F1’S turn to electrification has been under increased scrutiny since the debut of the new regulations, which split the PU into a 50:50 split between electrical and combustion.
The regulations were created to improve racing, sustainability, and market appeal for engine suppliers, but managing these stakeholders has put F1’s PR in a negative spiral.
The FIA and teams have been actively discussing regulation tweaks since before the season even started. A timeline was agreed between F1, the FIA, and the teams to review matters after the Chinese GP, with the door open to fast-tracked changes.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis acknowledged the issues. He said: “We have a few aces up our sleeves on that, which we didn’t want to introduce ahead of the first race as a kneejerk reaction.”
Possible technical fixes under discussion include raising the superclipping recovery limit, reducing peak deployment power while extending boost duration, or increasing combustion engine output.
But after the Chinese GP produced better racing than Melbourne, F1 decided to hold fire on any major changes until at least the Miami GP, with a technical working group meeting planned after the Japanese GP.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff hinted that some teams might seek rule changes to reduce rivals’ advantages, saying “we’ll see what political knives will come out in the coming weeks or months.”
Big stars such as Max Verstappen, last year’s winner Lando Norris, and Fernando Alonso have spoken out negatively on the new regulations and their effect on what racing should be.
F1 Drivers Dissent
Max Verstappen
The four-time world champion has been the most vocal critic. His opposition dates back to 2023, when he first raised concerns following simulator work. He said the cars looked “pretty terrible” based on what he’d already seen in the data.
Verstappen claims the limitations were predictable from the outset and that the amount of money teams had invested meant these regulations would stick around for a while.
After the Chinese Grand Prix, he said the racing was “still terrible” and compared it to “playing Mario Kart.”
He went on to say that anyone who enjoys it doesn’t understand what racing is about (ESPN). He went on to say the rules were “fundamentally flawed” and that small tweaks won’t fix them.
He also anticipated the obvious rebuttal that his frustration stems from Red Bull’s poor start: “I would say the same if I were winning races, because I care about the racing product,
“It’s not about being upset about where I am.”
Fernando Alonso
Alonso expressed sympathy with Verstappen’s position: “As a driver, you want to make a difference in corners, but now you’re conditioned by how much energy the engine will have on the next straight.” (Total Motorsport)
Two-time world champion Alonso has yet to finish a grand prix because Aston Martin’s car vibrates so hard that it risks harming the drivers if they complete the full race distance.
Lando Norris
wasn’tNorris initially took a lighter tone during pre-season testing, jesting that Verstappen should retire if he weren’t enjoying the new cars after the four-time world champion’s “Formula E on steroids ” comment.
He later admitted that it was deliberately provocative, saying he didn’t want to complain publicly on the first weekend back.
Norris confirmed he actually agrees with most of Verstappen’s points and that the cars represent “certainly not the purest form of racing.” (ESPN)
After the Australian Grand Prix, where he qualified sixth and was almost a second off pole (a huge blow considering where McLaren were the same time last year), the gloves came off.
The reigning world champion said F1 had gone from “the cars’ best made to probably the worst.”
On the practical driving experience, Norris said the 50/50 power split between electrical and combustion energy “just doesn’t work,” and that drivers are now forced to stare at their steering wheels every few seconds to manage battery deployment.
The Midfield
Beyond the headline names, the chorus is wide. Esteban Ocon called the driving “very artificial.” Pérez described it as “very fake.” Ollie Bearman said the drivers are “not racing.” Lance Stroll wished for “cars that sound good, a little bit less complicated, and normal, good racing.”
This is not one unhappy driver on a bad weekend. It is the collective verdict of a grid that feels something essential has been taken from them.
The Grass is Greener
The F1 paddock doesn’t all follow the champion’s line of thinking on the regulations, as seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and both his current and former teammates, Charles Leclerc and George Russell, have shared positive, tentative comments on the regulations.
After the Chinese Grand Prix, he said the cars are much easier to follow than in previous years, with far less dirty air reducing downforce, calling it “the best racing that I’ve ever experienced in Formula 1.”
His on-track back-and-forth with Leclerc brought several laps of entertainment to the fans, as we weren’t sure when the battle had ended, even after Hamilton started to build a gap that eventually saw him get his first Ferrari podium after a difficult 2025.
George Russell is the biggest beneficiary of the new regulations, as they see Mercedes return to dominant form after a struggling four years under the ground effect rules. Mercedes famously struggled to propose and unlock race-lap speed under the old regulations, despite their PU winning two consecutive constructor titles with McLaren.
Russell won the opening round in Australia and the Sprint in China, finishing second to young upcomer Kimi Antonelli during the grand prix.
Both Mercedes drivers have complimented their team’s work on the PU, which is widely regarded as the best engine in the game right now, thanks to its compression trick and other ingenious engineering.
Russell asked fans to give the regulations a shot, and after the Chinese Grand Prix, said he believed the fans were enjoying the racing more than they expected. Antonelli took a similar tone, urging people to “wait a few more races before actually commenting on this new regulation.”
But the pattern is hard to ignore.
The positive voices come almost exclusively from the front of the grid. Mercedes and Ferrari have nailed the new regulations. Their drivers are competitive.
