How F1 plans to avoid “humiliation” in the 2026 rules

when Formula 1 adopted the turbocharged hybrid power units for the 2014 season, a manufacturer -Mercedes- had been dedicating resources to his project for a longer time and with more intensity than anyone. The result was almost five seasons of absolute domain, while their rivals struggled to reach them and, in the case of Renault, it could be said that they never succeeded.

The idea that the next change to new power units with more electric deployment could be a case of 2014 again is what keeps several team directors awake at night.

This background anguish has been buzzing in F1 for months and the tests of its effects are everywhere: the brief mania of recovering the V10 at the beginning of the season and Alpine’s historically significant decision to abandon its own power units (Renault) in favor of those of Mercedes are only two examples. More recently, in another restructuring of the Audi address, the head of engines Adam Baker has been fired.

The Audi F1 engines program has been created as an independent company, although as a subsidiary of Audi Sport. Baker, who spent more than a decade involved in the motor trains of competition in BMW, and before that he was in Cosworth, had been in charge of the development of F1 engines in the “Motorsport Competition Center” of Audi Sport (reads more elegantly in the original German as a typical thenutonic collision of nouns) in Neuburg an der Donau since the European summer of 2022.

This last episode of “musical chairs” in management occurs after the news circulated that the Audi engines program is in trouble, and that the company’s CEO, Gernot Dollner, went in person to what was described as a “decisive meeting” between the interested parties of the F1 before the Bahrain Grand Prix.

It is known that Dollner was one of the voices that he advocated strongly because more recovery provisions were included in the 2026 regulations. Most others agreed – Mercedes, which is believed to be in the strongest position at this time, not so much – and this was one of the published results.

The challenge will consist of introducing this mechanism in the current financial restrictions of the F1.

“There have been imbalances in the past,” said FIA’s monoplays director Nikolas Tombazis, Motorsport.com“and normally those things exceed an extra expense by the people who need to recover, as well as with a lot of hard work, sweat and tears.”

“That is more difficult with the cost limit. There are already provisions in the regulations for those who do not meet the requirements, which were introduced in 2022, when it was first approved. Now we are discussing with the manufacturers of power units which should be the exact provisions in this regard.

“To make it clear, we are discussing the provisions that would allow a low performance competitor to carry out more development work. Categorically, we are not talking about any artificial mechanism that increases the performance of a low performance engine.”

“This is necessary within the framework of the cost limit, because (otherwise) we could find ourselves facing a situation in which a low performance engine could never catch up on the framework of the cost limit.”

“There are a lot of technical knowledge in F1. We are asking people (that is, the new manufacturers of power units) that are threw the deepest when they do not have this know-how Accumulated for 10 or 15 years, so we believe that morally and from the point of view of equity there must be a mechanism that allows them to catch up and compete at the same level. “

“We do not want to have someone eternally condemned to misery and humiliation.”

The case that concerns us is that of Honda, which, despite its rich history in F1 and in motorism in general, failed loudly in its first efforts to create a competitive hybrid power unit. Reaching at the height of Mercedes and Ferrari took years, included divorce with McLaren after three seasons together and absorbed large amounts of financial and engineering resources, to the point that cars of cars of cars, for example, saw their budgets cut.

After arriving at the top, Honda decided that it was enough and announced his retirement from the F1, but changed his mind when his association with Red Bull became multiple victories in the championship and the largest electrification of the 2026 standards package proved to be sufficiently aligned with his street car business.

“Honda is an organization with incredible talent, with very capable people and, fortunately, they had the resistance and engineering capacity to move forward,” Tombazis said. “If they could not spend a little more money during that period, they might not have managed to catch up. We want the new manufacturers of power units to remain in the long term.”

At a F1 commission meeting held on Thursday following the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, all parties were shown according to the principle of a recovery mechanism, but the concrete details had to be on the road. This is, in part, to a broader and pressing debate about the possibility of changing the electric deployment mixture during the races, to deal with the fear that cars will remain without energy in the long lines.

The ideas about the recovery mechanism moved to an independent working group on power units, which will formulate more detailed proposals. Motorsport.com Understand that the most likely result of this will be a mobile scale of power bank and budget concessions for engines, depending on the scale of performance and/or reliability disparities.

This would be more or less analogous to the current regime that governs the aerodynamic tests, where the equipment at the top of the Construction Championship faces greater restrictions in the wind tunnel and the CFD research than those in the lower part.

The challenge is now the detail and how to avoid gaps. Although simplification and cost reduction were fundamental in the philosophy of the 2026 engines package, once the competitive instinct comes into action is difficult not to spend.

For example, the pistons of the current generation of engines are made of high quality steel and very complex geometries. Given the mechanical and thermal tensions in this area, the manufacturers that are already in the F1 have accumulated a great experience and knowledge, the “knowing” to which Tombazis refers. The manufacture of a piston costs about $ 10,000.

It is understood that the new manufacturers interested in joining the F1 when the 2026 regulations were debated for the first time – among them Porsche – they pressed a lot to adopt the aluminum in place, only to reverse in that position once they had juggled with the necessary figures and detected opportunities in which advantages could be obtained.

The result has been an inevitable dilution of the cost reduction campaign.

“As FIA, we are the moderators of the debate on the regulation, attentive to the containment of costs and the equal conditions for all,” explains Tombazis. Sometimes there is a strong resistance, as expected, by UP teams or manufacturers that protect their interests or investments. “

“The reduction of costs and the level of technological freedom are at odds. It is not easy to have both.”