Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton has criticized plans to make grands prix 15 kilometres shorter next year, saying it \u201cmakes absolutely no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2027, Formula 1 races will be two or three laps shorter (depending on the length of the circuit) due to changes to the engine regulations that will result in higher rates of fuel consumption.<\/p>\n
In order to avoid teams investing in costly chassis redesigns to accommodate larger fuel tanks, the FIA announced last week that it would shorten races from 305km to 290km.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe races should be longer because they are physically easier than ever before,\u201d Hamilton was quoted by the Press Association ahead of this weekend\u2019s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is supposed to be a sport which is the most physically and mentally demanding, and there are some where you are on the edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that is where you want to see — athletes right on the edge of performance and pushing their bodies further, pushing the levels and pushing the boundaries. Shortening the races makes absolutely no sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shortening of races stems from complaints made by drivers about this year\u2019s hybrid engine regulations, which initially targeted a 50\/50 split between internal combustion power and battery power.<\/p>\n
The notional 50\/50 split proved to be closer to 53\/47 in favour of the internal combustion engine, but the regulations still resulted in cars that regularly run out of electric power around circuits where energy deployment is high and energy harvesting is limited.<\/p>\n
For next year, the rules have been tweaked to achieve a 58\/42 split — which will become 60\/40 in 2028 — but in order to increase the power output of the internal combustion engine, it will need to consume more fuel.<\/p>\n
Accommodating the extra fuel needed to complete a 305km race distance under the tweaked regulations would have required teams to make costly redesigns to their chassis, so the FIA reduced the length of the race by 15km to allow them continue with the existing fuel tank size.<\/p>\n
Hamilton admitted he had not been briefed on the reasons for the changes, but is concerned the shortening of races will reduce the physical challenge and limit tyre strategy options.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really know anything about it or any of the reasons they put it up behind it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the races should be longer because the races are physically easier than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo shortening, I don\u2019t think, makes much sense. If you think about this weekend, we have the C3, 4, 5 [tyre compounds] that can pretty much all do the race distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we have a lot of races where it\u2019s only a one stop. It\u2019s not particularly challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo for me, there\u2019s been many races where I wish we had more laps. It\u2019s the opposite that I would be asking for [which] is longer races, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton has criticized plans to make grands prix 15 kilometres shorter next year, saying it \u201cmakes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-906903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","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\/906903","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=906903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}