Hamilton, in particular, has a personal context that shapes his view: he openly despised the previous ground-effect cars, endured a miserable 2025 at Ferrari, and now finds himself in a machine he enjoys driving again. His renaissance is real. His objectivity on the regulations is harder to separate from it.
Verstappen acknowledged this dynamic. “Some, of course, will say it’s great because they are winning races,” he said. “When you have an advantage, why would you give that up?”
“Formula E on Steroids”
The awkwardness of F1’s position becomes sharper still when you consider Formula E.
CEO of Formula E, Jeff Dodds, views F1’s electrification as a compliment, not a threat. “For me, it brings credibility to the notion of electrification,” he told RACER. “When the pre-eminent racing series in the world has an electric element to its setup, I think it justifies electric vehicle technology.”
Formula E was created to be the home of electric single-seater racing. It holds an exclusive agreement to remain the FIA’s only all-electric single-seater championship until at least 2048.
F1 have committed to a hybrid path it can never fully follow, in a space where another series has exclusive rights and a ten-year head start. Instead, F1 sits in an odd place, not quite Formula E but not the usual F1 formula of pure speed.
So, why exactly is F1 pushing to keep the 50/50 electrification split, when the sport is simply not allowed to be the best at electric motorsport?
If the new and successful sustainable fuel addresses the carbon question on its own, then the 50/50 electrification split was not an environmental decision. It was a commercial one.
The sport needed to attract and retain manufacturers investing in electrification for their road car programmes, as governments push manufacturers to go fully electric or hybrid in the next decade.
And while it was the right commercial decision, seeing as Audi and Cadillac have joined the grid, along with Red Bull starting their own engine supply and Honda remaining in the sport, it may have been a detrimental choice to the health of F1’s viewership.
The near-tripling of the MGU-K’s output — from 120 kW to 350 kW — has made battery management the defining characteristic of every lap.
Drivers lift off the throttle on straights. They downshift at 300 km/h to harvest energy. They stare at their steering wheel displays every few seconds.
In qualifying, the fastest lap often requires going slower in one sector to have enough energy to be fast in another. The regulations may be cognitively demanding, but they do not look, sound, or feel like the pinnacle of motorsport.
If the commercial logic of the 2026 regulations was to attract new fans and new manufacturers, then the early evidence on the fan side is not encouraging.
In an OverTake.gg poll conducted after the first two races, over 65% of respondents rated the new regulations negatively. Roughly 10% were neutral. Only about 25% were positive.
One fan encapsulated the frustration: “They look fantastic, but terrible engines ruin them. Being the top motorsport, racing should be based on pure skill, being able to get the car right on the edge. Instead, the title’s going to whoever can save more battery power, and that’s just not racing.”
F1’s defence has been the overtaking statistics. Melbourne produced almost three times as many passes as the 2025 race. But more overtaking does not necessarily mean better racing. Many of the moves were products of energy differentials — one car having a battery charge, the other not — rather than driver skill.
That said, Leclerc and Hamilton’s battle at the Chinese Grand Prix proved that a driver’s skill can still make the difference during overtakes. In fact, the Ferrari duo is the perfect example of drivers adapting their skills to the new PU, using the battery deployment system to their advantage alongside their wheel-to-wheel and tyre management capabilities.
However, many of the compliments the Ferrari drivers gave during their battle were more about the improved ability to follow cars for longer in dirty air—thanks to new aerodynamic packages under the new chassis regulations—than about the impact of the PU.
There is also a generational divide that Verstappen has identified.
F1’s audience has changed dramatically since Drive to Survive brought millions of new viewers. He worries the sport is now optimising for engagement rather than quality: “I hope they don’t think like that, because it will eventually ruin the sport.” His concern is that the new F1 audience does not know what it is missing — and that the sport will calibrate to those lower expectations.
The strongest version of the pro-2026 argument is that Formula 1 has always been shaped by its regulations, and that nostalgia for a “pure” era that never existed is a bad basis for criticism.
Alonso himself conceded this: “This is Formula 1, and it has always been like that. Now it is the energy. Last year or two years ago, when he [Verstappen] won all the races, it was the downforce.” Fuel management existed in the 1980s. Tyre conservation has been a factor for decades. Every era has had its compromises.
F1 is now holding fire until at least the Miami Grand Prix in May, with a technical working group meeting scheduled after the Japanese Grand Prix. The cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix due to Middle East conflicts has inadvertently opened a window in April for more thorough analysis.
But these are sticking plasters. They may smooth out the worst of the energy management absurdities, but they will not address the fundamental imbalance between electrical and combustion power that underpins the regulations. And the politics of making bigger changes are ferocious.
The technical fixes will come. The energy deployment levels will be tweaked. The super clipping limits will be adjusted. By Miami, or by the summer, the worst of the absurdities may be smoothed out. Teams will learn the regulations. Some of the initial shock will fade.
For 76 years, Formula 1’s identity rested on a simple claim: we are the fastest, the most extreme, the most demanding form of motorsport on the planet. The qualifying lap — a single attempt to extract every hundredth of a second from a machine at the boundary of what was physically possible — was the purest expression of that claim. In 2026, drivers are lifting off the throttle on their flying laps.
Formula 1 remains true to its core, but its clear identity has been lost. The core message still exists, hidden beneath 350 kilowatts of electrical noise. The real question is whether the sport has the bravery and political resolve to reconnect with it.
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