If the first test week that was just concluded in Bahrain is anything to go by, Formula 1 2026 may well be in the dwang.
Grand Prix racing is full of incredible stories of great men and epic drives. Flat out all the way in some cases, tactical masterminds in others, torrential masterclasses and blockbuster come from behind performances. All of which demanded the very best from man and machine.
Like Nuvolari’s incredible German Grand Prix display at the Nürburgring, 91 years ago in 1935. Tazio caught and passed the might of the Nazi silver arrows as he wheeled his unlikely old 265 HP Alfa Romeo P3 to The Impossible Victory over Hans Stuck and Bernd Rosemeyer’s 375 HP Auto Union Type Bs, Rudolf Caracciola and Luigi Fagioli’s similarly powered Mercedes-Benz W125s, and the rest. Much to the disgust of the assembled Third Reich.
Into the Formula 1 age and back at the Nürburgring in 1957, knowing that the Ferraris were going the distance on one tank of fuel, Juan Manuel Fangio half-filled his Maserati and opted for softer tyres. He raced flat out, stopped for fuel and fresh rubber and resumed to overhaul Maranello’s finest to score what many believed to be the five-time champion’s greatest victory. A year later, Stirling Moss pulled a similar strategy to ‘impossibly’ beat his front-engined rivals to win the ‘58 Moroccan GP in his rear-engined Cooper. A true Love Story
South African Champion, Rhodesian John Love was another to deliver an epic drive to lead the 1967 South African Grand Prix against 3-litre V8s, V12 and even W16s. If only his humble four-cylinder Tasman Cooper had the fuel capacity…
There have been so many incredible wet wins too. Jackie Stewart driving with a broken wrist in torrential rain and thick fog in the Matra at the Nürburgring. Jacky Ickx in the first winged Ferrari in France. Both in 1968. Ayrton Senna’s ‘93 European Grand Prix epic at Donington.
Never mind the closest races. Like when two tenths split Peter Gethin, Ronnie Peterson, François Cevert, Mike Hailwood and Howden Ganley at Monza in ’71, Villeneuve and Arnoux’s epic wheel to wheel ‘79 French GP at Dijon and Senna and Mansell in Spain in ’86. Or the come from behind winners who won from last on the grid. Watson, Coulthard, Fisichella, Button, Alonso and Pérez among them.
The point of all those victories, is that those men either drove those cars way beyond their limits and capabilities, outdrove the conditions, or raced smartly enough to overcome all the odds to pull off among the greatest and unlikeliest grand prix wins of all. That’s the point of racing, isn’t it? To push that car to its limits, no matter what the conditions. And win against the odds…
Newton and I… we agreed
So when Formula 1 confirmed its new rules for 2026 on top of the already dubious set we have just got shot off, I wondered how this would all work.
How’s it possible for a battery so small to deliver half the car’s output over a single lap? Never mind for an entire 300 kilometer Grand Prix? To harvest so much energy so quickly and then deploy it again, and then repeat the process over and over again, made no sense. If anything, I was intrigued. I believed Isaac Newton would also be…
Before we progress, let’s first consider the international battery electric vehicle malarkey. The wholly unjustified drive to make the world electric was after all at its zenith when F1 first considered and set these new rules a couple of years back. The woke did their utmost to foist electric cars on the world. Libtard officials strong armed the carmakers into spending billions on developing the crap. Only for the world to reject it.
Turns out that two years later, besides the lunatic fringe, nobody wants EVs after all. Electric models are being canned by the dozen. Soon they’ll just be an alternative. What they should have been, all along. Not the answer the woke w@nkers insisted EVs were supposed to be.
Hybrids are next. E-fuels will see to that. They’ll probably survive in some carbon-free city centers, but beyond that, EVs, hybrids and the lot will just become a distant memory of the nightmare they are.
Max, Lewis and the rest concur, too
So we cannot really blame F1 or the FIA for their lack of foresight. They believed those wakened politicians after all. Now we have 50-50 petrol-electric Formula 1 cars. And it seems Newton and I are no longer alone in our inability to understand the ethos of these rules.
A man in the mould of all the men we introduce you to above, Max Verstappen is beyond outspoken on the new cars, following his first attempts to drive them.
“As a pure driver, I enjoy driving flat out,” Max explains. “At the moment, we cannot drive like that. These cars are so energy inefficient on the straights that in certain corners on some circuits we’ll be better off cornering slower to recover more energy for the straight. It’s not too bad here at Bahrain, but we’re going to circuits where it will be a real drama.
“Sorry, but that just makes no sense at all. This is anti-racing, its just not Formula 1. It belongs in Formula E. I’ve already won and achieved everything here, so is it really necessary to continue, driving cars I do not enjoy, or are not a challenge?
“There are a lot of other nice things I can do with my time and I’m definitely going to do those, maybe already this year and also in the coming years. This certainly doesn’t help me want to keep going for much longer.”
Have idiot rules cocked up Formula 1?
Verstappen is not alone in his criticism. Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton is just as vocal.
He said: “The cars feel slower than Formula 2 right now,” Lewis points out. “It’s ridiculously complex. I sat in a meeting and they took us through it, it’s like you need a university degree to fully figure it all out. None of the fans are going to understand these rules. It’s just so complex.”
Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc added: “I expect chaos. Overtaking will be a big challenge and there are many question marks.”
All in all, it appears that misguided by wanton woke world trends at the time of developing new rules, Formula 1 has created itself a monster. Now those trends it chose to adhere to have already fallen flat. So much so that it may be prudent for Formula 1 and the FIA to most urgently rethink this whole catastrophe.
If Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc and the rest of the comments are anything to go by, it seems F1 has royally cocked this rules set up.
Can it make them work? Time will tell. But judging by the writing on the wall, it may just be prudent for an urgent rethink. Yes, keep an electric motor. To trundle down the pit lane. But give them wild, no nonsense e-fuelled V8, V10 or V12s out on track.
That’s what the world wants to see. Not this woeful nonsense we’re saddled with now. And the sooner the better, too..