{"id":503448,"date":"2026-02-25T16:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503448\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T16:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:02:08","slug":"explained-how-f1-qualifying-will-change-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503448\/","title":{"rendered":"Explained: How F1 qualifying will change in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Formula 1 qualifying will look a little bit different in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>That is because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/teams\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cadillac<\/a> has joined the grid, taking the amount of drivers up from 20 to 22 for the upcoming campaign.<\/p>\n<p>To accommodate the additional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/news\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">F1<\/a> team and two extra drivers, a small tweak has been made to the format.<\/p>\n<p>The traditional three-part knockout structure remains the same, with only 10 cars advancing to contest the top-10 Q3 shootout.<\/p>\n<p>With 12 cars now needing to be eliminated before Q3, that means the six slowest drivers will be knocked out in both Q1 and Q2.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>The six drivers dumped out of Q1 will determine grid positions P17 through to P22.<\/p>\n<p>Q2 will run for 15 minutes, with the slowest six drivers eliminated to lock in grid positions P11 to P16.<\/p>\n<p>No changes have been made for Q3, where the top-10 grid positions and pole position will be decided during a 12-minute session.<\/p>\n<p>Sprint qualifying will follow the same structure on the six allocated grands prix weekends to feature a sprint race in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The last time F1 had 22 cars and 11 teams on the starting grid was in 2016.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, 2016 featured a facial qualifying experiment that was immediately dropped after one weekend.<\/p>\n<p>F1 debuted a new-look elimination-style qualifying system at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, but agreed to make a U-Turn after cars repeatedly did not take to the track at the end of each segment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 qualifying will look a little bit different in 2026. That is because Cadillac has joined the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,817,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-503448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}