{"id":579357,"date":"2026-04-03T10:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T10:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/579357\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T10:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T10:07:10","slug":"is-the-car-behind-in-control-f1-2026-rules-spark-alex-albons-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/579357\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Is the car behind in control?\u2019 F1 2026 rules spark Alex Albon\u2019s concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Albon<\/a> has weighed in on the impact of Formula 1\u2019s 2026 regulations, which he said were discussed in the drivers\u2019 briefing.<\/p>\n

Closing speed between cars deploying energy and others harvesting it has been a hot topic since\u00a0pre-season testing and was thrust under the spotlight by Oliver Bearman<\/a>\u2019s hefty Suzuka crash, when the young Briton lost control of his Haas car at 308km\/h when approaching Franco Colapinto<\/a>\u2019s Alpine<\/a>, which was travelling 45km\/h slower.<\/p>\n

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According to Albon, this is also linked to active aerodynamics and the way Straight Mode (formerly known as SLM, which stood for Straightline Mode) and Corner Mode operate on different cars.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it has been emerging that drivers don\u2019t have full control on their cars. \u201cI didn’t even want to overtake Lewis [Hamilton]. It’s just that my battery deploys, I don’t want it to deploy, but I can’t control it,\u201d Lando Norris<\/a> revealed at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNot how it should be\u201d – Lando Norris and Max Verstappen on power unit influence in F1 2026 <\/a><\/p>\n

As a result, Albon confesses to sometimes worrying that a rogue car behind him might cause an incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually talked about that in the drivers’ briefing, just about the closing speeds and defending and moving and all these kinds of things,\u201d the Williams<\/a> driver commented. \u201cIt feels really awkward now, because you want to defend but you’re sometimes worried that the car is behind \u2013 if they’re in control of their car.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMaybe we just need to make SLM itself a bit more stable or less powerful or something like that. More like a regular DRS that you can control quite easily. I don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander Albon, Williams\"Alexander<\/p>\n

Alexander Albon, Williams<\/p>\n

Regardless, Albon experienced a tough weekend at Suzuka, where he was eliminated in Q1 before the struggling Williams team turned his race into \u201ca bit of a test session\u201d \u2013 which involved energy deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to test a few things with the front wing, and so we wanted to map some of the car in this five-week break so we could understand it a bit better and go through some of the data,\u201d the Thai driver explained. \u201cSo we proceeded to do so. I think points were not on the cards today. <\/p>\n

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\u201cWe actually had quite a nice test plan in place. That meeting was basically, we do 10 laps like this, five laps like this, five laps like this, five laps like this, 10 laps like this, and we still had the same issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in some parts of the races it was working well and I could stay in the pack, and then if you look at my race plot and you see me drop back, it’s where I have the issues. At that point we thought, honestly, we’re not going to fix it here so we might as well turn it into a test session.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams currently lies ninth in the constructors\u2019 championship with two points, leading Cadillac<\/a> and Aston Martin only, with Audi<\/a> ahead on countback.<\/p>\n

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Williams experiments: Why Alex Albon stopped five times in F1 Japanese GP <\/a><\/p>\n

To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Albon has weighed in on the impact of Formula 1\u2019s 2026 regulations, which he said were discussed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[80350,49,48,6974,221910,578,576,577,591,82,203461],"class_list":{"0":"post-579357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-alexander-albon","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-car","12":"tag-corner-mode","13":"tag-f1","14":"tag-formula-1","15":"tag-formula1","16":"tag-lando-norris","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-straight-mode"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579357","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=579357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}