How Formula 1 driving has changed – and stayed the same

You’ve surely heard a disparaging view about Formula 1 drivers from those in your life who are less than motorsport-literate. “They’re not athletes, all they do is sit in a car,” they might suggest, scorn resumed between the occasional swing of a nine-iron and the slow trudge across the fairway.  

That reductive view, plus the other withering putdowns that you’ve no doubt heard before, fails to take account of the fact that F1 drivers are still knackered by the end of a two-hour slugfest. Grand prix racing isn’t a mere Sunday drive; it is the endeavour of 120 minutes’ worth of unbroken focus and physical strength as g-forces slap a driver around the face multiple times per lap.  

Of course, the view of the driver’s role in 2026 has changed somewhat, particularly when it comes to working with the current hybrid powertrains used in F1. Even the drivers have remarked that qualifying, once the test of a driver’s bravery and commitment, has been diluted thanks to the lap-by-lap song-and-dance with battery charge and deployment.  

Indeed, watching drivers cruise into corners to recuperate energy has taken some of the sheen away from the spectacle of qualifying. The races have taken something of a different dynamic too; with the spread in energy levels at a given location on track, drivers with a fully stocked battery can very easily capitalise on those ahead who were either more wasteful or simply chose to deploy their energy elsewhere.

Within some quarters of F1’s fanbase, this is an area that rankles. The perception is that, with an algorithm (largely) deciding when to deploy and when to harvest, the cars are incredibly easy to contend with: Fernando Alonso suggested that Aston Martin’s team chef would be able to race in F1 with contemporary machinery. You’d doubt that a driver with a half-decent car would make the same assertion… 

It’s still incredibly difficult to drive an F1 car, and the 2026 regulations don’t change that. Instead, it’s the attributes required that change it; perhaps raw, natural ability is rewarded a little less, but it gives a bit more of an advantage to those with the in-car mental acuity to plan their moves and their actions accordingly.

And it’s not like the skills required to be successful in F1 have remained static over its 76-year history. Even so, the core attributes associated with championship winners continue to be must-have traits. A contemporary driver simply leans on them in a different way. 

Adaptability is a core trait of the finest Formula 1 drivers, reckons Stella

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How to drive in 2026

The fundamentals of driving remain the same; a car still has four wheels, an engine, a steering wheel and pedals. Parts of the driving experience still rely on instinct, but there’s a greater percentage of conscious, coached driving behaviour to get the best out of the new cars. 

It requires more thought and more mental bandwidth to drive the 2026 cars. To a degree, it was likely similar when KERS was introduced back in 2009, and drivers had a resource to spend: where do you spend that 80bhp boost, and how do you get the driver in front to use theirs at a convenient location?  

This was less of a consideration under the previous hybrid regulations because the MGU-K deployment was largely automated through the lap, although drivers could make use of the ‘overtake’ button as their power-on-demand outlet. 

The KERS gamification has returned in a more conspicuous role in 2026, although the 4MJ battery capacity means that the recharge element is also more apparent. Hence the rise of super clipping and lift-coast tactics, with the battery unable to store enough energy to last a lap. 

The KERS gamification has returned in a more conspicuous role in 2026, although the 4MJ battery capacity means that the recharge element is also more apparent

Take Suzuka, for instance. The drivers and the engineers look at the simulations in advance and determine the best places to harvest and deploy their energy, then determine how to get through the lap and hit the right notes.  

Over a qualifying lap, the drivers wanted to deploy in four locations: the start/finish straight, the exit of the Dunlop Curve and into the Degners, between the hairpin and Spoon, and on the run to 130R. This meant modulating the throttle a little bit more in the Esses to ensure the battery wasn’t being discharged, then only reapplying it to 100% once out of Turn 7. 

Interestingly, this meant that drivers were pushing the entry to the first Degner a little bit more than in 2025. It was normal to push the throttle and lift off again between the Degners last year but, instead, the best course of action was to lift between the corners and let the car engine-brake from the motor running against the crankshaft for the second Degner.  

There was a similar approach for Spoon, albeit with a small squirt of throttle just to help the car turn, and for the Triangle chicane at the end of the lap. The macro-inputs were not fundamentally different, but the micro-inputs, and variance in throttle position between corners, have required the drivers to exercise moderation. Perhaps that detracts from the challenge of Suzuka, or of hooking up a lap in Q3. 

