In 2023, one driver won 19 out of 22 races.
But last season ended with a 15-race run in which no one scored back-to-back wins – the longest such streak since the 2012-13 seasons.
The constructors’ championship was still hanging in the balance on the final lap of last season, and the same could have happened in the drivers’ title fight had McLaren sorted their car out sooner.
After such a close championship, all the signs point to more of the same this year. Four different teams set the quickest lap time over the final five rounds of last year, and each of them scored at least four victories over the season.
But while the prospects appear good for a close championship this year, some in F1 are already signalling their concerns about what will happen in 2026.
F1 is heading for its first change of chassis and power unit regulations in 12 years. The last time this happened it ushered in an era of unprecedented domination by a single team, Mercedes, who won 51 out of 59 grands prix over the next three years.
Even if F1 is spared as one-sided a spell as that, the competition fans enjoyed last year and anticipate this year is clearly in jeopardy. Have F1 and the FIA therefore done the right thing by scheduling an overhaul for 2026? Or will we end up viewing F1’s incoming rules as a success?
For
F1 could not afford to delay the introduction of its 2026 power unit regulations as the previous rules had not significantly increased manufacturer interest. Honda had come and gone, and no other manufacturers were likely to go up against rivals with mature designs.
Moreover, F1 needed to show it is in line with the car industry’s needs in terms of developing greener engines. The 2026 power units will generate around half of their power output from electricity and the combustion engines will run on ‘sustainable’ fuel.
The quality of the racing may suffer, perhaps only temporarily, but that is a small price to pay to ensure F1’s continued overall health.
Against
F1 arrives at successful regulations more by luck than by design. If the current rules are working well at the moment, the odds are the next ones will prove a step backwards.
That is all the more likely next year because F1 is ushering in one of its periodic changes in engine formula. The risk a manufacturer could gain the kind of advantage Mercedes enjoyed a decade ago is high.
The regulations F1 introduced in 2022 were the product of years of research to create cars which could race together more closely and to converge the performance of teams through the budget cap and the handicapping aerodynamic testing rules. This has worked, and F1 should have stuck with it for longer.
I say
It is not inevitable that a change in the engine regulations will lead to one-sided competition. The drivers’ title fight was decided at the final round of the first three seasons after the V8 engine formula was introduced in 2006.
The FIA chose to change the engine regulations to make F1 more attractive to engine manufacturers and, on balance, this appears to have worked. Audi will become a full works entrant in 2026, Honda are returning as manufacturers again, Ford will return to collaborate with Red Bull and Cadillac have set up a power units division to supply their own engines by the end of the decade.
The long-term benefits of bringing new manufacturer interest into F1 outweigh the potential deterioration of competition on the track. Even if one team claims an advantage in 2026, it is likely to only prove temporary, as the convergence in performance since 2022 shows.
There is one caveat: Whether the 2026 regulations will produce cars that race well. The 2022 rules failed in this respect, drivers are still heavily reliant on DRS to pass each other, and those who wrote the 2026 rules still expect drivers will need artificial help to pass cars.
You say
Will F1's 2026 regulations prove to be a change for the better?
- No opinion (0%)
- Strongly disagree (15%)
- Slightly disagree (19%)
- Neither agree nor disagree (28%)
- Slightly agree (31%)
- Strongly agree (6%)
Total Voters: 124

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Pilotjohns
12th January 2025, 9:12
When a team becomes dominant, the only way to shake up the series is to change the rules. As a famous person said, a paradymn shift sets everyone back to starting at zero. A change in rules is much fairer than adapting a rule that penalizes a perceived dominant player; everyone has the same fighting chance for miracle solution or to screw up. May the best team win. I am loving it.
Johns
12th January 2025, 9:18
Having said that, I miss the v10 cars like the raced at Pheonix in the 80s. Simply rules, easily developed, no “green fuel. Small fast need skill to do well, etc. and no 300 lb batteries
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 11:58
We need NA, high revving engines back. What makes F1 money is the show. Not manufacturer involvement. F1 did need it when F1 was deeply unprofitable. So, we can lose those who require the facade of green tech transference to justify their participation.
