F1’s 2026 power unit rethink exposes growing divide between old and new fans

As this was written, a series of meetings between teams, Formula 1 management and the FIA was underway to decide on what changes could be made to the new-for-2026 power unit regulations. These meetings, after just three races of the latest formula, could be described as anything from routine to urgent to crisis, depending upon confidence levels of the future.

Some years ago two key decisions were made which in combination have resulted in powerful, unintended consequences. F1’s understandable desire to accede to automotive manufacturers’ wishes about the PU regulations and its concurrent pursuit of a more populist, less elitist fan appeal have combined in a troubling way.

The opposing viewpoints between traditional fans and more recent converts has been merely a tension for the last few years, but the new PU regulations have unintentionally increased that tension to a point where the fabric of the category is threatening to tear.

“The F1 fanbase has increased 12% every year for seven straight years”

Deciding to massively increase the electrification towards a 50/50 electric/combustion split was a decision taken a few years ago but which has only come into effect this year. Possibly there was an overestimation at the time of that decision about how much battery density technology would improve by the time of the implementation. Because in hindsight it’s obvious that the 50/50 aspiration was way too ambitious, bringing with it huge compromises and complications to the nature of the racing.

Within that decision, F1 was aligning itself with the automotive industry’s enforced move towards a more environmentally friendly future. At some high corporate level of F1, it was perhaps an obvious ‘right’ move; it headed-off future environmental criticism of the sport and it would retain the big-spending automotives and perhaps encourage new ones.

It also went hand-in-glove with another part of the vision commercial owners Liberty Media had for F1: to make it less jet-set exclusive (where previous commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone had always placed it) and more inclusive to all ages, genders and income groups. Staying with high-revving petrol burners as the world moved away from that would likely have been perceived as F1 continuing to celebrate excess, which was the very thing Liberty wanted to get away from.

The more inclusive buy-in involved popularising the sport through Netflix and the semi-reality show Drive to Survive. It’s been spectacularly effective in expanding the sport’s appeal. The fanbase has increased around 12% every year for seven straight years, the demographic shift in age and gender is immense and it has commercially cracked America for the first time. The fact that a high proportion of the new fans consumed the sport differently, maybe taking in only a couple of minutes of a race on their phones but spending hours watching the documentary, was of little commercial concern. Business was great.

Then the introduction of the ’26 PUs (and the necessarily associated active aero to reduce the drag so the batteries didn’t flatten ridiculously quickly). Boost buttons and overtake modes to spice up the racing became way easier with 470bhp of battery power to play with. So they were incorporated too. But once into the nitty-gritty of trying to race these cars, we find that the energy starvation is so immense that there’s an enormous offset in performance around different parts of the lap – because there’s not enough electrical energy to stay charged the whole lap. The charge can’t be harvested fast enough and depletes quickly.

This has created three new phenomena: 1/ the fastest way to do a qualifying lap is to coast through key corners to save battery which is then deployed to better lap time effect on the straight; 2/ a sometimes-dangerous speed differential in the races between a car with a suddenly empty battery and a chasing car on full deployment; and 3/ a yo-yo style of multiple pass/repass which can continue indefinitely as batteries empty and refill around different parts of track as drivers play an alternating game of cat and mouse.