Competitiveness & Safety Drive 2026 F1 Regulations
The FIA has announced the details of the technical regulations Formula One will use from 2026, and the message is both slightly confused yet clear- more overtakes (hopefully), more sustainability (definitely), and more saftey (ditto). Here are the headlines.
· Smaller car dimensions- 10cm narrower and 20cm shorter
· The minimum wight limit has fallen by 30kg
· The battery will provide 46% of the engines power, nearly three times as much as the current cars.
· The cars will run on 100% sustainable fuels
· Moveable front and rear wings as a standard element on each car
· DRS removed, instead drivers will have a boost in battery power when within one second of the car in front
· Stronger roll hoop structure, improved protection of fuel cells, and front impact structure
The full list of changes is on the FIA website, but if that’s where you get your information, outside analysis will be a welcome thing. The jumble of associated bodies that run Formula One are ultimately chasing entertainment, and will do anything to convince you just how entertaining they are, or in this case, will be. Is face value here to be belived? Lets speculate.
When the FIA says that cars will be smaller, what they mean is narrower. The maximum width of the 2026 cars will be reduced by ten centimetres, and taken off the front wing. The floor maximum floor width will also be reduced, this time by fifteen centimetres. The maximum length refers to wheelbase, so doesn’t include aero elements, but given that these are becoming more standardised anyway the cars really will be noticeably smaller all round.
They grew so much to be more aerodynamic, a larger surface area gives more options for shaping airflow to your advantage. Obviously there are limits to this, or cars would resemble cheese slices over wedges, and Brabham would have run a forty inch high 18-wheeler in the 70’s. By making the cars physically smaller, reducing downforce by 30%, drag by 50%, and grip by just a smidge (tyres will be slightly slimmer), car will be more slippery throug the air and take up less of the track, leaving more for someone else to drive past on.
Its fantastic news for fans of Monaco. Another area of reduction is wieght; the minimum falls to 769kg, the new target, because weight is the enemy of racing. It ruins handling, top speed, efficiency, packaging, the whole lot, and 30kg is the equivalent to taking three of the wheels away. Like the dimensinos its noticeable, especially in a car with 1,000hp.
The casr wear it lightly though, in the environmental sense. From 2026 a far greater hoof of this power will be produced electrically, and reducing weight while adding battery power is no mean feat. That said, as a whole the power trains have been simplified to make them easier to produce, a key factor in encouraging new teams with fragile corperate egos to the sport.
This has been done by removing the MGU-H, a thing so complicated that even the dummified acronym makes no sense. The Motor Generator Unit — Heat is attached to the turbo, which is spun by waste exhaust gas from the engine, forcing more air into the engine for more violent explosions, and so more power. When the turbo spins, it spins the MGU-H, generating electricity, which can be used to top up the car’s battery for later use, or deployed immediately for overtaking or quaifying. That same electricity can be used to spin the turbo when the engines revs are low, so that when the driver accelerates, it’s already spinning fast enough to provide power, and lag is all but eliminated. Thats the motor bit. Heat is for those exhuast gasses.
If that made your head hurt, then good news. You can forget it all, the MGU-H is gone. Teams have been perfecting them for ten years now, so it makes sense that the second they’re thrown away two more engine suppliers join the party- Audi, and Red Bull. Audi will take over the Sauber team and bring along their own engines, while Red Bull and Honda have divorced, and will each make their own power units. Alpine is another new name, but the company being wholly owned by Renault, who already make the Alpine team’s engines, means they don’t count.
And so to active aero and temporary battery boosting, but don’t picture pop up brakes like an airliner and Mariokart mushrroms. What the changes essentially amount to is front and rear DRS for everyone, regardless of proximity to the car in front, on every straight. It could be argued that in this case you may as well not have it at all, and take the opportunity to further simplify the intricate and air bending wings, but shhh. People love pop up spoilers, so why not give everyone two.
The battery boost is odder still. Or perhaps just silly. If DRS was a gimmick then this is a step further, and after going to all the trouble of removing DRS, the FIA has replaced it with a temporary power increase that has the same effect. True you could deploy the power at any point during the lap, perhaps leading to some unusual overtakes, but cars now risk being sitting ducks to attackers. At least with DRS a good exit before the straight meant defending was to some extent possible for long periods of time.
Constant and irresitable overtaking isn’t fun. Neither is hitting a six every third delivery, or beating American Samoa 31–0, or being made a Peer due to blatant cronyism. Defensive driving is just as exciting as attack, and given the speeds and the settings you’d think F1 possessed enough of a nose for ‘the spectacle,’ and access to enough cameras and archive footage, to know this.
Following Zhou Guanyu’s crash at Silverstone in 2022, which really was a spectacle, the strength of the roll hoop will be increased, as will the protection around the fuel tanks to reduce the likelihood of Grosjean-esque fireballs. More crashes would be exciting, though only if the drivers live to do it again and again. In this spirit, he survival cell will be more firmly attached to the front impact structure, so secondary impacts are as protected against as the inital one.
Other miscellaneous changes include a doubling in energy harvesting under braking, slimmer tyres, by 2.5cm at the front and 3cm at the back, reduced ground effect, mandated aero elements around the wheels to reduce the wake of the cars, standardised rear wing endplates with flashing lights, repositioned GPS antennae, and the use of sustainable ‘drop in’ fuel, in theory useable in any combustion engine. Providing they aren’t diesels.
Making so many changes, some potentially lifesaving, while reducing the weight and footprint of the cars, and tempting several new manufacturers into the sport, means these regulations have to be classed as a stonking success. Demanding that more weight should have been lost, a pile more centimetres shaved away, is not quite ungrateful but at least a little greedy. This is a proper ruffling of the book, and a clear direction has been indicated- safer, smaller, cheaper cars. And that’s exciting! Now set your calendars. Let’s see if it works.
