What a neuroscientist – and motorsport fan – thinks about Formula 1’s new era

There are moments in Formula 1 that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. A driver hunts down their rival, closes the gap into a corner, and then, just when every rational instinct screams, “Brake!”, he doesn’t. Not yet. He holds it a fraction longer than seems physically possible, threads the car through, and emerges ahead. Brave, brilliant, and borderline insane.

In 2026 the hunt looks different. Drivers are queuing up behind their rivals. Calculating. Waiting. Watching their battery. Timing their energy deployment to the millisecond. Esteban Ocon said after Melbourne that his head was “exploding” from everything he had to learn.

Welcome to the new F1, where the most important organ on the grid may not be where the age-old expression suggests it is.

The amygdala era

The art of late braking is fundamentally an amygdala sport. The amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain, is our fear processor. It detects threat, triggers the stress response, and screams at you to avoid risk. 

Every time a driver pushes their braking point deeper into a corner, they’re in active combat with their amygdala. Drivers who win that battle aren’t fearless. They regulate their fear response in real time, to override the amygdala’s alarm bells. Feel the signal and not be ruled by it. 

That kind of emotion regulation, performed at F1 speeds, is extremely rare. It’s also, frankly, thrilling to watch. There’s something very exciting about seeing a person confront the limits of their own nervous system and push through.

Prefrontal dominance

This new era requires something different. Battery deployment, energy recovery, strategic timing, all of that is prefrontal cortex work. Rational, forward-planning, data-driven. The question shifts from “Do I have the balls?” to “Do I have the battery?” This demands a different cognitive profile. Drivers need to hold more variables in mind simultaneously, model scenarios further ahead, and make decisions based on systems thinking rather than instinct. 

Ocon said his head was “exploding” from everything he had to learn at Melbourne

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

Spare capacity becomes more relevant than ever. The drivers and teams who adapt fastest in 2026 are those who absorb this complexity without maxing out their mental bandwidth. Mental flexibility matters just as much. The ability to update your model of how things work, let go of habits formed over years of a different regulatory framework, to stay curious rather than frustrated when the old playbook stops working.

These are all learnable skills, but they take time to develop under pressure. Right now, everyone is still experimenting. 

A different kind of demanding

I’ve always been drawn to the amygdala era. There’s something compelling about raw courage as a performance skill. But the 2026 regulations are brand-new, so I want to give it a chance to see whether what we’re gaining is better or worse than what we’re leaving behind. 

Holding more complexity in your head while still executing at the limit, staying flexible when everything around you is unfamiliar, managing a race over a much longer cognitive horizon, none of it is easy. It’s just less cinematic than a late-braking move that makes you wonder whether the laws of physics apply to these drivers. 

Lewis Hamilton said this was some of the best racing he’s ever experienced. Max Verstappen hates everything about it. Clearly, experiences may vary.

Whether this new kind of racing will prove more or less exciting than what came before is an open question. The racing is still finding its shape. What we can say is that the demands have changed. The cognitive profile it rewards has changed. And the skills that will define the 2026 champion may look different from those that defined champions past.

Emotionally, what do I want to watch on a Sunday afternoon? I want the amygdala. I want the driver who looks at the gap that isn’t quite there yet, and goes for it anyway. I want the overconfidence that leads to brilliance

But we have to be fair. The prefrontal cortex deserves its moment. Strategic intelligence is underrated in how we talk about sport. The ability to stay calm, process enormous amounts of real-time information, and make optimal decisions under pressure is not nothing. It is what separates good drivers from great ones. And the area keeping the amygdala in check is, in fact, that same prefrontal cortex.

But if you ask me, emotionally, what I want to watch on a Sunday afternoon? I want the amygdala. I want the driver who looks at the gap that isn’t quite there yet, and goes for it anyway. I want the overconfidence that leads to brilliance. I want the moment where the person in the cockpit beats the fear response and does something that makes no rational sense. 

F1 has always sold the dream of human beings at the absolute limit. So far this season, I’m still waiting for the moment that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Give me big balls over batteries, any Sunday.

Driving Performance: 10 Lessons About Building High-Performing Teams from Neuroscience and Formula 1 by Dr Marcia Goddard is available to pre-order. 

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

Ayrton Senna versus Jean Alesi at Phoenix in 1990 – moments to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up

Photo by: LAT Images