Considerations have emerged in latest weeks concerning the dangers of a incorrect step with the brand new automobiles in 2026 ruining the spectacle.
World champion Max Verstappen mentioned {that a} simulation run he had with the 2026 automobile, the place he was pressured to alter down gears on the straight to recharge the battery, left him removed from completely happy.
“To me, it seems fairly horrible,” mentioned Verstappen. “When you go flat out on the straight at Monza, and I do not know what it’s, like 4 or 5 hundred [metres] earlier than the top of the straight, you need to downshift flat out as a result of that is quicker. I feel that is not the best way ahead.”
However whereas Verstappen’s Pink Bull group is pushing for adjustments to be made to assist enhance issues, F1’s personal senior technical figures are much more sanguine concerning the scenario.
Actually, F1’s chief technical officer Pat Symonds thinks group alarm bells concerning the 2026 scenario are far too untimely – as he suggests their fears have been triggered by out-of-date knowledge and laws which might be within the technique of being refined.
Newest mannequin
Symonds and his group at F1 and the FIA, benefiting from the large laptop energy accessible to it by a partnership with AWS, have been accelerating laptop simulations on the 2026 challenge over latest months.
And it has emerged that the newest automobile mannequin F1 has is a large step from what groups have been basing their findings on to this point, and is performing in a totally totally different manner.
Horner has criticised the 2026 guidelines
Picture by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Photographs
Talking to Motorsport.com about alarm bells being sounded over the 2026 guidelines, Symonds mentioned: “Groups spend a big a part of their finances on shopping for alarm bells.
“We had precisely the identical with 2022, that it will not work, and we [the teams] have been by all of it earlier than and we all know what we’re doing.
“The 2026 automobile in my thoughts is not any larger a change than the 2022 one. I’d argue that it’s truly a bit much less aerodynamic [a jump]. Sure, it obtained extra energetic parts in there however there’s nothing magic about energetic aerodynamics. I am fairly assured.”
Symonds defined that FIA’s head of aerodynamics Jason Somerville, who has been heading up work on the 2026 automobile, was in an excellent place proper now with how issues have been shaping up.
“There are some spectacular drag targets however Jason and his guys are there with it,” added Symonds. “So yeah, I feel we are able to do it.
“And the group’s alarm bells, and speaking about Max who has pushed it within the simulator: he hasn’t pushed what’s there. I do know that, as a result of we’re clearly months forward of the place they’re.”
Symonds added that, whereas groups are conscious of the challenges of the 50/50 break up between combustion energy and electrical vitality, there was all the time the acceptance that the laws would evolve as soon as they’d been revealed.
Symonds has described the 2026 adjustments as ‘much less of an aerodynamic bounce’ to the 2022 alterations
Picture by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Photographs
“We wanted to get a set of laws out for the engine, and put some vitality administration numbers in there,” he mentioned.
“They have been very immature. We knew that they would not work and we knew that they wanted to be developed. And the place we have got to within the 9 months since is transformational.
“The efficiency profile of a 2026 automobile in simulation now does not look terribly totally different to 2023.
“So all of this factor about hitting the highest pace in the course of the straight, it isn’t like that anymore.
“You’ve to remember that these automobiles do not attain prime pace on the finish of the straight anymore; so all this factor about altering down gears on the straight merely is not true.”
Eliminating DRS practice
In addition to honing the vitality administration and moveable aero traits of the 2026 automobiles, Symonds mentioned that one space F1 was specializing in was higher racing.
And whereas a decrease slipstream impact might affect the potential of automobiles passing one another on the straights, Symonds says one key goal being checked out was shedding the present blight of races getting locked down by DRS trains.
DRS trains stay frequent in F1
Picture by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Photographs
“One of many aims, and what we’re attempting to do in 2026, is to do away with the DRS practice,” he mentioned.
“In the mean time, we’re speaking a couple of automobile that has 4 aerodynamic states. I do not assume we’ll find yourself with 4 aerodynamic states, we are going to find yourself with two or presumably three.
“However whereas a few of that might be by technical laws, a few of that might be by sporting laws as effectively.
“The factor with the 2026 automobiles is that you do not have these big quantities of vitality accessible that you’ve got in the meanwhile.
“Once we conceived the automobile, the thought was to have entrance axle restoration. The producers ditched that, in order that made our life actually tough. But it surely does not make it inconceivable.
“So I feel now now we have to have a look at the sporting laws and assume very fastidiously about the way you recuperate vitality and the way you deploy vitality. So it will not simply be a technical train, it will likely be a sporting train as effectively.”
Laptop energy increase
Symonds says that the large computing energy that F1 has accessible to make use of in CFD simulation, by its relationship with AWS, has left it with a excessive diploma of confidence that all the things is on monitor for 2026.
Pat Symonds
Picture by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Photographs
“The issues with CFD prior to now have not likely been concerning the software program, it is the quantity of computing energy you possibly can throw at it,” he added.
“It actually turned fairly transformational as we teamed up with AWS, and now we have needed to be taught collectively.
“It wasn’t a case of: this is a little bit of software program, you load it and run it. We needed to do an terrible lot of labor to get it working correctly. But it surely did give us this skill to run these extremely complicated fashions.
“There may be what we name our gold commonplace, of two full automobiles operating one behind the opposite in a cornering scenario with a totally unsteady stream. And that workout routines the computer systems a little bit bit.
“So as soon as we have been capable of do issues like that, we had some confidence. Now we’re nonetheless doing wind tunnel testing, however that has come again and given us much more confidence I’d say.”
