2026 Season Preview

Feek said:
How many races before one of those side bargeboards gets snapped off by an impact?
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I assuming it'll happen at the first race, but F1 cars have been knocking aero bits off each other in collisions since they first introduced aero bits.
 
Mr Jack said:
I assuming it'll happen at the first race, but F1 cars have been knocking aero bits off each other in collisions since they first introduced aero bits.
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Only took a raised kerb to severely comprimise the downforce with the ground effect cars. Maybe a damaged or missing sidepod won't have so much of the same effect.
 
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Will be interesting to see the reliability of these new gen cars. I think when i reflect on modern vs even early modern (1998-2006) the cars were far less reliable now. An amazing feat of engineering but it takes a lot of the drama out of things.
 
Sounds like everyone getting their knickers in a twist about Mercedes and possibly RB running a higher compression ratio. Wouldn’t be a new season without some controversy around loopholes.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Sounds like everyone getting their knickers in a twist about Mercedes and possibly RB running a higher compression ratio. Wouldn’t be a new season without some controversy around loopholes.
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If there’s a catering loophole then RB will definitely be all over it ;)

I watched the video and I find it all a little depressing. It all sounds so gimmicky. Why do they need “straight line mode” if all cars get it at the same point on track, every time? :confused: The rest of it just seems like it’s turning into a video game. 50 million buttons for the drivers to press (and remember), all of which sounds like they’ll give us more motorway driveby overtakes — not actual wheel to wheel racing.

My prediction is the races will be exciting, but only because they’re essentially going to be a lottery and not much left for driver skill (besides using the right buttons at the right time to execute passes).

So they’ll succeed in making it a good spectacle, but we won’t be able to tell who are the actual talents behind the wheel anymore, in a “traditional” racing sense.
 
Scam said:
If there’s a catering loophole then RB will definitely be all over it ;)

I watched the video and I find it all a little depressing. It all sounds so gimmicky. Why do they need “straight line mode” if all cars get it at the same point on track, every time? :confused: The rest of it just seems like it’s turning into a video game. 50 million buttons for the drivers to press (and remember), all of which sounds like they’ll give us more motorway driveby overtakes — not actual wheel to wheel racing.

My prediction is the races will be exciting, but only because they’re essentially going to be a lottery and not much left for driver skill (besides using the right buttons at the right time to execute passes).

So they’ll succeed in making it a good spectacle, but we won’t be able to tell who are the actual talents behind the wheel anymore, in a “traditional” racing sense.
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I hope you’re wrong however I was getting the same feeling when I read a similar article.
 
A lot of stuff next year is going to be 'hidden' from the viewer. The BBC article mentions a Boost mode giving maximum power, than an overtake mode giving more power. Where's that 'more power' coming from? Who's to say the FIA don't turn on that 'more power' for a car by mistake? At least with DRS we could actually see it.

There's been no talk of how the movable wings will work. Will teams be able to use a simulator to set them to adjust for maximum lap time, or does the driver need to manually adjust them for their favoured handling characteristics.

In terms of the performance of the cars, and Aston Martin, I doubt Newey has been there long enough to do anything other than start getting the correct tools and people together.
 
Scam said:
Why do they need “straight line mode” if all cars get it at the same point on track, every time? :confused:
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Yep, I had the same thought. The entire point of DRS is to create a performance difference that can aid overtaking. It seems like these new movable wings that can be used any any point in the lap will just make the fast cars faster, as they can run lower wing for longer through corners, meaning less competitive racing. Likewise, it seems that the teams will easily have the computational power to figure out when/where/how much to open the wings so it's not like it's going to be guess work that generates uncertainty. Likewise this whole 'No more DRS' is nonsense. The wings still move, and the cars now have the 'Overtake' button for more power if you're 1s behind the car in front. It's still DRS in all but name.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm really not hopeful.
 
GravyMonster said:
It's still DRS in all but name.
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To be honest it sounds hella worse than DRS.

I can’t see how the powers that be can’t realise a simple anti-Verstappen rule change (call it the Alonso rule) where “all the time you have to leave the space”, plus getting rid of all DRS, button pushes/powers ups/banana skins etc. and just simply make sure the card can follow really well (ie stop dirty air out the back). Well then we’d have good wheel to wheel racing in my opinion. It’d be about driver skill, car placement, traction, tyre differential, natural slipstream etc.
 
GravyMonster said:
It seems like these new movable wings that can be used any any point in the lap will just make the fast cars faster, as they can run lower wing for longer through corners
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The active aero can only be used in designated zones of the track.

It's essentially only there to reduce high speed drag, so the cars can compensate for the loss of aerodynamically efficient ground effect downforce with more inefficient wing based downforce without significantly slowing the cars down overall (edit - or obliterating the energy stores by having to use half a battery just to get down the back straight).

In turn, this is why 'DRS' has had to move to an extra power based overtake system, because they've had to rely on movable wings simply to keep the cars quick enough generally.
 
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Kenai said:
If this was actually simple to achieve, they'd not be bothering with the gimmicks
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But we all know that the cars have aero designs that deliberately upset the air behind them so as to make it difficult for cars behind them to get close enough to overtake. That will be one of the goals of the aerodynamicists with these new car designs.
Last year the Mercedes had a front wing to do just that, amongst other things https://www.racefans.net/2024/02/21...esign-may-be-against-spirit-of-rules-symonds/
 
cuke2u said:
But we all know that the cars have aero designs that deliberately upset the air behind them so as to make it difficult for cars behind them to get close enough to overtake. That will be one of the goals of the aerodynamicists with these new car designs.
Last year the Mercedes had a front wing to do just that, amongst other things https://www.racefans.net/2024/02/21...esign-may-be-against-spirit-of-rules-symonds/
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Exactly, if it was easy to write rules that prevent cars being designed like this, they'd do that but it isn't that simple when you've got some of the smartest aerodynamicists in the world trying to find every way possible to make their car harder to follow.

It's all very well saying "simply make the cars easy to follow" but there's nothing even remotely simple about it these days.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Sounds like everyone getting their knickers in a twist about Mercedes and possibly RB running a higher compression ratio. Wouldn’t be a new season without some controversy around loopholes.
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There's a good video on how exactly they're doing it:


Basically, certain parts of the cylinder head are made from materials which expand at higher temperatures increasing the compression ratio of the engine. It's an estimated 0.5mm of expansion over the base of the cylinder, although that doesn't take in to account the area of the spark plug or valves. And it all stems from the rules now specifying that the engine compression ratio will be tested at ambient temps, leaving this loophole. It all sounds like good engineering to me.
 
GravyMonster said:
There's a good video on how exactly they're doing it:


Basically, certain parts of the cylinder head are made from materials which expand at higher temperatures increasing the compression ratio of the engine. It's an estimated 0.5mm of expansion over the base of the cylinder, although that doesn't take in to account the area of the spark plug or valves. And it all stems from the rules now specifying that the engine compression ratio will be tested at ambient temps, leaving this loophole. It all sounds like good engineering to me.
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This is f1.

Stuff like this is amazing and the exploitation should be allowed for a lt least a while.

Its ultimate creativity.

Same as mass dampener.

I have no issue with allowing it, and banning after a year. But I do think things like this should be rewarded.
 
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