r/F1Technical • u/heidenreich137 • 5d ago
Analysis F1 2026 Rules + Engines are a complete mess
If u read the Rules , it's shocking how bad they are.
1) Overtaking will be incredibly hard
Currently F1 is using DRS to even have a chance to overtake. Their mini Aero changes against Dirty Air won't do anything. This new Override Boost only happens after 290km/h. But some tracks only have 290km/h couple of seconds.
2) Engine Noise will be even more silent.
Yes they are removing the MGU-h but they are also switching to lower Fuel tank ( 70kg only ).
Because Teams have less fuel to burn, RPMs will be down causing Engines to be more silent despite removal of MGU-h
3) Active Aero
Like who came with this Idea? More dirty Air, more complex and more expensive
4) Charging the Battery in the Race
Driver could be more focused on charging the battery during race. FIA only allowed Rear breaking to get energy for the Battery
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u/Jebusura 5d ago
Every. Single. Big. Rule. Change.
Winge, winge, winge by teams and fans.
First 3 years of big rule change one team nails it, dominates. Final year of two of new rules we get exciting races as team performance converges.
Rinse, repeat.
I've been watching F1 since the 90's and it keeps on happening.
We need to stop changing rules so quickly!
Anyway, the rules aren't a mess, they never are, every single big change has always been labelled a mess and will lack overtaking blah blah blah. It's boring and you're almost certainly wrong, no matter how smart you think you're being.
Everyone said these current rules wouldn't work but the racing was fine, we just had to suffer one team being dominant. It was the same in the turbo hybrid era.
2026 will be boring, not because of anything you said, but because one team will nail it. Feel free to rub it in my face in 2026 if I'm wrong. I probably won't be though.
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u/Kaggles_N533PA 5d ago
And guess what? FIA is already looking for possible engine regulation overhaul for 2030
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u/mkosmo 5d ago
Of course. It gets boring when the teams all read the same innovation cliffs, so rule changes every few years are to be expected.
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u/Rivendel93 5d ago
Nothing was boring about this season, we had 4 teams converging and capable of winning at different points in the season.
It would be more exciting than having one team nail the new regs for the first few seasons, going unchallenged, and then as soon as the other teams figure it out they change the rules.
We've seen the same cycle so many times now, new regulations, one team nails it, one driver wins 3-4 years in a row, then teams catch up for the final season, and then new rules reset everything when the racing became good.
Think if we'd had a second 2021, that would have been incredible, plus Ferrari and McLaren might have joined in on the fun.
We've only had 4 different champions in the last 15 years, and they've all been from the same 2 teams.
That's a bad cycle to continue.
The 2024 season is what we should be hoping to continue, as 2025 will most likely be fairly similar due to the regulations staying the same.
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u/Ramuh 5d ago
It's fun to winge. OP is a bit much.
There's things I would have done differently.
Front regen (heavier though) would have been nice. Goes way more into the HYBRID aspect, hybrids are all about regen. The nerfed rear regen is a bit silly. However I suppose it's more now with the higher power on the rear
Capping regen I also don't like, like why.
Same battery, why, let them go ham there.
The electric system is kind of weird. I can only imagine that some behind the scenes contract, Formula E intermingling caps it somewhere.
Active aero I'm cool with, if it's done well and presented well.
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u/TerrorSnow 5d ago
The restrictions on battery usage and recharge are really kind of odd. We already have power limited by fuel flow rate, which the battery would be building off of, of course. I guess it's to not snowball a stronger engine too much? But tbh in recent times the engines weren't really too much of a difference anyways.
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u/Exxon21 Iñaki Rueda 5d ago
meh. the engine regs have taken a step back in my opinion. they want to push for 50/50 power between ICE and electric for efficiency and eco purposes and yet they get rid of the MGU-H and still mandate regen on the rear axle only? they simply don't have enough ways to regen the battery (outside of literally using the engine as a generator which would defeat the entire point of the regulations making cars more efficient). there's only so much you can harvest from the rear axle before you end up locking the wheels.
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u/IJustLoveWinning 5d ago
I agree.
