{"id":450847,"date":"2026-02-03T09:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/450847\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T09:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:10:08","slug":"esteban-ocon-says-it-looks-to-be-difficult-to-pass-with-2026-formula-1-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/450847\/","title":{"rendered":"Esteban Ocon says it looks to be difficult to pass with 2026 Formula 1 cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Haas driver Esteban Ocon issued a warning with regard to overtaking with the 2026 Formula 1<\/a> cars, claiming it will be difficult based on what he experienced during the testing week in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Over the past years a main talking point in F1 was the ability for cars to race closely and overtake, which was the reason behind adopting the ground effect cars back in 2022.<\/p>\n

That generation started well with overtaking being easier, but as the regulations matured, F1 engineers found ways around the rules to gain performance.<\/p>\n

This meant the ground-effect cars started generating more wake (dirty air), and chasing cars suffered, losing performance and overheating, with their tyres getting punished.<\/p>\n

With the new rules featuring overtake mode, boost mode, and active aero, the same question is being asked.<\/p>\n

Will it be easy to follow and overtake?\"Bearman-Haas-VF26-Barcelona-3-2026\"\/Early signs are not encouraging, according to Ocon, based on what he has experienced while driving the Haas VF-26 in Barcelona last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

“I don’t want to give too early conclusions on how it’s going to be because obviously, you know, it needs to be adjusted, optimized, etc. for that to work in a perfect way.<\/p>\n

“But 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,” Ocon concluded.<\/p>\n

His teammate, Oliver Bearman, echoed his sentiments adding:\u00a0\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. I 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,” he pointed out. “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

\u201cI didn\u2019t really get to use the overtake mode, but I was still able to try it just in clean air. We need to obviously see the difference in cooling and all of those things.<\/p>\n

“So I was able to try it, but I wasn’t able to use it to overtake someone, if that makes sense,” Bearman concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haas driver Esteban Ocon issued a warning with regard to overtaking with the 2026 Formula 1 cars, claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,3021,578,131193,166709,166708,28673,576,577,7935,3017,185510,82],"class_list":["post-450847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-f1","tag-f1-2026","tag-f1-2026-power-unit","tag-f1-2026-regulations","tag-f1-news","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-haas","tag-haas-f1-team","tag-overtaking","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450847","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=450847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}