Oscar Piastri has said Formula 1 grids are now being decided by \u201ccomputers behaving or misbehaving,\u201d adding that they have produced \u201ca pretty c–p way of going racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Power deployment was a recurring theme at the Belgian Grand Prix, the most sensitive track of the year for F1\u2019s new cars, which feature an unprecedented focus on battery harvesting.<\/p>\n
George Russell blamed Mercedes for a crash on the opening lap when he found his car was drained of battery almost immediately at the start of the race.<\/p>\n
Russell was not the only one with complaints. McLaren driver Piastri was also left rueing the odd quirks of the new engine formula after qualifying seventh and seeing teammate Lando Norris in third.<\/p>\n
Piastri complained about a significant lack of power down the straights compared to his teammate, despite making changes to try and fix the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sucks. I can\u2019t really say it any other way than that,\u201d Piastri said about how much the electrical part of the new engines dictate results this season. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it\u2019s a pretty c–p way of going racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen has been the outspoken critic of the new engines this year and he could not help taking another dig after finishing third on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome to F1 2026,\u201d Verstappen joked. \u201cSometimes it can be a jungle.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Piastri\u2019s case, he was upset by not understanding what the problem is, saying computers now dictate far too much from a competitive standpoint.<\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly wouldn\u2019t have been the only person,\u201d he added. \u201cI know George has had a lot issues with that this weekend, and maybe the last couple of weekends. And speaking to some others, it\u2019s a similar story.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere it\u2019s obviously exaggerated a lot and made worse, but yeah, when you come in from a qualifying session, you look at all the corners and go, \u2018I\u2019m on par with my teammate and yet I\u2019m two tenths behind at the end of it.\u2019 It\u2019s not a very nice feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The software in F1\u2019s new engines can effectively self-teach itself in real time, adapting power output lap to lap based on information gathered on previous completions of the circuit.<\/p>\n
This can sometimes happen if the wind changes direction on one lap compared to a previous one, and a handful of other things outside the driver\u2019s control.<\/p>\n
This means drivers can find themselves with vastly differing power outputs without really knowing why.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc, who finished second, said he had spent practice sessions ahead of qualifying struggling to understand the behaviour of his Ferrari power unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese power units are so complex that there are some days when you scratch your head trying to understand why you are losing so much on the straights. That was a bit the case for me on Friday and in FP3.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, in qualifying, things went well again by slightly fine-tuning things. It\u2019s just very difficult, but also very frustrating sometimes for a driver because, even when you are doing your best, there are things in the background that change constantly, and that\u2019s not so nice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has said Formula 1 grids are now being decided by \u201ccomputers behaving or misbehaving,\u201d adding that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2571,49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-816469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-auto-racing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816469","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=816469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}