Bob
12th January 2025, 14:17
But that dont make sense, F1 is currently the most popular it has ever been, watched in more countrys, by more people than ever, and is using 1.6 litre v6 engines.
MichaelN
12th January 2025, 15:49
That’s probably an exaggeration. Liberty changed the way it counts ‘engagement’ when F1 was on a slight uptick in audience, but still nowhere near the early 2000s (by FOM’s prior counting method). It’s very hard to compare between these two different ways, and even more so as the nature of the media landscape has so profoundly changed from 25 years ago.
Robert Williams (@weiliwen)
12th January 2025, 22:16
I do not think that those two are linked; I believe it’s a case where correlation is not causation.
El Pollo Loco
13th January 2025, 1:37
That popularity isn’t the result of the racing or specs though. The DTS bump won’t last forever.
faulty (@faulty)
13th January 2025, 4:02
@el pollo loco
You are right.
Think of sports/entertainment products that have sustained high figures and it all comes down to close competition, heroes & villains, and the possibility talk about it with other people.
anon
12th January 2025, 16:51
Is that really what the sport needs, or rather what you are accustomed to and think everyone else is used to as well? Looking at a history of what fans on this site say that Formula 1 “needs” often ends up being a window into what the sport was doing around 20-30 years earlier, when most fans began engaging with the sport and treat that as the reference to what is “the right way of doing things”.
Go back to the 2000s, and you found plenty of fans then complaining that the high revving normally aspirated V10s were rubbish and that a “proper F1 car” was a mid-1980s turbocharged car, and that those cars were the “proper test” of driver skill. Now we’ve moved on a generation, and the generation that grew up in the 2000s is now the one that is more vocal about what it is used to and what it therefore thinks is a “proper F1 car” and the “proper way” of doing things, and so the cycle continues.
El Pollo Loco
13th January 2025, 9:28
If you’re referring to my post about NA engines, it’s what I and many, many, many people I come across echo. It doesn’t have to be anything specific layout as long as it sounds good. IMO, F1 is supposed to be a spectacle and PUs that are both unexciting in sound and have little relevance for real world tech but masquerade as such are not only not to my taste but also not what I think is best long term for the sport. How long can F1 pretend to be actually relevant to road going cars without becoming completely antithetical to the series as a sport? I don’t know, but the time will come and I think it’d be better to begin transitioning away from that model sooner rather than later.
M2X
12th January 2025, 10:18
The thing is every regulation change starts with the dominance of single team, the team that gets it right.
Then it takes year(s) for convergence to happen and other teams to catch up and by the time that happens F1, almost traditionally, changes the regulations.
F1 goes through the same cycle every single team, and it’s quite clear the FIA simply doesn’t learn from its past when it comes down to technical regulations.
pastaman
12th January 2025, 12:56
Except no one is dominant right now, so why shake up the series.
Renato Aguiar
13th January 2025, 0:09
That’s exactly what he wrote, my friend.
grat
13th January 2025, 2:33
Incorrect. The problem for the past 15 years has been the unrelenting changes in aero rules nearly every year– even if the basic rules haven’t changed, there have been constant “tweaks” that require teams to rethink their entire approach. Until the cost cap, only the major three (Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull) could hope to keep up with the need to redesign the car from the ground up every season.
Even with the cost cap, the big teams have the best engineers. With the sliding research limits, AND fixed rules, there was a convergence this past year, and next season should be even closer.
2026, we will again have one or two teams that got it right, and the rest playing catch-up.
Stable rules allow for convergence.
bone (@bone)
12th January 2025, 9:13
A car which performs best at 90% is boring to watch, so I’ll be happy to see them gone. Not sure all the active aero will improve things though
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
12th January 2025, 9:23
That is an impossible question to answer, no one can possibly know.
If you had asked – “Are the changes necessary?” – then I would answer with a resounding “No they are not”.
