How to make F1's 2026 rules simpler - and why Horner was half-right

When the FIA unveiled the list of tweaks planned for the Miami Grand Prix in its endeavours to tackle some of the main points of criticism about Formula 1's 2026 regulations, there were many who felt that it was simply too complex. Arcane procedures on top of arcane procedures, it seemed, as the press release weaved its way through different power caps and energy levels.

Formula 1 has been very open about the parameters of the regulations, arguably too open to the point where a great handful of casual viewers might find it all a little bit overwhelming. Without wanting to be condescending, there's people who don't really know what a kilo-watt is, so to see 350 of them might require a bit of a deductive leap.

Now, it's inescapable that some of the more egregious policies over deployment read a little bit like a Monty Python sketch, especially in the Meaning of Life when John Cleese's schoolteacher informs his students playing in the afternoon's rugby match to move their clothes to the lower peg, before writing their letter home, if they're not getting their hair cut, unless they have a younger brother going out over the weekend as a guest of another boy, then you can deploy your battery energy at 350kW with straight mode on, unless you're passing through a particular zone and harvesting, which is where your 250kW maximum comes in apart from under super clipping...

...sorry, I'm getting my wires crossed, but I think you get the gist. 

Here's the thing: there are folks like me who find this both fascinating - both in trying to understand how a race played out and from morbid curiosity in untangling the matted web of stipulations and conditions. Yet, there are also plenty who couldn't give a solitary fig about any of this stuff: they just want to see cars going quickly around a track.

The thing is, when you strip it all down to the constituent elements, it's a bit more digestible. Think of the motor as an electrical engine, and the ICE as the mechanical engine. Battery energy is just fuel that you can get back. Kilo-watts are just horsepower but in metric. It's all the same thing in theory, with one system supporting the other. And that's how it was in the previous hybrid rule-set; you didn't hear a thing about the MGU-K parameters because it was silently doing its job in the background to augment the rest of the powertrain.

Now, we've got a battery not quite big enough to contend with the deployment of the full 350kW without discharging it two times per lap, requiring heavy recovery tactics that have made a fair chunk of viewers quite cross. Yet, there's all sorts of systems that continue to unbalance the supply-and-demand aspect, which also complicate things further: there's the power-on-demand "boost" mode and the power-for-longer "overtake" mode, which are often confused with each other because the previous regs' 'overtake' button was the power-on-demand outlet. 

Boost, overtake, charge, repeat: F1's 2026 rules might have been over-ambitious

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

And now we're in the situation where recharge rates will fall, which cuts out the problem of excessive lift-and-coast moments but also further reduces the capacity to charge up. The problem is, if you put a bigger battery in the car and gave it some pre-charge to minimise the more egregious harvesting tactics, the cars get heavier and we end up with the issue of cumbersome cars once more. And there aren't any scalable emerging battery technologies that can be used in an electric vehicle setting, at least not now; widespread use of solid-state batteries (where the liquid electrolyte used in current lithium-ion tech is replaced with a solid) is still a few years off. Contemporary supercapacitors don't store enough energy, and neither do lithium-alternative batteries. 

And when demand outstrips supply, we have to deal with the consequences of that - which is where this added complexity sets in. And, as I wrote in yesterday's piece about the Miami changes, this will remain the case as long as F1 remains glued to its utopian ideal of a 50-50 split in mechanical-electrical power delivery. 

How do we make it simpler? It's easy, and apologies if I've said this too much: cut the power universally from the MGU-K by at least 100kW. I guarantee the discussion over super clipping, energy allowance, power modes, and the other irritating functions of the current regs will ultimately disappear. Recharging to the correct rate should happen naturally over a lap, and you won't have the situation of two drivers operating at two distinct power modes at unexpected places.

Knowing what we know now, keeping qualifying at the 350kW level now seems optimistic. Maybe the change in charging parameters will clear this up, but you could still sanction a 50kW drop to smooth this out even further - and without losing too much output

Since this is an opinion column, I feel like I can go a little bit more all-out in my declarations that this was all very predictable; for an explainer or a news piece, only the facts matter. And, I don't want to be smug and it gives me no joy to do so, but I wrote this last year to demonstrate how predictable this was:

"When you're relying on a near 50-50 split between the internal combustion engine and the electric drive motor to provide the power (its actually 55-45, but you get the gist), this means that the regen over a lap has to be tooled to ensure the 350kW motor output can be attained throughout the lap.

"And that's difficult, because teams want to have their cake and eat it; there's no way that braking normally for the corners is going to offer that level of regen, even with an aggressive MGU-K braking strategy allied to the carbon brakes on board the car. There'd have to be some degree of more-efficient regenerative braking off-throttle to feed the battery before the driver hits the actual brake pedal."

We got that in the form of super clipping. One hopes that the uprating to 350kW will help some of main issues seen in qualifying, but I don't know if I'm entirely hopeful of this. Here's another chunky bit from that column.

Were some of F1's issues in 2026 predictable? Yes.

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

"There is already a ramp-down rate in place, but one of the suggestions tabled at the F1 Commission meeting is to start the decrease in power earlier than the current 290kph (180.2mph) sooner to reduce the rate of battery discharge. This might reduce the rate of lifting and coasting into corners, and would likely alleviate some of the issue of cars running out of electrical power on the Monza and Baku straights. But this does not address the concern that the scope of regenerative braking will be limited in the faster circuits where there's fewer hard stops - like Suzuka, Spa, or Silverstone.

"As an aside, this ramp-down rate also allows for the drivers to use the "overboost" function to sidestep that for a short time, effectively as an ersatz-DRS. But will the drivers with overboost even have enough power to play with to use it?"

"Alternatively, the view of Red Bull's Christian Horner is slightly different. He's suggested that the full 350kW output of the electric motor remains in place for qualifying, but this is turned down to 200kW for the race. This equates to a 200bhp drop for a race, putting the cars at about 800bhp rather than the full circa-1000bhp available in qualifying - it's still a high output, but not as high as that initially promised.

"He argues that the results are two-fold: firstly, that this will cut down on the lifting and coasting that has been prevalent in simulations. Clarifying this later, Horner effectively suggested that reducing the race power from the MGU-K to 200kW opens the door to a bonafide push-to-pass system.

"Depending on how it's defined, this could be a good tool for the racing spectacle; while DRS is divisive and has been criticised for making passes too easy (or, conversely, not being effective enough at some venues), a push-to-pass system offers a little bit more latitude, especially if a defending car can use it. It'd be a little bit more like the 2009-13 KERS button, but a bit more potent with a 200bhp boost."

When this was published, I had a person in the F1 paddock admonish this point of view for being little more than a cover for Horner's vested interests. What neither of us knew at the time was that Red Bull had a very good power unit in development, and Horner likely did - which reframes the argument considerably.  I'm sure there was still a soupçon of political spin - 'twas ever thus in F1 - but the point remains valid.

Knowing what we know now, keeping qualifying at the 350kW level now seems optimistic. Maybe the change in charging parameters will clear this up, but you could still sanction a 50kW drop to smooth this out even further - and without losing too much output. But I stand by the lower race power plan, and in using it for a limited-use push-to-pass button akin to that used in IndyCar. That way, you have a variable that the drivers can plan around that isn't quite as one-note as DRS was, without stretching into the realm of "artificial" passes that receive an immediate response. 

It might be fair to say that Horner was half-right. If only we'd seen this coming...

Would we even need active aero if the electrical power levels were lower?

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images