Why F1's future engine rules offer new opportunities but also new pitfalls

It has always felt a bit odd to talk about the future power unit regulations even before the current ones were introduced, but their mixed reception has only further prompted soul searching on what Formula 1 is, what it should be, and what it could become in the near future.

Given the timelines involved in aligning manufacturers and developing a new set of power unit regulations, that future starts now. Talks over the finer details of the 2031 rules should be speeding up soon, especially if FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem gets his way and finds a consensus to bring the new era forward by one season.

A lot of the formal sit-down discussions on that front still have to take place. But, to borrow a phrase from James Vowles, the direction of travel is clear. Naturally aspirated V8 engines with a much less significant electric motor and sustainable fuel. Louder, lighter, cheaper, simpler. Less saving, more flat-out racing. If you are a driver or just a fan of racing, it sounds almost too good to be true.

The proposal does offer several opportunities on paper. Making the engine sounds more visceral should appeal to a large segment of the fanbase, although louder doesn't necessarily mean better.

Making the engines lighter and doing away with big batteries will help with F1's push to reverse the unwelcome trend of cars getting heavier over the past two decades, which has had an adverse impact on the racing, the driver aspect and safety - even if some of that weight was added to improve impact structures.

Ensuring power units are simpler and cheaper to produce is not only lowering the bar for entry for current and prospective manufacturers. As pointed out recently by both Ben Sulayem and his F1 counterpart Stefano Domenicali, a less complex formula could open the door for the FIA to appoint a third-party engine builder and do away with customer teams altogether, forcing teams to either build their own engine or lease an off-the-shelf one.

The push for simpler engines in the future has opened the prospect of a third-party supplier

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The FIA could also go further and mandate spec gearboxes, which is an idea that has been gaining traction in the paddock. Several teams have, either publicly or privately, wondered why they are investing so much in items that are invisible to the public and aren't major performance differentiators. Alpine has even made a U-turn on its original decision to make its own gearboxes again in 2027, after taking Mercedes transmissions for the first year of the regulations. It has now decided to stick with Mercedes' hardware.

Perhaps the biggest boon of a return to a pre-2014 formula is the purity of the driving and racing, which should please drivers and fans, and should make F1 a lot easier to understand. The current power units are so complex that some of the vagaries and driving quirks are very difficult to explain.

Could a V8 return have unforeseen consequences?

Guaranteeing teams can't collude any more by safeguarding their technical independence sounds like a reasonable idea on paper. It would put an end to a long-running discussion about Mercedes and Ferrari and the alleged influence they have on their customer teams, and it would go some way towards easing concerns over Red Bull's multi-team ownership.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envisage the bigger fish starting to lobby for some form of performance advantage over the third-party power units

But offering a Cosworth-like alternative will have to be executed properly, because it also runs the risk of eroding F1's manufacturer-driven ecosystem. If there is one lesson from the current set of regulations and its poorly implemented catch-up mechanics, then it's that F1 needs to decide if it wants power units to be a performance differentiator, alongside aerodynamics, or not.

Historically, that has generally been the case, but the ADUO system and its granular upgrade tokens for every two percent an OEM's V6 engine falls behind seems to suggest otherwise. What was supposed to be a helping hand to a new, struggling manufacturer has become a political battleground in the margins, bickering over a handful of horses.

It's not a straight Balance of Performance, sure. Manufacturers still have to develop their way out of trouble. But it seems to be built on the risk-averse idea of avoiding the type of failures that would drive one of F1's six current manufacturers away.

F1 is terrified of a 2015 Honda repeat which is why ADUO was created in the first place

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If only tiny performance differences between manufacturers are desirable, then the third-party engine also carries a few inherent risks. Why would blue chip OEMs spend a huge amount of resources developing a power unit when a cheaper, white-label engine is roughly equal on performance and freely available to the likes of McLaren and Williams, who can then focus their attention elsewhere?

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envisage the bigger fish starting to lobby for some form of performance advantage over the third-party power units, whether by design or through their integration with the chassis. If the FIA were to give in to such pressure, it would then risk creating a two-tier system between the manufacturer and non-manufacturer teams.

The other question mark is exactly how tenable this about-face to older tech will be in the long term. If we're talking about V8 engines again, then that's because there has been a course correction in the industry about the rate of EV adoption. OEMs and governments have walked back their aggressive pivot towards electric vehicles in recent years, with the EU suspending the idea of banning combustion vehicles by 2035.

For example, falling short of its projected EV sales, especially in North America, has changed Audi's mind on the 2026 power unit rules that convinced it to sign up in the first place, now seeing promise in a switch to V8s with less advanced electric components. The advent of sustainable fuels is playing a key part in bigger engines being fashionable again.

However, EV sales crossed 20 million in 2025 and are still expected to exponentially increase by 2030. Current thinking isn't a pivot away from EVs, but to adopt a more realistic, slower on-ramp for their mainstream adoption.

So, the other risk F1 runs is that a V8 with token hybridisation may be falling behind the industry again by the time it has made it onto the starting grid in 2030 or 2031. This is not necessarily a criticism, but simply the result of the lag involved in formulating and implementing a new engine formula, which tends to take F1 around four years. But it is worth thinking about.

Will F1 end up going back to the future with V8s?

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Another question fuelling the debate

The third question is what to do with all the (sustainable) fuel the next generation of F1 cars will burn off. A token hybrid system means a move away from the impressive thermal efficiency of the current and previous generation of turbo hybrids, which F1 probably hasn't promoted enough.

Going back to large amounts of fuel to cover a grand prix distance will undo a lot of the weight saving, at least in race trim, unless F1 brings back refuelling, which was abolished in 2010. But alongside the safety hazards and the uncomfortable PR message it sends on how efficient modern F1 cars really are, F1 has taken great measures to streamline the calendar and reduce the amount of freight shipped around the world. Bringing back refuelling rigs would feel like a backwards step.

As the troubled introduction of the 2026 rules has shown, finding a balance between sporting and corporate demands is extremely difficult. F1 needs manufacturers, but also doesn't want to be beholden to them. F1 wants pure, adrenaline-fuelled racing, but also needs to keep its finger on the pulse as the pinnacle of motorsport technology. It wants to reward successful engineering but also can't risk anything other than a relatively level playing field to ensure close competition.

Those dichotomies are part of the complex puzzle that the FIA and F1 management must get right, laced with potential pitfalls.

Can F1 keep its manufacturers without being restricted by their demands?

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