It’s a shame that just as we approach what could well be the most thrilling F1 season for decades, we are also approaching the end of a ruleset that (whilst far from perfect) has started to give us tight and interesting races.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 12:18
Agreed, but since the new specs seem to be taking us in the wrong direction (heavier, battery focused, likely just as quiet if not more so, etc.). I’d personally rather see more modest rule changes that allow some leveling of the playfield but without destroying all the growing convergence.
kuvemar
13th January 2025, 13:49
Why would battery focused and quiet be the wrong direction? This is F1 you’re talking about. Innovation, engineering marvels, the best technologies available. There is no going back to cars that run on fossil fuels only, it’s over. Why would F1 of all series go back to outdated technology?
El Pollo Loco
14th January 2025, 1:22
Except
a) it’s not real innovation. You could design faster, more efficient car for a tiny fraction of the price w/ an open formula
b) they still are burning fossil fuels and not just that, they’re going to be literally burning it just to be able to charge this amount of battery because unlike the current cars, there’s so much battery capacity to charge it can’t be achieved through normal, efficient energy recovery. What a joke
c) So, in your world it’s fine if F1 ends up becoming Formula E? Good luck selling that
d) Fans care first and foremost about the drivers and the on track action. Engineering is of distant, distant tertiary importance
e) Finally and most importantly, at no time was being the most technologically complex ever set out as a mandatory requirement of F1. Formula 1 meant “the formula for the fastest race cars possible” and once upon a time that inherently required developing the most exotic and innovative tech in racing. But tech has come so far that, without any rules, one could make much faster formula cars for a tenth the cost and why it must be artificially limited to prevent them from being too fast.
The only engineering challenge is to create the fastest car within the parameters created by artificial or arbitrary obstacles F1 sets for itself. It’s like a martial league that prides itself on being the most having the most deadly fighters and trainers, but then requires its fighters to only use their right arm 20% of the time, kicks only during even numbered rounds with no more than 1 kick per second and one eye blindfolded.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
17th January 2025, 14:25
SO the Williams FW15 should not have been an end point but a beginning. But it isnt. Most of the tech was taken off and that was 30 years ago.
On your argument, surely all aero changes are progress. Where is ABS, traction control? They are all developments but nowhere in F1. Its a fallacy to say that f1 is at the technological sharp end. It is a controlled ‘formula’. Not a free for all. Using high revving engines is no more the past than anything in F1 but you are peddling the manufactures line of ‘road relevance’ for these battery powered wheeze buckets.
Dex
13th January 2025, 23:30
I didn’t find races that interesting last year. Unpredictable outcomes, perhaps, but not enough interesting battles. The championship is getting more interesting as the teams converge, but the aero development made close racing something drivers have to avoid, like pre ’22.
I can’t say that I’ve truly enjoyed more than a handful of races, if that many. But that’s F1… Most of the fun is debating about it, not watching it.
El Pollo Loco
14th January 2025, 1:25
Agreed, Dex. It was incredibly dull the majority of the time. A lot of it felt like “whose car is going to work this week and will that give them enough of an edge to beat Max?” On track battles, whether wheel-to-wheel or tense strategic battles where drivers basically raced the clock were few and far between IMO.
Johns
12th January 2025, 9:24
Honda and Toyota did it right by using F1 to train its young engineers to build amazingly reliable cars that we all benefit from, like the honda civic and Corolla this is the true F1 legacy and giftbto the world.
anon
12th January 2025, 10:17
Johns, firstly, with regards to your earlier fanciful claim, the current cars don’t need 300lb, or 136kg, of batteries now either – you’re more than 100 kg off with that figure, given that the regulations state that the weight of the batteries is limited to a maximum weight of 25kg. Whilst the weight of the entire powertrain may be closer to that figure, given that weighs about 150kg, the vast majority of that weight – 115kg – is made up of the conventional internal combustion engine.
Secondly, the idea that Honda and Toyota used Formula 1 to “to train its young engineers to build amazingly reliable cars that we all benefit from” is nonsensical. The Civic dates back to 1972, and Honda was onto their third generation of that car by the time that they returned to Formula 1, whilst the Toyota Corolla dates back to 1966 and was into it’s ninth generation by the time that Toyota joined Formula 1.
