FIA rewrites 2026 F1 power rules after safety fears

The FIA has agreed a package of 2026 Formula 1 rule changes, pending formal ratification, to curb dangerous closing speeds and unintended overtakes after early incidents exposed flaws in how the new cars deploy electrical power.

The clearest warnings came at Suzuka and in the Japanese Grand Prix. In Bearman’s crash, Oliver Bearman arrived on Franco Colapinto’s Alpine far quicker than expected, took evasive action and spun heavily into the wall. According to the FIA’s account, the trigger and major magnifying factor was the difference in electrical boost between the two cars at that moment. In the race, Lando Norris had to lift at 130R to avoid the back of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, then got far more power than expected when he accelerated again. That rapidly drained his battery, allowed him to pass Hamilton, and then left him vulnerable to immediately losing the place again because of the difference in charge levels.

FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said the two problems are closely linked. “The unintended overtaking is also related to the closing speeds,” he said, adding that “we believe that the measures we've taken to address the level of boost and the level of power in certain parts of circuit goes to some extent towards addressing this issue.”

The main change is a remap of electrical deployment around the lap. In the FIA’s “key acceleration zones”, the limit stays at 350kW. Outside those areas, it drops to 250kW. In race trim, the maximum additional power in boost mode is now capped at 15kW. The package also increases the amount of energy that can be recovered through super-clipping and reduces the harvesting limit in qualifying, with the FIA aiming to make qualifying more spectacular while also restoring a more natural speed profile and reducing the need for lift-and-coast.

Part of the problem lay in the control logic behind the power delivery. The existing system used interim measures to stop cars running out of charge on straights, including ramping electrical power down in a prescribed way rather than letting it fall off suddenly. Tracks were also split into areas where electric boost mattered more for lap time, mainly on corner exit, and areas where it mattered less, such as later on straights. Teams used machine-learning algorithms to prepare the car for those power-limited sections, with the trigger set when the driver held at least 98% throttle for one second.

That logic is now being revised after Norris in Japan and Charles Leclerc in China were caught out by lifting the throttle at a point that did not match the system’s expected script. When they accelerated again, the system reset in a way that hurt them. It has now been agreed that the cars will enter power-limited mode whether the driver lifts or not, removing one of the most counterintuitive behaviors from the current package.

Tombazis described the update as “a gradual and data-driven adjustment of the dial.” He said: “We believe, we are quite certain, these changes will be a step in the right direction and a reasonably significant one.” But he also made clear the FIA is still judging whether this first intervention will be enough over the next few races.

That uncertainty is important because the current fixes are still essentially deployment changes rather than a redesign of the power unit itself. Motorsport-Total.com reported that the real effect may only become clear after Miami and Montreal. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said a “substantially” bigger improvement would likely need hardware changes, such as increased battery capacity or a higher gasoline flow rate for the combustion engine. He said teams, if left completely free, would naturally optimize for lap time rather than for what he called more natural driving or for avoiding excessive speed differences in racing.

McLaren performance technical director Mark Temple also warned that some unusual driving traits will remain on energy-limited circuits even after the latest revisions. He said the most serious weak points may already have been addressed, but added that there may still be things “we didn’t foresee and that we need to look at again.”

That leaves the FIA with a clear next test. Miami will show whether software-style changes to deployment and control modes can stop the 2026 cars arriving on each other too quickly and producing strange pass-and-repass sequences, or whether Formula 1 will have to move from calibration fixes to hardware changes in the power units themselves.