Jean Alesi believes Formula 1’s fastest drivers, such as Max Verstappen, are being held back by the sport’s growing reliance on battery management.

After all, they just want to go flat-out through every corner and not have to manage their batteries over a full lap to minimise time loss.

Jean Alesi says Max Verstappen affected by battery management limits

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Verstappen has been one of the biggest critics of Formula 1’s new “anti-racing” formula – as he puts it.

Battery harvesting and super clipping have become the norm for the drivers, meaning they are not full on for an entire lap. They have to even back off in qualifying – a single lap – to harvest battery power.

With management more important than speed, Alesi reckons today’s regulations – with the 50/50 engine split in combustion and electrical power – are negatively impacting the fastest drivers.

Drivers such as Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

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“Max is struggling a lot at the moment, really struggling, because you see the system they have now with the car, the way they operate the throttle, they have less electric power,” he told Racingnews365.

“Is it, at the moment, right now, the point where the fast drivers are more in trouble than the other ones?

“Maybe, because you see the qualifying here [in Japan], Max and Charles, they have been faster in every corner, but slower at the end of the lap time.”

But while Leclerc has still been able to fight at the front during the grands prix thanks to Ferrari’s epic starts, Verstappen and his new teammate Isack Hadjar have had issues with the Red Bull-Ford engine’s launches.

Losing positions off the line, Verstappen has not held back in his thoughts on the new engine formula.

Aimed more at the regulations than his own team’s performance, Verstappen has called the new engines “Mario Kart” with “mushrooms” boosts.

Alesi appreciates the honesty, as he feels it will drive Red Bull-Ford forward.

“It’s just more on the engineers’ side,” Alesi continued. “The maximum he can do now is just to stay quiet and to let the engineers make the improvements. It’s the only thing he can do.”

“Absolutely,” he said of the driver’s honesty. “He is pushing the team. It doesn’t mean that you are against the team.

“As a driver, of course, you push your team. He cannot go to a press conference and say: ‘my team is fantastic, my car is fantastic, everything is perfect’.

“He has to say: ‘the engine has to be like that, the aero at the moment is this direction, we have to change the direction’. That is not a critique. It’s a message for improvement.”

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