In both of those cases, there really wasn’t a lot of technological or knowledge transfer from motorsport to their road car division (certainly a lot less than you are trying to claim). In Honda’s case, if anything, the flow tended to be more often in the opposite direction – the knowledge to fit variable valve timing on their Formula 1 engines came from their road car division, for example.
Davethechicken
12th January 2025, 19:41
The Toyota Prius was released in the 1990’s, long before F1 moved to hybrid power units.
anon
12th January 2025, 22:05
Davethechicken, which does kind of reinforce the point I was making about the argument that poster made about the transfer of technology from those Formula 1 teams to their road car divisions being questionable (not to mention that Panoz did already trial hybrid power units back in the late 1990s at Le Mans, and at least some of the technology that has been used in Formula 1 was coming off the shelf from technology that Zytek had developed for sportscar racing).
El Pollo Loco
14th January 2025, 1:32
Exactly. This entire road relevancy thing for manufacturers is farcical green washing. Outside the race track, I do like their efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the moving circus anywhere they can because it’s the right thing to do whether it’s for the image or not.
Steveno
12th January 2025, 9:27
F1 is foremost an engineering competition, so yes, car design rules need to change or, preferably, thrown out of the window so the teams can decide themself whatever they want to run.
Especially with the cost cap in place, there is no need for restrictions anymore.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 12:47
At no time was being the most technologically complex ever set out as a mandatory requirement of F1. Formula 1 meant “the formula for the fastest race cars possible” and once upon a time that inherently required developing the most exotic and innovative tech in racing. But tech has come so far that, without any rules, one could make much faster formula cars for a tenth the cost and why it must be artificially limited to prevent them from being too fast. The only engineering challenge is to create the fastest car within the parameters created by artificial or arbitrary obstacles F1 sets for itself. It’s like a martial league that prides itself on being the most having the most deadly fighters and trainers, but then requires its fighters to only use their right arm 20% of the time, kicks only during even numbered rounds with no more than 1 kick per second and one eye blindfolded.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 12:52
ps: For most fans, the excitement is 95% about the drivers and close racing. Even many who claim to care about the purity of the sport still complain endlessly when the racing is boring. Many care more about prestige factor re: the pinnacle of race car than they actually care let alone understand the tech. If this weren’t the case, fans’d care more about the WCC than the WDC. Instead, the WCC is considered of completely secondary importance.
Diez Cilindros (@diezcilindros)
12th January 2025, 9:31
I think we should go for smaller, shorter and lighter cars, less aero-dependant and with less tyre size. Just much less grip. I believe the lesser the grip, the better the racing (as in wet races).
And I’m not sure 2026 regs are going on that direction. I think modes X and Z are just the opposite: lots of grip in the corners (as I assume teams will set up their cars with maximum downforce) and very small slipstream in the straights. Override mode will cause the straights with less than 800-900 meters will see no overtakes at all, and in very long straights the speed differential may be too dangerous. I’m not for it.
But the point of the topic (teams fighting closely) is different from the regulation: a technical reshuffle always creates the risk of getting one team to dominate, and it’s just pure luck to get a dominant team with no resources (Brawn) that fades quickly and we get the close fight within a few races, or two dominant teams (Mercedes and Ferrari 2017) that fight with each other… or just a total annihilation (2014). It’s impossible to know 1 year in advance which kind of situation we will get. I think it’s just luck.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 13:07
Don’t be silly. You’re proposing requirements that care about +’would produce exciting racing. But you’re forgetting what matters: needlessly complex race cars that require tech automakers can plausibly pretend will help advance street car technology and/or reflect the engineering ability of their consumer brands.
MichaelN
12th January 2025, 9:41
What is the argument for this? The new engine rules are very prescriptive. Among those who are more engine than car enthusiasts, there’s been a constant sense of disappointment about the 2026 engines. Some have even called them spec in all but name. The recent change to ES charging based on track characteristics is another area where they’ve taken away a possible area where manufacturers could differentiate themselves.
