How Formula 1 proved the naysayers wrong – for once

In this era of the attention economy there’s no shortage of Cassandras in the Formula 1 paddock eager to thrust themselves upon the stage, thence to strut and fret and launch into woe-woe-and-thrice-woe mode – especially if there are clicks to be had from it.

The half-baked nature of the 2026 technical regulations has provided an open goal for amply justified criticism after the fact. It’s simply a process of calling a spade a spade – or, in the inimitable words of the late Alan Jones, a bloody shovel. But the fickle climate of Sao Paulo in November appeared to spawn a subgenre of doomy prognostications before the fact.

To listen to some voices on Friday and Saturday, you would think some kind of armageddon was in prospect as the latest generation of F1 machinery met properly wet conditions in anger for the first time (the prologue in Malaysia, you’ll recall, came to nothing since the cars didn’t actually work in the wet, forcing a pause for a hastily concocted software update, after which faff the track was beginning to dry out anyway). Even those not predicting a crash-fest at Interlagos were writing the race off as a non-event, on the grounds that battery management would militate against drivers starting out-of-position owing to engine penalties from surging through the field as they might have done in previous years.

Thursday, then, was a depressing process of working through this agenda: in the absence of the Drag Reduction System, overtake mode would be hamstrung on the long ‘straight’ as the electrical energy output entered its mandatory ramp-down phase, just as it had in Mexico. Half a megajoule? Only good for a tenth or two a lap, not enough to generate a pace offset. 

After qualifying on Saturday, where Pirelli’s full wet tyre, so long the wallflower even during inclement conditions, made a successful appearance, there were still those who foresaw chaos and calumny on race day if those conditions were to be repeated. Well, publish and be damned I suppose.

Essentially, the doomiest predictions were based on old data. This being a new generation of tyres, narrower than the previous ones, there have been insufficient opportunities to run them in representative wet conditions. Most running in ‘organic’ wet weather has been performed in low ambient temperatures, whereas elsewhere the tracks have had to be artificially wetted. During the April interregnum there was an agreement to raise the temperature of the tyre blankets for the intermediate rubber on the understanding that it was taking too long to come up to the right temperature while running on track.

Separately, there have been concerns that the instantaneous torque output of the electrical element of the new power units would be too savage for even the greatest drivers of the world to contain. Fair enough, but this is also old knowledge. In what may come as a late-breaking development for some, one of the FIA’s key mandates is eternal vigilance on matters of safety, and much effort has been invested behind the scenes in mitigating these risks. The software continues to be imperfect, as evinced by the formation-lap farrago in Malaysia, but such are the consequences of a fundamentally misconceived set of regulations requiring endless sticking-plaster solutions.

F1 drivers put on a show despite pre-race concerns

Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / Getty Images

Feedback from drivers after the race shows there’s still work to do. Finessing the power delivery in wet conditions has done much to head off the doomsday scenarios, and the evidence of qualifying and the race indicates the tyres are resistant enough to aquaplaning. Thermal degradation is what Pirelli must address for next year.

Still, on the evidence so far, the reality of driveability in the wet is very different from the noise. The cars were more benign than expected, and generated less spray than the previous ground-effect generation. Many drivers went off at the corner TV pundits insist on pronouncing to rhyme with “young cow”, but ’twas ever thus in the wet, given the queasy camber and sharp change of direction there.

Wet races have always served as a great leveller, where the great drivers really show their mettle. Far from being a “horrific” encounter as predicted by some, the 2026 Sao Paulo Grand Prix delivered an entertaining spectacle even though the drivers’ championship is now a dead rubber. Who’d have thought it?

An entertaining spectacle as the rain levelled the playing field

Photo by: Hector Vivas / Formula 1 via Getty Images