Wondering what would happen if we didn't get the new rules and kept the current set until, say, 2035. Would we get closer racing because the cars are more and more equal? I'm excited for '25 because of how close everyone got to Red Bull. Now the midfield just needs to catch up.
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u/colin_staples 5d ago
I've been watching F1 since 1986 and you are right
Also, fans will moan about every change ("the cars don't look right", "xxx driver looks wrong in that team's colours") but guess what? We get used to it very quickly.
Cars now look weird without a Halo, and we will soon get used to seeing Lewis in Ferrari Red
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u/Carlpanzram1916 5d ago
I’m not super excited about these tule changes but I don’t think the engine revs will be as much of an issue. The cars will be way slimmer on the straights because of active aero and have a lot more battery power to deploy. My main issue is just that all these rules seem to be work-around a for the fact that they announced the engine regs only to realize they won’t really work and they’ve had to work backwards with the aero regs to try and salvage them. I would probably prefer they worked on how to make the current concepts lighter and more agile
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u/CP9ANZ 5d ago
Honestly I don't know why they didn't just mandate a smaller car, and a lower minimum weight, then gave them a more powerful MGUK with higher energy allowance and a spec or guaranteed supply of MGUH.
Can easily make a regulation on how much the H can harvest which would increase wastegate use and increase sound.
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u/Carlpanzram1916 5d ago
I think the main problem is they designed the engine reg around attracting new manufacturers. They cut the mgu-h and increased the hybridization. Problem is that means more batteries and more weight. They probably would’ve dumped the idea once the sims came back so poor but they didn’t want Audi and Ford to back out of their entry so they’ve worked the whole aero regs around salvaging the engine
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u/CP9ANZ 5d ago
Thing is, removing the H reduces the hybrid component. From all reports the H was the sticking point for Audi, why not force supply. All the pain of development is over now, they're as reliable as the rest of the car generally.
Seems like such a waste of money and effort.
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u/GaryGiesel Verified F1 Vehicle Dynamicist 4d ago
Because it’s not as simple as whacking an off the shelf motor onto your turbo shaft. It’s a whole package and standardising components won’t actually make things much easier until you standardise the whole engine…
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u/CP9ANZ 4d ago
I know it's not a simple component, hence the opposition to having to develop one, but hear me out, if newcomers are given the option to develop their own, or select from the four current MGUH and turbo packages at a cost, there's no longer a big hurdle to jump.
It also gives the current works engine outfits an ability to recover some costs via selling the MGUH as a product.
Is that not fairly straightforward? When you think of the context of another works team drawing up from a clean sheet, they can choose 1 of the 4 and design around that existing and tested package. In my opinion this isn't some insurmountable road block
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u/GaryGiesel Verified F1 Vehicle Dynamicist 4d ago
Developing the individual component isn’t the difficult bit. It’s developing the whole cohesive system. Simply supplying an off the shelf system doesn’t help very much
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u/CP9ANZ 3d ago
Wasn't that the component that was the root cause of many retirements in the first 5 years?
And that component was the sticking point right? Wouldn't the supply of a turbo and H unit already set the direction for a cohesive design? It's not like personnel aren't poached, we aren't talking about state secrets.
I respect your position mate, but it seems like the challenge being presented is being overblown, 3/4 PU manufacturers seem to have achieved pretty reasonable parity, with the one that started last picking up multiple championships.
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u/Jules040400 5d ago
Look it's so easy to complain about new rules, it's part and parcel of being an F1 fan, has happened for every rule change since Ascari was winning championships.
But do you really think you know better than Nikolas Tombazis and his team? He has a Phd in Aerodynamics, was chief of Benneton aerodynamics during their title-winning years in the mid-90s and later chief of aerodynamics for Ferrari for the vast majority of their dominant years (1998-2003).
As per usual, there will be one team that is slightly or very ahead in the first year and everyone will whinge about how last year was better, then one to three years later the field bunches up.
