{"id":815451,"date":"2026-07-22T00:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/815451\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T00:35:13","slug":"f1-news-2026-oscar-piastri-complains-about-cars-electric-power-unit-comments-belgian-grand-prix-misbehaving-cars-george-russell-charles-leclerc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/815451\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 News 2026: Oscar Piastri complains about cars electric power unit, comments Belgian Grand Prix misbehaving cars, George Russell, Charles Leclerc"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Formula 1<\/a>, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a driver who is happy with their car right now. <\/p>\n

It might sound like a wild statement, but as the paddock heads into the summer break after this weekend\u2019s race in Hungary, widespread confusion over unpredictable car behaviour has left the grid at its wits\u2019 end. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

George Russell was a victim to engine gremlins. \u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

Specifically, multiple drivers have found themselves facing mysterious power deficits compared to their own teammates, with engineers entirely unable to explain why.<\/p>\n

McLaren<\/a>\u2019s Oscar Piastri<\/a> recently rued a bizarre anomaly after finding himself two-tenths of a second slower than teammate Lando Norris<\/a> for no apparent reason. <\/p>\n

Team principal Andrea Stella later revealed that Piastri had been compromised by the engine\u2019s autonomous \u201cself-learning\u201d elements. These electrical systems calibrate lap after lap, adjusting energy deployment based on driver input.<\/p>\n

Consequently, while Piastri and Norris ran identical engine settings, an errant mechanism on Piastri\u2019s power unit left him starved of battery power through crucial sections of the track at Spa compared to his teammate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sucks. I can\u2019t really say it any other way than that,\u201d Piastri said about how much the electrical part of the new engines are dictating results this season. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it\u2019s a pretty crap way of going racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly wouldn\u2019t have been the only person,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know George has had a lot of issues with that this weekend, and maybe the last couple of weekends. And speaking to some others, it\u2019s a similar story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obviously exaggerated a lot and made worse, but yeah, when you come in from a qualifying session, you look at all the corners and go, \u2018I\u2019m on par with my teammate and yet I\u2019m two tenths behind at the end of it.\u2019 It\u2019s not a very nice feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mercedes<\/a> camp faced this exact scenario. <\/p>\n

\"Piastri<\/p>\n

Piastri was not happy with the \u2018crap driving\u2019 the F1 cars reflect.\u00a0AP Photo\/Darko Bandic<\/p>\n

A stark top-speed deficit emerged between George Russell<\/a> and his teammate Kimi Antonelli throughout the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.<\/p>\n

Antonelli took pole<\/a> and won Sunday\u2019s race and Russell managed to only qualify fourth and crashed out of the race<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven on my last lap, for some reason I lost another tenth and a half to myself, just on the straight. You\u2019re watching on your steering wheel, just losing speed when you\u2019re full gas on the straight. You feel powerless,\u201d Russell said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the power unit, to be honest. But there\u2019s something slowing us down in the straights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both teams and drivers have been left scratching their heads, desperate to figure out why these power unit challenges exist and why they vary so wildly across the garage. <\/p>\n

It appears that even a slight change in wind up a hill or through a corner can trigger a \u201cself-input\u201d in the electrical unit to randomly learn, unfairly shifting the car\u2019s baseline potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe change in fuel flow and the less deployment are not going to fix those specific issues, it\u2019s to do with how the engine\u2019s calibrated, how the engine learns,\u201d Piastri explained further.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Drivers are struggling with the car\u2019s \u2018self input\u2019 status. \u00a0AP<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of ingrained into these engines. Obviously, it will get better as all the manufacturers understand the engines more, and it\u2019s not just a problem for us or Mercedes, it\u2019s a problem with all the engines, speaking to some of the other drivers \u2013 but the fact that it\u2019s even a problem is pretty annoying for more than just myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc<\/a>, who finished second in the race in Spa, admitted that he had spent multiple sessions with engineers struggling to understand the behaviour of his Ferrari<\/a> power unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese power units are so complex that there are some days when you scratch your head trying to understand why you are losing so much on the straights. That was a bit the case for me on Friday and in FP3,\u201d said Leclerc. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen, in qualifying, things went well again by slightly fine-tuning things. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just very difficult, but also very frustrating sometimes for a driver because, even when you are doing your best, there are things in the background that change constantly, and that\u2019s not so nice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Formula 1, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a driver who is happy with their car right now.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-815451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815451","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=815451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}