Hamilton loves 2026’s “back and forth” racing, and hasn’t had this much fun in F1 in more than a decade

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“In Q3, that’s where you want to get out on the track and try things you’ve never tried before, taking risks that you’ve never taken before,” Charles Leclerc said after qualifying at the Japanese Grand Prix. “And that’s been rewarding for most of us in all our career. And now this is not possible anymore.  

“Every time you go a little bit over the limit, any time you have a bit of a snap, this is costing energy on the power unit side and then you pay the price more. I feel like at the moment consistency is paying off more than being brave and going to take something that you’ve never tried before, which is a shame. And which makes qualifying a little bit less challenging.” 

Lando Norris concurs: “It’s the special 1-2% that makes it exciting, that might surprise you, in terms of this guy is suddenly on pole because he’s taken those couple little risks. And you’ve kind of taken that element away.” 

By reducing the recharge limit, the FIA has tried to limit the amount of lift-and-coast over the course of a lap – yet, the contra-point to this is that drivers have even less energy to play with. But the non-straight areas of the circuit now come with a 250kW limit, which should reduce the overall energy demand over a lap. Hopefully that will contribute to making qualifying a little more special again.

Driving style and driver input have been less affected in race trim. There’s still the ‘yo-yo’ factor imbued by the difference in energy levels but, arguably, the races have been a better workout for the drivers’ skills in close-quarters combat. This is a skill that is sharpened in karting and the lower formulas, and then (if you’re being uncharitable) dulls slightly in F1.

The modern reliance on DRS tended to encourage drivers to wait for the zones before attempting a pass. The best drivers could, of course, fight back. But this felt rare, unless there were back-to-back DRS zones. 

“Formula 1 has not been the best form of racing in a long, long time,” was Lewis Hamilton’s assessment. “Out of all the cars that I’ve driven in 20 years, this is the only car that you can actually follow through high speed and not completely lose everything that you have. You can stay behind.  

“We had the DRS before, which I think was a bit of a band-aid for that issue that you can’t get close enough through the corners. Now we have the power difference, but it’s so small, the power difference.

Clark’s mechanical sympathy was key to coaxing his Lotus to 1965 British Grand Prix glory

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“But when you get ahead and the cars behind you, they can keep up with you. I personally find it much more fun because that’s [his fight with Leclerc in China] the most overtaking and best battle I’ve had probably since Bahrain years and years ago with Nico [Rosberg in 2014]. 

“But that’s how racing should be. It should be back and forth, back and forth. It shouldn’t be like one move is done and that’s it.” 

What do all great drivers have in common?

One man best placed to answer that question is McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, who has worked with F1’s greatest during his spells at Ferrari and McLaren. Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen all overlapped with Stella during their Prancing Horse tenures; naturally, the Italian has great insight in comparing what was needed at the turn of the millennium, and how this compares to a driver’s skillset today. 

“I think one fundamental characteristic of all the best F1 drivers is that they’ve always been quite adaptable,” Stella explains. “They need to understand what are the lead variables here, what are the parameters that they need to optimise, and then they are better than others in achieving this optimum understanding together with their engineers, not only leaning on their own ability and their own adaptation, but working also with the engineers to find a way, find solutions, so that they can extract more performance out of what is available. 

“I think the current regulations don’t fundamentally change the scenario. I think the best drivers are still the ones that are trying to understand, process, analyse what the best solutions are and possess enough talent and enough teamwork attitude and ability to understand this is what it means when I’m driving. I’m going to use the steering wheel, the brake, the throttle. 

“I think the best drivers will always have the opportunity to prevail and the changes to the regulations, if anything, will help, as intended, this kind of aim” Andrea Stella

“It’s about going as fast as possible in the corners and hopefully it is even more with these tweaks [for the Miami GP] to the regulations about braking as late as possible. There are some aspects that may be peculiar to the current regulations which had to do with the amount of throttle going on power, impact throttle, but actually some of them will be removed with some of the additional tweaks that possibly might have been less advertised, but they are part of this package.  

“I think the answer is that the best drivers will always have the opportunity to prevail and the changes to the regulations, if anything, will help, as intended, this kind of aim.” 

When Stella speaks about adaptability, Schumacher, for example, was excellent in this arena. The parameters were different in his day: there were driver aids, fuel stops, grooved tyres, but the absolute fundamentals in the late 1990s and early 2000s were the same: wheels, engine, steering wheel, pedals.  