Only real exception was 2014 regulations, Mercedes' advantage was unbelievable
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u/dabnada 5d ago
Yeah lol nice try bud. I'm a top commenter on r/F1Technical and have over ten years of podcast watching experience, and have read How to Build A Car by Adrian Newey over three times. I don't know who this Nicholas TomNazi is, but rest assured if I were in charge of F1, everything would be so much better
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u/Visible_Meal_907 5d ago
Mercedes advantage was unbelievably because they had a ~2 year head start on their engine design. As long as the fia learned their lesson, that kind of advantage shouldn’t happen again
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u/GoldElectric 5d ago
what do you mean 2 years? how?
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u/Visible_Meal_907 5d ago
There’s a good chunk of evidence that Mercedes was working on their turbo hybrid engine as early as 2011
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u/Dutchsamurai2016 4d ago
Except we know from information that has come out these rules are a bit of a frankenstein. They were dead set on getting 50% of the power from electric but I think it was Newey who said the chassis/aero rules weren't really made with that in mind. Teams then started feeding back information there wouldn't be enough electrical energy to go flat out and that is when the FIA came up with the active aero in a half arsed attempt to not make the cars look like a complete joke.
Even the FIA said they'd rather not have DRS but because the new regs appear to be so bad they had to come up with even worse solutions like active aero and power boosts rather than coming up with regs that would promote overtaking in a more natural way.
Is there even a single person watching F1 who gives a dime about the whole hybrid/green crap anyway when they fly 20 teams all over the world? Seems like a total PR/Marketing fail to me. They should have just dropped all the hybrid junk and focused on synthetic fuels for their PR/marketing green goals.
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u/BuckN56 5d ago
I think 2026 will be interesting in the tech side of things to say the least. I'm seeing numbers being thrown around in YouTube and social media about these cars being anywhere from 2-5 seconds slower than 2022+ but that to me isn't an issue. They'd still be the quickest racing series in the world, but the lack of front regen (because the other manufacturers are scared of Audi's LMP1 experience) is going to turn this into FE/peloton type racing. Constant lead switching due to the drivers harvesting energy so often.
I'm just scared that it won't produce actual good racing.
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u/GaryGiesel Verified F1 Vehicle Dynamicist 4d ago
They’re not not doing front regen because Audi has experience with it lol. It’s mainly a weight/complexity/cost thing. There’s nothing special about front braking regen that is any fundamentally different to what we already do on the rear. The idea Audi would have an advantage is a very strange narrative
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u/GaryGiesel Verified F1 Vehicle Dynamicist 5d ago
Nah they’re not going to be anywhere near as bad as you’re making out. From some of the things you’re saying you clearly don’t actually understand how the changes are going to work (how will the active aero increase dirty air when it’s basically just mega-drs?)
They will have some definite quirks, but not the problems you’re suggesting. I’m certainly excited for the opportunities they’ll open up to find performance in creative new ways
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u/Whisky919 5d ago
Teams are already using nowhere near the 110kg allowed limit. I think this is all overblown.
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u/Kaggles_N533PA 5d ago
Active aero equals more dirty air sounds like a bullshit but actually, it makes sense. Because teams are getting low downforce mode on the straight anyways, they'll bring barn door wings to every single circuit. Which in turn means more dirty air through the corner, less slipstream through the straight
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u/BuckN56 5d ago
That's why they're going with the overtake mode option now a la Super Formula or P2P in IndyCar.
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u/Kaggles_N533PA 5d ago
But as OP pointed out, the new manual override mode replacing the DRS is little different to push to pass in IndyCar or Super Formula. All cars will have there power gradually reduced above 290kph but the car with override mode activated won't have that power reduction until it goes beyond 337km/h.
So in a slow track like Monaco, Hungary and etc where cars barely reach beyond 290km/h, override mode's effect will be close to zero
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u/tigerskin_8 5d ago
I know it doesn't have much importance right now but RSS is a studio that makes the best cars for AC(some F1 drivers used these) and they made a 2026 car with the regs that are known by now. The car is not slow at all, the off throttle sounds are very nice idk if they simulate the MGU charging or what. The engine sound is very similar to current engines, well if i remember correctly it will remain unchanged.
On straights if you use the new modes is not slow at all and once the electric engine kicks in the acceleration is pretty nice too. Again is just an interpretation for a simulator but if the cars are anywhere near of this then i don't think people will hate them much. As expected the cars has less downforce and are harder to control.
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