New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nDrivers were required to lift and coast in qualifying to keep the battery topped up, and they lost considerable speed down the long back straight and into the previously ferocious turn 9-10 chicane when they ran out of electrical energy.<\/p>\n
Mark Skaife, the five-time Supercars champion and one of the hosts of MotorRacing 360 debuting on Wednesday on Fox Sports, said the new rules fundamentally undermined the challenge and appeal of qualifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrivers fundamentally want to drive the car as hard as they possibly can and want to be in control of their own destiny,\u201d he told Fox Sports and Kayo. \u201cThat\u2019s just essential to getting the best from yourself for enjoying driving the cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve made these comparisons that it\u2019s like Mario Kart or like Formula E on steroids \u2014 all that sort of stuff.<\/p>\n
Piastri explains where it all went wrong | 01:28<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you watch those [qualifying] laps, there are areas of the racetrack where clearly you\u2019re not driving the car at 100 per cent, and the car, in terms of the demand on the driver at that point, is far for maximised.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrivers want to maximise themselves at every single corner, for every single braking area \u2014 laps that you couldn\u2019t be 1 metre deeper under brakes without going off the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they\u2019re all complaining about was this uneasy feeling of not having to optimise the performance everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re actually sacrificing some areas of the racetrack when the super clipping and the harvesting is going on to then optimise your performance in another part of the track, you\u2019re robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the drivers are up in arms about that as a concept in terms of what you want to have as a feeling of race driving, to be 100 per cent committed everywhere and drive the wheels off the cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s fundamentally why those blokes are there and that\u2019s why we love car racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
PIT TALK PODCAST: The 2026 Formula 1 season is underway, with George Russell leading a Mercedes one-two to victory in Melbourne. But not every driver was thrilled with their first experience of the new rules.<\/p>\n
The opening stages of the race produced plenty of highlight-worthy action, with Charles Leclerc rocketing into the lead at the first turn and then engaging in a long duel with pole-getter George Russell for top spot until a virtual safety car broke them up.<\/p>\n
Formula 1 boasted of 120 overtakes for the race, up from 45 last season.<\/p>\n
Many drivers, however, described the racing as artificial, with passes largely dictated by how much battery charge they had available to attack and defend.<\/p>\n
Skaife agreed that the overtakes lacked significance, and he said the boosted metric wasn\u2019t a sign that the new regulations had improved the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want authenticity in terms of how overtaking is performed,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you think about Supercars racing and you watched those races on the weekend \u2014 Brodie Kostecki coming through the field or Cam Waters or any of the guys \u2014 they were constructing the overtake. They were working on the back of another car to find the right time to dive down the inside and be able to make what I would call a genuine overtaking manoeuvre.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Formula 1 the DRS used to cop so much flack because it basically created an overtaking scenario that was only in a straight line \u2014 the car from behind had such a powerful reduction in drag that it basically just drove straight past the next car.<\/p>\n
Merc Dominate as Ferrari call backfires | 02:25<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t real, it wasn\u2019t authentic. You didn\u2019t actually get in the slipstream and work your butt off to get right behind the car in front and dive down the inside of the corner; you just drive straight past them.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what we saw on the weekend was even worse than that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone that says 2026 overtaking is better \u2014 that\u2019s just delusional.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re driving by someone when you\u2019ve got a massive power advantage over the other car at that time. That\u2019s not overtaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe genuineness, the authenticity of that \u2014 it has got to be rectified.\u201d<\/p>\n
MotorRacing 360premieres on Fox Sports and Kayo on Wednesday 11 March at 7:30pm (AEDT).<\/p>\n
Skaife will join hosts Jess Yates and Paul Murray, along with Supercars champions Garth Tander and James Courtney and sport journalist James Phelps, each week to break down the week\u2019s biggest motorsport stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overtaking in Formula 1 has become valueless thanks to engine changes introduced for the 2026 season, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[2620,263467,64,63,689,248285,263460,24562,263463,13275,263465,263468,49589,51270,817,813,816,101816,263464,3875,263466,107494,56542,86951,127332,60607,647,263461,677,263459,34731,2119,263469,262043,16205,25598,263462,85,660],"class_list":["post-530268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-artificial-overtaking","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-battery-charge","tag-boosted-metric","tag-british-driver","tag-car-racing","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-drivers-calling","tag-engine-changes","tag-engine-regulations","tag-engine-rules","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-garth-tander","tag-genuine-overtaking-manoeuvre","tag-george-russell","tag-highlight-worthy-action","tag-james-courtney","tag-james-phelps","tag-mario-kart","tag-mark-skaife","tag-martin-keep","tag-melbourne","tag-motorsport-stories","tag-oceania","tag-overtaking-scenario","tag-paul-murray","tag-pit-talk","tag-race-driving","tag-race-vision","tag-rule-changes","tag-safety-car","tag-single-braking-area","tag-sports","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530268","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=530268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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