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What F1's regulation meetings can, can't, and probably won't do
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Everything you need to know about today's regulation summit, and why it is unlikely to change as much as some hope
The meetings are unlikely to change the core issue with the rules
Grand Prix Photo
After Oliver Bearman‘s frightening near-miss at Suzuka, Formula 1’s governing bodies and all 11 teams meet today to discuss possible changes to the 2026 ruleset.
The meeting, the first of three over the coming weeks, has been a long time coming.
Three races into the 2026 season, Formula 1 finds itself facing a problem it created: a set of technical regulations that has produced racing some inside and many outside the paddock consider fundamentally broken.
On Thursday, representatives of the FIA, Formula 1 management and all 11 constructors sit down to agree emergency changes.
There is, by all accounts, a broad consensus that something must be done. The question is what.
The two problems
Stripping away the technical complexity, there are essentially two issues on the table.
The first is closing speed differentials.
Bearman’s wrecked Haas took a 50g impact when it hit the barrier at Spoon Curve
Grand Prix Photo
The 2026 regulations create wildly different power states between cars at any given moment on track: a car in full electrical deployment can be travelling substantially faster than one that is harvesting or conserving.
The risks this creates were brought into sharp focus at Suzuka, when Bearman hit the wall in a 50g impact after finding Franco Colapinto‘s much slower Alpine when approaching the hairpin.
The incident served as a demonstration of what drivers and teams had been warning about for months.
The second item on the table is qualifying.
Under the current energy management framework, drivers are being forced to lift and compromise their cornering in ways that cut directly against what qualifying is supposed to be: a pure expression of driver and car at the limit.
The algorithms that govern energy deployment are based on what a driver has already done in a session; there is no room for the kind of improvisation and escalating commitment that has historically defined great qualifying laps.
Charles Leclerc, one of the best single-lap drivers of this generation, has brought in his own team of software engineers to model the permutations in an attempt to work around the problem.
That a driver of his like Leclerc needs to do this at all tells its own story.
The options
The fundamental aim is to find a way to make driving safer while bringing back the qualifying show that has disappeared under the new regulations.
Drivers want qualifying to be back to what it was
Grand Prix Photo
The direction of travel appears clear even before the meeting starts. Those in the meeting will be looking at harvesting rates and deployment limits.
The most straightforward tweak would be to raise the power available during super-clipping — harvesting energy while still on full throttle — from its current 250kW limit to 350kW, matching what is available during lift and coast.
If super-clipping becomes as efficient as lifting, drivers will naturally prefer it, reducing the prevalence of the more dangerous lift-and-coast behaviour that creates the large closing speed differentials.
Reducing the maximum MGU-K deployment is also an option, as it would cut the current 350kW maximum deployment limit, although that would inevitably make the cars several seconds a lap slower.
Perhaps the most powerful lever available is cutting how much energy can be recovered per lap. The current qualifying limit is 9MJ, already reduced at Suzuka to 8MJ as a one-off measure.
A bigger reduction would make the recharge limit easier to hit, drivers no longer needing to lift and coast aggressively to reach it. The trade-off, however, is also slower lap times.
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Other, more radical, fixes could include an overhaul of the active aerodynamics rules, allowing free use of straight mode throughout a lap instead of in designated zones.
That would reduce drag demands significantly, extending the available battery energy and giving teams more flexibility in how they pitch their downforce levels.
However, the changes would carry safety implications that the sport’s bosses are not willing to face just yet.
The most structurally significant fix would be to rebalance the power split between the internal combustion engine and the battery by raising the fuel-flow limit.
However, current engines were designed around existing rules and pushing them beyond the current parameters creates reliability risks, not to mention it would move the sport away from its sustainability goals.
It could also create the unwelcome need to reduce race distances, given the limited capacity of fuel tanks, which would be a devastating indictment of F1’s current power units.
What is not going to change
Despite hopes that there are fixes that can be implemented in order to bring the cars back to what drivers and fans expect of them, it is advisable to curb expectations about major changes.
The current problems F1 is facing are part of a multi-year regulatory process between rule makers and manufacturers that started several years ago.
The regulations are, for the most part, what they are by design, not by coincidence, and any tweak is unlikely to be significant enough to eliminate the current downfalls completely.
The most likely outcome of these meetings will be minor tweaks in the name of safety, delaying bigger decisions until later in the year if the backlash continues and/or if audiences decline.
For the time being, these rules are here to stay, and anyone expecting these meetings to fix F1 is likely to be disappointed.
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