{"id":830782,"date":"2026-07-29T07:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/830782\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:37:13","slug":"formula-1-five-things-weve-learned-from-first-half-of-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/830782\/","title":{"rendered":"Formula 1: Five things we’ve learned from first half of 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year’s F1 championship introduced the biggest rule change in the sport’s history,<\/a> with new aerodynamic and engine regulations.<\/p>\n

While the chassis rules have generally been a hit – even if the cars are a little slower than last year – the new engines most definitely have not.<\/p>\n

The nominal 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power (more like 53-47 in reality) combined with the architecture of the engines, has left them energy starved.<\/p>\n

And when the battery is empty, the cars have only about 540bhp – less power than a Formula 3 car, but with loads more grip.<\/p>\n

The need to constantly charge the battery has neutered many of the best corners on many of F1’s greatest tracks, reducing them to what Fernando Alonso has called “charging stations”.<\/p>\n

The flip side is the energy starvation has led to some interesting battles, known as “yo-yo racing”, with cars swapping positions repeatedly over a number of laps.<\/p>\n

But the drivers point out this is artificial, and that overtakes are often happening simply because one driver suddenly has 350kW (470bhp) more than the other.<\/p>\n

As four-time champion Max Verstappen says: “Sometimes people say: ‘Ah yeah, but this was a great race.’ I say: ‘Yeah, but it’s not really realistic the way we are racing.’<\/p>\n

“And then you arrive to some tracks and you’re driving on not a lot of horsepower for F1 standards. And it’s a little bit painful, which I could see coming already for years. So, it’s then, of course, not the most exciting.<\/p>\n

“At one point I’m also a little bit fed up with repeating myself, because it’s already hard enough just having to drive it.”<\/p>\n

The drivers – especially Verstappen and Fernando Alonso, but most of the others, too – were very vocal about this from very early in the season. The sport as a whole recognised there was a problem, and has reacted.<\/p>\n

Tweaks to the rules<\/a> to lessen the problem were made after just three races, and the engine split will be modified to become 60-40 by 2028,<\/a> with an intermediate step for next year.<\/p>\n

That will significantly reduce these issues, but not eradicate them completely.<\/p>\n

F1’s governing body the FIA was warned repeatedly in the years leading up to 2026 that this energy starvation issue would happen.<\/p>\n

This has left an easy target for FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, to propose a return to naturally aspirated V8 engines for 2031.<\/p>\n

It’s an idea with distinctly limited support among F1’s stakeholders. It lacks imagination and analysis, comes with its own set of problems, and is effectively turning the clock back 15 years.<\/p>\n

The issue is not hybrid engines or turbos per se; it is the lack of energy recovery possibilities.<\/p>\n

It’s a situation F1 forced on itself by removing the MGU-H, which recovered energy from the turbo and exhaust, and not allowing recovery from the front axle.<\/p>\n

The sport needs to take a pause, intelligently and rigorously analyse what it wants from its engines in the future.<\/p>\n

Then it needs to come up with a package that satisfies the manufacturers, has road-relevance, embraces concerns about the climate crisis, does not create a noise-hazard threat to some of the sport’s most high-profile races, is cheaper, allows the drivers to almost total access to full power, and gives a facility for overtaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year’s F1 championship introduced the biggest rule change in the sport’s history, with new aerodynamic and engine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-830782","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\/830782","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=830782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}