Osvaldas31 (@osvaldas31)
12th January 2025, 9:51
Attracting manufacturers is good, but will it be easy to keep them in F1? What will happen, when one day manufacturers will start withdrawing from the sport? Like happened in 2008-2009 (BMW, Toyota, Honda). Manufacturers come and go, teams stay whatever are the owners. I think keeping teams and spectators happy is more important than satisfying manufacturers.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 12:12
We no longer needed them since F1 is no a longer a charity case (I.E., auto makers willing to flush $ the toilet for prestige and dubious marketing returns). It was the manufacturers who contributed to making the sport so unsustainably expensive in the first place. Once upon a time, arguably during F1’s most exciting times, teams were a small group of specialists whose entire focus was F1 or motorsport. A staff numbering 400+ would be considered ludicrous by all the teams. Now, it’d be considered a skeleton staff for the smallest team, but there’s no reason teams should need to be that big. It just became the requirement to keep up. The budget cap was a good start, but F1 should seek to create team size limits with reductions introduced gradually for obvious reasons. A budget cap + ceiling on staff sizes would make F1 more economically sustainable (they can’t expect revenue to always be as high as they are now) as well as proofing it against the need for automakers or giant corporations to keep them afloat.
black (@black)
12th January 2025, 10:38
> The main problem with the previous engine rule change, was that it was a brand new design with the introduction of MGU-H (that baffled most teams to get it right) and the return of the turbo (which Mercedes mastered it with the split design).
> After that, the development of the teams was limited by the stupid token system that basically ensured that whoever got a head start, it would be very hard to catch. We saw after the token system was abolished in 2017, Ferrariimmediately caught up (aiden by the new aero regs for sure).
> Aero-wise it wasn’t anything sophisticated, not to discredit from the also excellent aero that the Mercedes had.
> Budget-wise Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull were spending 200+mil $ while the bottom 5 teams only ~50mil $, so quite the gap.
> This time the engine formula is kinda an evolution, same as before minus the MGU-H (which was the most complicated part). I don’t expect the new entries of Audi and Cadillac to be as lost as Honda was in 2015.
> There is no token system anymore, so even if there is any initial advantage, I expect most teams would catch quickly (not like after 3-4 years like last time).
> Aero-wise is the biggest change, Red Bull showed in 2022 that having the best aero guy on the grid is valuable, and this time around they won’t. Not that all the other people involved in the aero departments are dumb, but it’ll be much more of an equal playing field.
> Budget-wise this time we have a reasonable budget cap of 135mil $, and (more importantly) healthier teams – we don’t hear every week news stories about “X team will fold unless they find cash soon”. Also the budget cap was introduced in 2021 (ahead of the 2022 regs change).. but because there was COVID and the regs were postponed by a year, I wouldn’t be surprised that some teams spent more money ahead of time (like beginning of 2020) before the budget cap was implemented to get a head start – this time around we’re in full budget cap mode.
All in all, of course there is a possibility that a team gets a head start and leads (maybe dominates) the field. But this time around there isn’t a system as compicated and as restrictive as 2014-16 to lock that advantage, and being the best in aero isn’t as concrete advantage as in engine departments (see Red Bull winning 21/22 races in 2023 and the next year with no aero changes, being the 2nd-3rd-4th fastest car in many GPs, losing the WCC and having a real battle for WDC).
So I’m optimistic (even though I wish I could postpone the changes for a year or 2 to enjoy this current competitive field)
Jere (@jerejj)
12th January 2025, 10:48
Neither agree nor disagree because definitive conclusions are impossible in advance.
However, I ultimately steer more towards the ‘For’ section, given the big picture implications.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
12th January 2025, 10:56
Yes and no, mostly no. Engines needed refreshing and lightening, but the aero changes are nonsense.
Interesting who can make a big rule change work. Beware of the team that goes missing in 2025 – they’re throwing the kitchen sink at it!
