Hunt brings rigour and polish to every article. His role is to sharpen analysis, check facts and ensure TJ13’s daily output meets the highest editorial standards.
