McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has urged Formula 1 to openly communicate the nuts and bolts of the 2026 regulations due to how different the racing is set to look.
The forthcoming campaign will introduce what’s arguably the biggest rule change in F1 history: a car chassis is becoming lighter and smaller, while there’ll be a near 50-50 split between the internal combustion engine and electric energy.
This added emphasis on electrical power means energy management will now play a greater role, as a driver could be harvesting to save his battery but that comes with the introduction of ‘overtake mode’.
That is a replacement for DRS and it is effectively a push-to-pass button which keeps a car at the maximum 350kW for longer, so there could be occasions where one driver is deploying more energy while the other is harvesting.
There are suggestions that this’ll completely change the racing: George Russell predicted there’ll be “overtakes in obscure locations”, while James Vowles said “it’ll just be in a different way to what you’re used to now”.
Stella has become the latest to echo those sentiments, adding it all needs to be explained further to fans because of how complicated the new set of regulations are.
He said: “It’s important that these scenarios in which we have overtaking happening, and it may look a little weird that one car can overtake so easily another car, it’s important the spectators understand why that was so easy.
Andrea Stella, McLaren
Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 / Getty Images
“Or even they are in condition to understand that one car, oh, the battery is now quite full, while the car ahead has the battery quite empty.
“So I think the power unit exploitation as a racing and overtaking variable will be particularly important in being able to communicate effectively to our spectators.”
But ‘overtake mode’ is not the only driver aid coming into F1 this year, because another aspect Stella touched on was the active aerodynamics in both the front and rear wings.
In ‘straight mode’ – available in defined zones, similar to DRS – both wings will move to a lower angle of attack, but then as a turn approaches the car will return to ‘corner mode’ where wings return to their higher downforce state.
“This will have to be clear to our fans and spectators: what does it mean for energy consumption? You consume much more energy if you don’t open the wings,” said Stella of ‘straight mode’ and ‘corner mode’.
“What does it mean for grounding, for instance? If your wings are not open, the car is going to run much lower and you suddenly may see grounding and you may hear on the radio drivers talking about, ‘oh, there’s a lot of grounding and bottoming now’.
“So I think the more we make all this clear to the fans and the spectators, the more they will feel engaged, the more we can keep offering such a strong spectacle like we’ve been able to do in Formula 1, and which is one of the reasons why Formula 1 has grown in how popular it has been recently.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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