Alan Dove
12th January 2025, 11:23
In the Against column we have “The risk a manufacturer could gain the kind of advantage Mercedes enjoyed a decade ago is big” when for F1 this is a positive. This is because it translates into stakes, very high stakes.
This winter has been relative barren in terms of intrigue, and is reflected in not many technical articles being written. Late 2025 and early 2026 it will be a completely different story, and I am sure this will be reflected in website stats.
Close racing isn’t in short supply in motorsport, and the pursuit of it is a bit of a red-herring. What F1 has, that no one else has in perception terms, is high-stakes. You lose the high stakes factor of car design and F1 loses the very thing that drives interest.
So reg changes are as much about maintaining this high-stakes factor as anything else. Good close racing can be found anywhere, and more often than not its accompanied by empty grandstands. What brings people in is other things.
ianhaycox (@ianhaycox)
12th January 2025, 11:43
Stop pandering to the environmentalists with expensive, heavy, complicated engines and ‘green’ fuel.
It’s 20 cars running around in circles for a few hours once a fortnight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the environmental cost of logistics, and spectator attendance, far exceed the ‘damage’ of the actual event.
F1’s strive to be road-relevant and help the manufacturers build better cars/engines for the masses is nonsense. That ship sailed years’ ago with EV uptake and regulation.
Let’s get back to bog standard ICE V10 engines. The cars will be smaller, lighter and cheaper and hopefully and put control back in the hands of the driver.
Full disclosure, I’ve been driving a Tesla for 4 years, so care about the environment – but I don’t want to watch Hybrid/EVs/Chip shop oil powered ‘racing cars’ chasing around Spa Francochamps,
Yes (@come-on-kubica)
12th January 2025, 14:02
Not sure if bragging about driving a Tesla is the way to go anymore.
Albeit I agree that the engines should move away from hybrids.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 14:17
It’s not pandering to environmentalists. It’s pandering to automakers so they can market aka pretend F1 tech is seeping into their road cars an/or a representation of their engineering abilities to consumers. However, that said, I agree, especially since there’s zero need for automakers now. Beyond making live races not worth going to and viewing less exciting too, it’s going to get even worse w/the new battery reqs weighing down already overweight cars.
MichaelN
12th January 2025, 15:53
Yes, this is very much true.
The correct interpretation of ‘road relevant’ is ‘manufacturer relevant’. Hybrids were that in the early 2010s.
The new split between MGU and ICE is the best F1 can do. It’s neither feasible nor allowed to race a BVE. Formula E will have the exclusive rights to that for a good couple more years, and even then it’s simply impossible to replicate current F1 performance over the duration of a Grand Prix on batteries (without multiple battery swaps, anyway).
S
12th January 2025, 12:14
Unless F1 wants the same cars forever, change is necessary. Obviously.
It’s worth noting that the recently introduced BoP system is aiding the state of on-track competition a lot – it’s entirely possible that Red Bull would still be very dominant without it.
It’s also important to remember that many of F1’s more competitive seasons have come in the year prior to a new set of regs – it’s the change itself that feeds that increase in competition as the big teams in particular shift their development resources onto the incoming ruleset instead. Having said that, many fans will still look at it the other way, believing the miraculous fallacy that the rules suddenly change at exactly the wrong moment every time – despite having been announced multiple years prior.
If that really was the truth, then the racing should be a lot better than it is. In realty, it tends to get worse as teams continue to refine aero design and find ways to further reduce performance for following cars.
The same question lingers every single time this happens, though – are the new regs ‘better’ than the old ones?
Usually not, because they rarely aim to provide what the viewers want. They instead intend to satisfy those who make the money from F1. Teams, manufacturers and marketers – not racing enthusiasts.
Just on the engines – the increase in electric is a significant concern. F1 fans are typically pretty critical of FE for their energy-saving ethos – but F1 has set itself up to be even more reserved in that aspect.
El Pollo Loco
12th January 2025, 14:23
I’m no purist, but BoP is awful. Penalizing cars through weight and power to even them up with competitors who haven’t totally blown it would be terrible for F1. Might as well as move to identical spec cars (my dream F1 format would = half the races are run in the constructors cars like now and half in spec cars so we are guaranteed amazing racing + get to see how drivers truly stack up when given equal equipment).
