Is the 2026 Regulation going to achieve it goal?

[airshifter]

Sorry buddy, l kinda disagree. The max horsepower of F1 cars in recent times has been 1000HP. This new regulation has split that to 500HP on ICE and 500HP on EP. On tracks where energy harvesting is difficult, most cars, if not all cars would effectively see their powertrain output drop to 500HP until they are able to charge it back up somehow.

The battery allows the car to operate at 1000HP on the straights, where maximum power is required. Therefore, the battery power only brings the power output to normal and historical power output. What it is not doing is boosting the power output above 1000HP to provide even higher speed.

All the teams are asking for is for FOM and FIA to ensure that the full power of 1000HP is available over the length of the straights on every track. Which is not unreasonable.

The only thing you argue that you disagree with is something I never stated. It was well accepted early in the regulation set that overall power output would not increase, as well as energy stores being limited enough to not make it at full power through many of the demanding tracks.

As for cars often driving around with only 500 horsepower available, you are obviously not seeing the aspect of strategic energy deployment. Being these are lighter cars with greatly reduced aerodynamic drag, and equal if not slightly more power available, they will accelerate much more quickly when using full power. That means even if a driver reduces electrical power before the end of the straight, they can still see the same or higher top speeds. With both wings trimmed for speed, the ICE alone could sustain these cars upwards of 220 MPH estimated. And with wings trimmed, they can harvest easily at the end of the straights with some lift and coast, then the wings switch when mechanical braking is needed.

You obviously are also not considering that with less downforce due to loss of ground effect aero, along with smaller tires, cornering speeds will be reduced regardless of power available. This means for lower speed corners the off throttle and braking (thus possibly harvesting) time has increased. So the time considered "full throttle" for any given track will decrease due to less grip. Less overall power demand will exist due to the regs changes.



The times will be longer on most tracks, that was intended. But testing has already shown that the times in Bahrain are only very slightly off the 2022 times. Drivers and teams that manage energy properly will probably find similar results on many tracks. There will likely be a few tracks where the times increase more than expected with the old regs, but there may even be tracks that times are lower than 2022. It's just a matter of where they are fast, and the new regs will shave time on straight line performance.

[airshifter]

I am most curious about how the energy deployment rules will affect racing. Smarter battery use sounds great but if drivers have to lift and coast a lot to stay within limits, it could hurt the close racing the rules are trying to create. The movable aero balance could also lead to big performance differences early on while teams figure it out, which might mix up the order at first.

25.7 seconds isn't long enough for most circuits - it's less than half a lap. They're all going to be trying to work out how long and where to deploy and where they can re-charge at multiple places around most circuits. I just hope that there's some sort of telemetry available to the viewer so we can see who's using what and where.

I don't think it's going to be nearly as bad as some predict. Simulations will show the teams fairly quickly where and when to deploy energy, and in any race the quicker lap time is desired. For that reason, all of them will look at where the deployment trims time the most, and many teams will end up with fairly similar strategies.

We also have to consider that even with the old regs, cars were only at full power 70-80% of the time and that was with greater downforce and cornering speeds. When you look at it track by track, you see the overall picture better. The 2022 pole in Australia was right about 1 min 18 seconds. If you factor full power time at 75% that is 58.5 seconds. That 25.7 seconds available energy store takes care of over half of that if they were pushing the cars with the same weight and aerodynamic drag,but they won't be. That power will be pushing cars with half the aero drag, along with lower weight, so the acceleration curves will eat up some time delta.

As for close racing, I'm also somewhat expecting that the boost mode will rarely be used. It would be next to impossible to factor into simulations, and might leave the car vulnerable to a quick attack to retake the position gained. What I do expect to see at some tracks is slower times in tighter sections with short straights and no real passing opportunities. Teams might decide it's not worth saving a tenth or two in a section of track where it isn't likely they could be overtaken even if slow. Think of Ricciardo with no MGU at Monaco, and still won the race. But if they can use that same percentage of energy stores and gain more on another section of the track, that's where they will use it.