The smartest drivers are unrelenting in trying to find an edge

Photo by: Ercole Colombo / Studio Colombo / Getty Images

The 1998 Hungarian GP springs to mind. Schumacher started third behind the two McLarens and, knowing that its best chance to beat Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard was on strategy, Ferrari concocted a three-stop plan. This put Schumacher in the position of needing to tail the McLarens through the opening stint, nail the out-laps, and high-tail it into the distance in the event he got the lead.  

After the second stop, Schumacher managed to undercut both McLarens with a rapid turn of pace and then continued to light it up on lighter tanks. He needed to build a 20-second lead over Coulthard (Hakkinen had since dropped back with suspension issues) to make the three-stopper work; Schumacher was over 25s clear before calling in. That’s cutting your cloth accordingly. 

All greats of the past have demonstrated that adaptability. Rather than griping that his Climax engine was losing oil pressure with 15 laps to go, Jim Clark won the 1965 British GP by switching off the engine in the corners to reduce the wear on his 1.5-litre V8.

Jackie Stewart won the 1973 title at Monza after finishing fourth, having fallen well down the order early on with a change to a deflating tyre. Ayrton Senna dazzled in torrential weather in 1984’s Monaco GP, then took his first win in similarly torrid conditions at Estoril during the following season. 

Having a bit less electrical power sounds incredibly quaint when measured against the chronic unreliability of F1’s earlier decades. It might be trite, but there’s some truth in the phrase ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. 

Are driving skills lost in time?

Many of the grievances surrounding the 2026 regulations seem to be predicated on the dilution of certain skills behind the wheel. While there are genuine arguments to be made here, and the FIA is attempting to address these with its tweaks to energy usage in qualifying to reinstate a more ‘natural’ driving experience, it’s not like F1 drivers haven’t ever ‘lost’ skills once employed in the past. 

Put a modern-day F1 driver in an old car, and they’ll quickly have to acquaint themselves with a manual gearbox and the heel-and-toe approach to using the brake and accelerator pedals. At the same time, when paddleshift semi-automatic gearboxes were becoming more common, drivers had to acquaint themselves with left-foot braking.  

Rubens Barrichello, for example, found the transition incredibly uncomfortable – even in his Ferrari days, he was still using his right foot to brake and, when pitted against Schumacher, this became an inherent disadvantage. Schumacher, who liked to use both pedals simultaneously, used the brakes for balance while blipping the throttle; Barrichello only used one foot to do both jobs. 

Schumacher’s Hungary 1998 switch to a three-stopper was a strategic masterstroke executed brilliantly

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Many would assume that today’s ‘prima-donna’ drivers couldn’t hack it on a wet track with a turbo engine and a manual gearbox, but that does our current crop of racers a huge disservice. The best would adapt to it and spend an inordinate amount of time poring through the little data available from the Gordon Gekko-era telemetry. Or, in modern racing driver vernacular, “maximise the potential”.  

Some skills are lost, yes, but new skills always come in to replace them. Plotting a journey with an Ordnance Survey map and a compass might be bordering on the obsolete given that Waze exists, but just try to teach a technophobic relative how to install an app in the first place… 

While Clark-esque approaches to mechanical sympathy may appear to be a dying art to some degree, let’s not forget George Russell’s drive in Bahrain last year, when he shrugged off a cocktail of electrical issues – no GPS, no braking, and little functionality on his steering wheel – to fend off Norris for second. Norris himself had kept Russell at bay two races prior in China, with his brakes fast fading towards the end of the race.

If anything, it’s refreshing that drivers can’t just cane their cars around a circuit for 50-odd laps, knowing that it’ll stick and perform largely the same on each tour

Sure, teams might prefer to retire a car today rather than potentially cost themselves an engine, but F1 drivers have never lost their ability to manage their way through potential banana skins. 

What we’ll end up with in 2026 is this: drivers will hone new skills and find ways to manage their energy effectively, while still being able to pedal extremely quickly and hook up their qualifying laps at full pelt. If you think F1 should be a genuine challenge and test the best against each other, the ‘modern way’ of driving still very much presents that – it simply takes a different form.

If anything, it’s refreshing that drivers can’t just cane their cars around a circuit for 50-odd laps, knowing that it’ll stick and perform largely the same on each tour, something that was probably only really true for a short time in the 2000s. And, as Stella says, the best will be those who adapt, fix problems and be self-aware. While F1’s 2026 rules will benefit from a few tweaks, the best will still prevail – no matter the scenario at hand.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the June 2026 issue and subscribe today. 

Alonso tames the 1951 British GP-winning Ferrari 375 at Silverstone in 2011

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