S
13th January 2025, 9:25
I guess the idea of BoP is pretty unpleasant, but the reality is that it has become necessary if the series is to not go spec.
It’s fair to say that the GT3 category (founded entirely on BoP) is a roaring success for the FIA, SRO, the manufacturers, teams, drivers and viewers alike – and the only people complaining about the BoP system are those who either aren’t winning or aren’t watching it.
In F1’s case, it isn’t so explicit as physical ballast and air/fuel flow restrictors – nevertheless, altering the amount of development resources each team has based on their championship position performs the same function, just in a different way. A worse way, arguably, as it can’t be reversed when it’s working too effectively.
Yeah, we’d all like to see F1’s biggest names compete on a truly level footing – but that’s never going to happen. Never mind the drivers and their teams never agreeing to do it, their sponsors certainly wouldn’t either.
Perhaps you’ve seen the ‘Race of Champions’ competitions – and, notably, who doesn’t participate in it.
Witan
12th January 2025, 13:32
Every time the grid converges and we start to get good racing the regulations change.
Wer
12th January 2025, 13:39
Yes. They should overhaul the rules every 3 years at best! Beyond that it becomes boring.
The cars have looked the same and all the same since advanced computer design pushed the car design to its limits.
It only gets interesting when a major rule change is introduced.
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th January 2025, 8:07
Yes and No I hear you about the wanting of changing the rules, Personally I would change a BIG change every 10 years and every 3 years finetuning the rules to making them smaller and lighter. Otherwise only the big 3 will be able to have the fastest cars.
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
12th January 2025, 14:32
The current generation of cars has many flaws. They are too big, too heavy, too susceptible to changes in wind or temperature. Their (admittedly low quality) tires can’t cope with them and using hybrid engines means they can’t really push for more than one lap in qualifying or race before they drain the battery.
The competition has become close(r) which is a good thing, but the races themselves aren’t necessarily exciting to watch. So change is welcome, but I fear the new ruling won’t address any of these problems.
Pilotjohns
13th January 2025, 1:40
It is interesting to note when i went to the vegas race, the clank around the track at the end of the race was minimal as compared to the Phoenix F1 race I attended several decades earlier. It is if the tires today are more like street car tires rather then old school race tires. Did not see muck clak sticking the cars either. Its like the new tires turn to dust as they wear and not get hot and soft. Jmho
El Pollo Loco
14th January 2025, 1:35
You’re halfway right. It’s a thermal degradation based tire rather than the rubber wearing out to the point the tires no longer have enough material to stay warm. It’s extremely lame.
Edvaldo
12th January 2025, 14:51
It’s about time. And these regulations were a huge backfire, so, who cares if it lasts one or two seasons less than it should.
Cars are still too big and too heavy and hardly produce good racing.
CryptidBadger (@ninjabadger)
12th January 2025, 15:18
I’m being pessimistic, but I remember people saying the 2014 regs ruined the close racing we had with the previous years. After all, 2012 was such a competitive year with so many different race winners.
Yet 2013 was dominated by Red Bull, as it had been in 2011.
Maybe things are different this time with restrictions on development, and teams working differently in their respective momentums compared to over 10 years ago.
But there are no guarantees either way, same regs or new regs, in terms of close competition what is giveth can be easily taketh away.
As for the topic of new rules, I’m biased in my love of the engineering side of F1. So new rules bringing new challenges for teams to tackle gets my interest.
Increased manufacturer interest is healthy… but I’m always wary of their fragility.
And whether it will be a positive change on the track; the proof will be in the pudding.
Dane
12th January 2025, 16:14
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
12th January 2025, 16:18
The issue I have with the 2026 changes is that I don’t believe they are been done for the right reasons.
The only reason they changed the engine regulations to remove the MGU-H (Which was the most interesting part of the Turbo Hybrids) was to try & get Audi & Porsche to join and I will always believe that engine regulations been written specifically for the big manufacturers is the wrong approach.
