{"id":776365,"date":"2026-07-02T21:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776365\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T21:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:53:11","slug":"focus-on-energy-management-could-make-silverstone-less-special-for-frustrated-f1-drivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776365\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus on Energy Management Could Make Silverstone ‘Less Special’ for Frustrated F1 Drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Energy harvesting and deployment were the big talking points at the start of the 2026 Formula 1 season<\/a>, as the limitations of the new power units became apparent. However, rule tweaks for round four in Miami<\/a> and a run of circuits with plenty of braking areas and where harvesting was not as critical saw such chat drop off the radar somewhat.<\/p>\n

It is front and center once again at Silverstone this weekend for the British Grand Prix, and a venue always associated with high speeds and drivers pushing to the limit looks set to be very different this year. That\u2019s because once they get through the twisty section at the start of the lap, the drivers have a run from Turn 8 to Turn 15\u2014probably more familiar to you as Woodcote to Stowe\u2014where there is little to no slowing down where cars can harvest energy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an issue that has suddenly cropped up. Along with Monza, Silverstone was always going to be one of the major stretches for the 2026 power units, and thus drivers have been sampling it in simulators over the past couple of years as they were being developed. Max Verstappen<\/a> noted recently that he\u2019d laughed when he first tried it, it was so odd to drive. On Thursday, ahead of his first real world laps with the RB22 on Friday, he made his feelings clear.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to keep being too negative about it,\u201d said the Red Bull driver. \u201cI’ve been, of course, in contact with FOM, FIA. Everyone is trying to do their best. It’s just that\u2014because of how we generate our power nowadays\u2014this track layout, unfortunately, it’s just not suited for it, because of all the continuous [running]. You have long straights and fast corners, you don’t really tap the brake or whatever, so you can’t really recharge enough. When you rely only on the ICE, you don’t have enough power. So in a lot of places around the lap, you basically just slow down a lot, because that layout is just not made for the current formula of the engine. I think it’s just as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"british<\/p>\n

David Davies – PA Images\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just about the straights, as Verstappen stressed. It\u2019s those sweeping high-speed corners\u2014the very bits that made Silverstone such a challenge in past generations of cars\u2014that now work against it. \u201cOf course, we go to some tracks, we also have a lot of long straights, like [Austria] last week,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there’s at least a braking zone. You can recharge a bit\u2014can use it again. Unfortunately, here that’s not really the case. So for sure some corners are completely different than last year, for example. And that then also, of course, it makes it a lot easier to get around the lap. But at the same time it’s quite painful, because all of your inputs matter even more. Just probably not the most exciting, unfortunately.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the loss of that special challenge, especially through the twisting Maggotts\/Becketts complex, that drivers lamented ahead of the race. \u201cThere aren’t really many high-speed corners any more in F1,\u201d said Alex Albon<\/a>. \u201cYou arrive so slowly to them that the speeds themselves are low. You would think Silverstone is a high-speed track, but actually, if you look at the corner speeds now, it’s more a medium-speed circuit … Once you get through turn six-seven, and you lack any braking all the way into turn fifteen, clearly, the battery’s pretty depleted very quickly, and then you’re struggling from there on … [It’s] a very different feeling this weekend, I think, to what we normally feel around Silverstone. Silverstone has always been special. It’s less special when you don’t have that kind of speed that you feel through some of the high-speed corners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Albon\u2019s sentiments were echoed by his colleagues up and down the F1 grid.<\/p>\n

“I think most of the drivers feel probably a bit sad seeing the [speed] trace, and also trying the track at the simulator,\u201d said Charles Leclerc<\/a> when asked by Road & Track for his take. \u201cThese were tracks where we actually, I think\u2014the bravest one in qualifying will make a difference, because you get into the high-speed corners with quite a lot of power, and need to play with the limit of the card at very high speed. Now, the high-speed corners are more medium-speed corners, because we have a lot of clipping. I don’t know exactly what to expect. I have an idea, but, but I’m pretty sure it won’t feel as special as it used to yet to be.”<\/p>\n

\"f1<\/p>\n

Clive Rose\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“A lot of the tracks with the most character in the previous generation, the fast-flowing high-speed circuits, now seem to really just lack reward when driving them,\u201d said Haas driver Oliver Bearman<\/a>. \u201cAnd that hurts a bit. One of maybe the ballsiest sections of track of the whole year, which was Maggots and Becketts\u2014this year, it seems to be just one corner. And the bits before, you’re going so slow because you don’t have any power, that it’s not actually a corner anymore. So that’s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austrian GP winner George Russell<\/a>, however, had a slightly different take, and the Mercedes driver tried to see the glass as half-full. Rightly or wrongly, he suggested that fans won\u2019t be too fussed about the difference to past years\u2014and he believes that we could actually get a good show on Sunday. “I think Silverstone will be great!,\u201d he said with a wry smile. \u201cWith these regs, we knew there’s going to be some tracks that are more difficult than others for twenty-two drivers to experience. There are six hundred thousand fans here who I don’t think probably care so much about energy management.”<\/p>\n

“And on the flip side,” he continued, “the tracks that are most challenging for the energy, such as Melbourne, China\u2014they have so far produced better racing than we’ve seen in the past at those tracks. And there’s no doubt the tracks that are energy-starved, the racing will be better. It probably will be a bit more chaotic, so you could look at that as the positive. But, for sure, a single lap in qualifying is not going to be as fast as we’ve seen in the years gone by.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Energy harvesting and deployment were the big talking points at the start of the 2026 Formula 1 season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,183855,782,275300,784,578,576,577,237154,1642,275299,273948,82],"class_list":["post-776365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-collection-motorsport","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-75e0dc9f-6808-49b7-aecc-7933304609ca","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-energy-management-makes-silverstone-less-special","tag-sponsored-false","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776365","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=776365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}