F1 isn't all bad in 2026: what GP racing has gained and lost with its new rules

A new power unit formula, active aerodynamics, lighter cars – the 2026 regulations were supposed to be Formula 1‘s biggest reset in a generation, promising a return to closer, purer racing after years of the sport growing heavier, wider, and harder to overtake in.

It was a gamble on almost every front: a technical formula built from scratch, a governance process that took years and several rounds of compromise to land on, and a bet that manufacturers and fans would follow.

Halfway through the season, the picture is more complicated than either the doom-mongers or the marketing department predicted.

Some of it has delivered exactly what was promised, arriving with less fanfare than expected precisely because it has simply worked.

Some of it has quietly undermined the show it was meant to improve, producing a version of Formula 1 that looks right on paper but doesn’t always feel right from the cockpit or the grandstand.

And some of it sits somewhere in between, a genuine step forward bundled with a cost nobody fully priced in beforehand.

Here’s the balance sheet so far.

What F1 has gained in 2026

Closer racing, smaller and lighter cars

The bloated, hard-to-follow cars of the previous era were one of the most consistent complaints from drivers and fans alike.

The 2026 regulations have pulled the dimensions back in the right direction – narrower, lighter machinery that’s easier to place on track and, in theory, easier to race wheel to wheel.

It hasn’t solved every problem in isolation, and there’s further to go before Formula 1 has genuinely nimble cars again. But the direction of travel is correct, and that matters after years of cars growing in every dimension that makes racing harder.

A new mega star in Antonelli

Every regulation reset creates winners and losers, but few could have predicted a teenager arriving at Mercedes and looking like a future champion after only one season during which he showed flashes of brilliance but was too inconsistent to offer a definitive verdict.

Kimi Antonelli‘s emergence in 2026 has given Formula 1 something rule changes can never manufacture on their own: a genuine new star, still raw in places, but unmistakably the real thing.

Whatever else 2026 gets right or wrong technically, it handed the sport a driver worth building the next decade of storytelling around, particularly if he ends up as the youngest world champion in F1 history at the end of the current season.

A rejuvenated Hamilton

Few storylines looked shakier heading into this season than Lewis Hamilton‘s move to Ferrari finding its footing.

The new rules haven’t fixed everything at Maranello, but they’ve coincided with signs of the old Hamilton sharpness returning: a driver re-energised rather than fading into a difficult final chapter.

A regulation change that revives one of the sport’s biggest names, even partially, is a win the marketing department couldn’t have scripted better.

If Hamilton, 41, is the man who ends up fighting Antonelli, 19, for the 2026 title, the story will have an incredible ending regardless of who ends up with the crown.

Lead changes

Genuine lead changes during races had become a rarity in recent seasons, as cars too reliant on clean air made overtaking for the lead a low-probability event.

The unpredictability introduced by the new power unit deployment rules — whatever its other costs — has brought some of that jeopardy back at the front of the field.

It’s a byproduct rather than a designed feature, and it comes bundled with problems covered below, but it’s a gain worth mentioning.

New manufacturers, increased competition

The regulations achieved something no amount of governance pressure had managed in years: they made Formula 1 attractive to manufacturers who’d walked away or never arrived.

Honda, having announced its planned exit under the old rules, is back. Audi has entered as a full works team. Cadillac will run Ferrari power units until its own engine arrives in 2029, but its presence on the grid at all is a direct product of the new formula’s appeal.

A bigger, more competitive manufacturer field is exactly what a regulation reset is supposed to deliver.

Sustainable fuel

Perhaps one of the most underappreciated successes of the whole reset.

Formula 1 quietly moved to fully sustainable fuel this season, a genuine technical achievement with real relevance to the sport’s stated net-zero ambitions. It has barely registered as a talking point.

That’s not a failure of communication so much as a sign the transition has been close to seamless.

The cars sound the same and the fuel in the tank is fundamentally different. Engineering success stories rarely come quieter than that.

What F1 has lost in 2026

Drivers making no big difference

The most damaging criticism levelled at the 2026 cars is also the hardest to dismiss: that driver skill has been partially elbowed out by the need to manage power deployment algorithms rather than push the car to its limit.

Laps are increasingly won or lost by energy management rather than raw pace, and the artificiality that creates — drivers visibly lapping to a number on a dashboard rather than to the limit of the car — cuts against everything Formula 1 claims to showcase.

As Verstappen said after Spa: “It’s basically just neutralising a lot of lap time, and that’s why, I guess, in general, you see a lot of close battles between teams and also team-mates, because sometimes you cannot make a difference. You’re not allowed to make a difference because it will just penalise you on the next straight.”

Predictable overtaking

Related to, but distinct from, the lead-change gain above: overtaking across the field has become more predictable rather than less, as drivers who’ve exhausted their battery deployment become effectively defenceless.

What should be a wheel-to-wheel contest is, in these moments, closer to a formality. The attacking car sails past because the car ahead simply has nothing left to fight with, not because it was out-driven.

Even with the DRS, some of the passes were not as easy to predict as they are now.

Regulation parity undermined

The Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) mechanism was sold as a tool for keeping the power unit field competitive.

In practice, it has added a confusing extra layer to an already dense rulebook, and it measures competitiveness through the internal combustion engine at a moment when electrical deployment increasingly decides who wins and loses.

A parity mechanism built around the less important half of the power unit is a strange piece of regulation to have settled on.

The fact that a manufacturer can also decide not to improve its power unit so the rival the FIA considers the best (Red Bull-Ford) stays on top and doesn’t get any tokens has also highlighted how flawed the concept is.

Qualifying dysfunction

Early-season qualifying sessions produced the strange spectacle of cars going slower on their final runs than earlier ones, as battery deployment rules interacted badly with single-lap demands.

The situation has improved since the rules were tweaked mid-season, and the worst of the dysfunction has been addressed. But qualifying still doesn’t feel like the pure test of one-lap pace it used to be, and a partial fix isn’t the same as a solved problem.

The ease with which drivers often overtake each other has also made qualifying less of a key part of the weekend depending on the circuit, meaning the Saturday spectacle has suffered as a result and is unlikely to produce the kind of God-like laps that are part of F1 folklore.

Driver unrest

Directly connected to the first topic under the losses list, Verstappen has been the most vocal, but he isn’t alone in making clear the drivers themselves aren’t entirely sold on the new formula.

When the people actually driving the cars are among the loudest critics of how the regulations have changed their job, it’s difficult to frame the reset as an unqualified success – whatever the marketing sheet says about closer racing, more overtakes or bigger audiences.

Reaching Formula 1 is almost any young driver’s goal. Seeing their idols constantly unhappy with the machinery they are driving might end up diminishing their enthusiasm.

Broadcast transparency

Formula 1’s coverage has become noticeably more guarded about the details of the new power units.

Battery and speed graphics that once gave viewers real insight into what was happening on track have quietly vanished from broadcasts. Post-session analysis segments have been cut short. Team radio touching on deployment issues has occasionally vanished.

The sport that spent years building a reputation for pulling back the curtain on its technology now seems more comfortable keeping some of it in shadow, and most regular followers have noticed.