And after that the only reason the aero regulation changes were made and are what they are is to counteract the negatives that came about from the engine changes.. again specifically the removal of the MGU-H.
These weren’t changes made to improve the racing or to really spice things up or anything…. They were changes made purely because Liberty/FIA only want big manufacturers in the sport and will do anything to entice them in. And again in my view that will never be the right approach because becoming bending over backwards to appease the manufacturers to the point where you become dependant on them never ends well because they inevitably always pull out & always leave the category in question worse off.
It’s happened with F1, Sportscars, Touring Cars, Rallying, Indycar & more. Manufactures flood in & everyone talks up how amazing it is and then they all leave & the category ends up in a significantly worse situation than beforehand.
For the record i’m not arguing against manufacture involvement as they do bring benefits but I just don’t like how over the past number of years F1 has bent over backwards to satisfy them to the point that independent teams & engine builders seem to be no longer welcome.
You have a big crisis of some sort that makes the manufacturers pull out of F1 & reduce involvement in the sport as a whole and you don’t have the independents ready to fill the void as you once did and that is a problem in my view & one which those who do nothing but chase the manufactures will ignore right up until the point when they can’t by which point it will be too late.
The boom never lasts, Liberty, The FIA & everyone that defends the current direction need to remember that!
sam
12th January 2025, 17:29
Every time the field closes up they change the rules. Not very smart if racing is what you are hoping for…….
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
12th January 2025, 22:15
Make changes at fixed intervals, 5 years maybe, unless there is a safety issue.
An Sionnach
12th January 2025, 22:51
Don’t know. If they have cars and drivers who drive these cars fast to see who wins, then I might like it.
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
13th January 2025, 5:22
So hard to know until they hit the track. 2025 promises to be close but if one team steals a march early on, others might shift their focus to next year and we may well end up with a repeat of 2013. It’s definitely a positive thing that manufacturers are interested in F1 so purely from that standpoint the rules change is worthwhile. I just hope we don’t end up with a repeat of 2014-16 where no one bar Mercedes had a chance. The manufacturers will surely drop off again if that happens.
Todfod (@todfod)
13th January 2025, 7:30
I don’t like or dislike the 2026 car regulations in general, but the timing of it is awful, just as most regulation changes have been.
The 2009 regulation change just put an end to an era where we had 2-3 teams fighting for a WDC (Mclaren, Ferrari, BMW sauber) and the gaps between the teams was not as large as it was in 2009 and following seasons. 2009 was an epic fail of a season if you compare it to 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, primarily due to the regulation change widening the performance gap.
The 2014 season regulation changes lead to Mercedes’ factory team advantage that was unprecedented, and honestly the previous 2012 and 2013 seasons had teams challenging Red Bull. If we continued in to 2014 with the same regulations, there was a high chance of getting an intense WDC battle.
The 2022 regulation change also destroyed the battle we could have had carry over between Mercedes vs Red Bull from 2021. Again, we had a single team dominating while others played catchup.
2024 was a good season and 2025 looks more promising. But then again we have a 2026 regulation change… that will destroy competition for another few seasons.
Rob
13th January 2025, 12:22
F1 cars are in dire need of being smaller and lighter.
Any rule changes to do this will just be positive.
El Pollo Loco
14th January 2025, 1:36
If only the new rules were doing that, I’d be excited.
Matt Dickens (@tsmv)
14th January 2025, 1:25
They have fixed some of the things that led to Mercedes’ 2014 dominance. 2014 would have been better if they weren’t allowed to nerf customer engines…
El Pollo Loco
15th January 2025, 0:12
Did they though? Or, if so, was it by a huge margin? I ask because Williams suddenly became the second fastest team after being awful the year before. However, considering the Mercedes was 3 seconds a lap faster than the field, it is very possible they did dial customer PUs back. They had tons of extra time to produce a customer version. One of the smart moves Red Bull made when they switched, very shortly, to Ferrari engines for 2006 was to do it so late that Ferrari would not have had time to create a de-tuned customer version of the V8 by during the first season.