{"id":449081,"date":"2026-02-02T12:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T12:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449081\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T12:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T12:10:11","slug":"why-overtaking-still-looks-difficult-with-2026-f1-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449081\/","title":{"rendered":"Why overtaking still looks “difficult” with 2026 F1 cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both Esteban Ocon<\/a> and Oliver Bearman<\/a> are pessimistic about overtaking with Formula 1\u2019s 2026 machinery following the Barcelona pre-season test.<\/p>\n

The Haas drivers were on track for three days \u2013 as many as allowed \u2013 in F1\u2019s shakedown last week and completed nearly 400 laps according to unofficial data.<\/p>\n

That was enough to get a taste of the new VF-26, which meets F1\u2019s revamped chassis and engine regulations for the upcoming season, featuring stripped-down aerodynamics as downforce is reduced by 15-30% and drag is cut by up to 40%.<\/p>\n

Yet, overtaking may prove even trickier than in the past, based on early impressions from the Catalan running \u2013 even with the new Overtake Mode replacing DRS, which is a power boost for drivers within one second of a rival.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been following a few cars,\u201d Ocon said. \u201cYou seem to lose quite a lot of front load, a bit more maybe than before, but we need to see.\u00a0And the Overtake [Mode], yes, I played with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t want to give too early conclusions on how it’s going to be because obviously, it needs to be adjusted, optimised, etc.,\u00a0for that to work in a perfect way.\u00a0But so far, it looks to be difficult to pass. That’s my first thought about it, but I hope it’s going to get on the easier side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Oliver <\/p>\n

Oliver Bearman, Haas<\/p>\n

Photo by: Formula 1<\/p>\n

Sophomore team-mate Bearman concurred, pointing out \u2018quite a big shift in car balance\u2019 in dirty air right behind another car.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of following and overtaking and everything, I didn’t really get a massive feeling on that of course, it’s not a priority,\u201d the 20-year-old Briton commented. \u201cI managed to do a few laps in and around other cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must say that it was a bit more challenging to follow, just given my relatively few laps I did. It picked up quite a big shift in balance compared to clean air, which seemed a bit more so than the previous generation of cars. But again, it’s very early days.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I didn’t really get to use the Overtake Mode, but I was still able to try it just in clean air. We need to see the difference in cooling and all of those things. So I was able to try it, but I wasn’t able to use it to overtake someone, if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman are pessimistic about overtaking with Formula 1\u2019s 2026 machinery following the Barcelona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[153611,49,48,148380,3021,578,576,577,3017,3030,82,184992],"class_list":["post-449081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-barcelona-catalunya-pre-season-testing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-circuit-de-barcelona-catalunya","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-haas-f1-team","tag-oliver-bearman","tag-sports","tag-why-overtaking-still-looks-difficult-with-2026-f1-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}