The narrative around the changes announced for the Miami Grand Prix is mildly reassuring: Formula 1 has identified a problem, gathered all parties in a room, and arrived at somewhat of a solution.
Super-clipping duration should be reduced to two to four seconds per lap, peak harvesting rate has been raised from 250kW to 350kW, and the battery ceiling has been lowered from 8MJ to 7MJ.
That should be good news for fans and most drivers who have voiced their frustration about the problems with the current rules after the first three races of the 2026 season.
The caveat with the rule tweaks, however, is that the changes might end up not being neutral.
Instead, they carry different implications for each manufacturer on the grid, and for at least one of them, the headline change – the harvesting rate increase – may not be a fix at all.
Veteran F1 journalist Mark Hughes spoke about the concern on the Motor Sport Show podcast this week.
The new 350kW super-clipping limit assumes that every power unit on the grid can actually generate the reverse torque required to drive its MGU-K at that rate.
For Honda, however, this is not straightforward.
“It’s all about reverse torque reduction on the rear axle, which determines how quickly it is harvesting,” Hughes said. “So yeah, it may well disadvantage Honda even further.”
The MGU-H, which previous regulations permitted, was twinned with the turbocharger and helped manage torque characteristics and shape the power delivery.
With it gone under the new rules, the burden falls entirely on the MGU-K, and using electrical energy to compensate for turbo lag is now one of the few tools available.
Whether the Honda ICE is strong enough to harvest at 350kW quickly and consistently, while simultaneously managing that compensatory workload, is an open question, and the fear, after a disastrous start to the season, is that it isn’t.
Honda is believed to have the weakest internal combustion engine of all manufacturers, sitting well below the Mercedes benchmark.
An ICE that is generating less power has less to give to the harvesting process.
Filling the battery at 350kW requires the engine to do heavy mechanical lifting, and a weaker ICE will take longer to do it, or may not be able to sustain the rate at all.
For Honda, the 350kW ceiling could be hard to reach.
The pecking order might be affected by the changes
Grand Prix Photo
The entire rationale for raising the super-clipping rate was to reduce the time cars spend harvesting, and in doing so, reduce the lap time lost to the process and limit the dangerous speed differentials that made Oliver Bearman‘s crash at Suzuka so alarming.
The FIA’s stated target was to reduce maximum super-clip duration to approximately two to four seconds per lap, compared to the six to 10 seconds observed at Suzuka, even after the one-off change introduced there.
However, if Honda’s power unit cannot harvest at the full 350kW rate, Aston Martin‘s cars will need longer in super-clipping mode to fill the same battery.
It remains to be seen how the changes will affect the likes of Audi or Red Bull, whose ICEs may not have the torque headroom to fill the battery as fast as the regulation intends.
F1 has trimmed its 2026 regulations ahead of Miami. Mark Hughes points out that these minor changes don’t address the real issues — and pretending otherwise helps no-one
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Mark Hughes
At the other end of the field, Mercedes, with the strongest ICE on the grid by some margin, will be able to harvest at 350kW efficiently and consistently.
That means that, on paper at least, the Miami tweaks might end up benefiting the Mercedes-powered cars, although nothing is confirmed until the cars take the track again.
None of this means the rule changes are wrong.
Reducing the battery ceiling from 8MJ to 7MJ and lowering out-of-zone deployment to 250kW are genuine steps that should reduce lift-and-coast frequency regardless of manufacturer.
The boost cap of 150kW is also a direct response to the Bearman crash, targeting the kind of closing speed differential where one car carries the full boost and another carries none.
These should prove real improvements.
But the headline harvesting change, the one most prominently cited as the mechanism to make qualifying better, might end up distributing its benefits unevenly.
