F1 OVERHAUL Leaked: Engine Boost, Battery Nerf 📈🙌

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]All right, guys. Talk about the Formula 1 news. Common sense, it appears, has prevailed. A crunch meeting today between the FIA and the Formula 1 T-Mois has gone even further than the raft of tweaks we saw to the regulations going into Miami. Hardware changes are on the way for next year. In 2027, we will have a significant increase in combustion power, a significant decrease in the battery power, and the implications are pretty widespread indeed. The 50/50 is dead before we even really got going. An admission it must be said that these regulations were flawed and have totally failed in the intention of the original rules. What will Da Cari have to say?

[00:00:34]But in many respects this is a great day for the future of Formula 1. Vermont and Twitter to your thoughts on the comments. Hit the like button if you enjoy. Subscribe if you're new. As always, I obviously wanted to start with this comment here because it wasn't long ago that Demetley said there are no problems. Formula 1 is in great shape.

[00:00:49]Well, it turns out there are some issues because clearly there are meetings to resolve these problems and the conclusions of those meetings have nonetheless been positive. Are they enough? That is a different question that we will describe. Yesterday we mentioned briefly that while Pablo Mononttoya has been an absolute tyra against Max Vstappen that continues. He says, "If I were the boss at Ford, I would not be happy to see Vstappen doing advertising aboard a Mercedes at the Nurburg Ring. I will say of all the things Monto has said over the last few days, this I actually kind of get. Now, of course, it is a Red Bull livery Mercedes, but nonetheless, it is a Mercedes, which is well, I'm sure in Towolf enjoys more so than Red Bull and certainly Ford do nowadays. We also have an update on the ADO, the additional development and upgrade opportunities.

[00:01:33]Now, we've kind of been wondering, Miami is done. When are we going to get the confirmation? Who's getting the ADO? Who isn't? Who actually is the benchmark engine? What are the Mercedes numbers actually looking like coming out of the combustion engine? What about the Red Bull powertrains Ford? What about the Ferrari? What about the Audi? And of course, what about the Honda? But there are changes because we were meant to have six Grand Prix by now. We've only had four cuz there was no Bahrain, there was no Saudi Arabia. So they are changing that. They are pushing that back and this is the latest change. So the ADO periods which were intended to be as following when they actually say okay we're going to go away test the engines and see what the numbers look like. that's now changed between period one is rounds one to five and as you can see below my head Montreal is race five of the season. So I guess they're just pretending those rounds in April never happened and to be honest there's a possibility they delayed actually saw a rumor today that within the next two to three weeks we are going to find out whether Saudi Arabia will be back on the calendar because rumor has it they're going to push Abu Dhabi back to make that happen. I guess we'll see. But news on that coming soon. subscribe to the channel, all that good stuff if you're not already. Would greatly appreciate it. Let's continue though because it's now 1 to5 which means after Montreal that's when they're going to sit down with the teams and say, "Okay, these are where the numbers lie. This is what we are going to do next." However, they've also added a new category here and this is kind of remarkable actually. So, I'm I've talked about this a million times.

[00:03:03]If you guys aren't familiar, if you are below 2% of the benchmark IC, you get one upgrade this year, one upgrade next year. There's also like a monetary piece of this. It's not quite as simple as that. There's obviously test like let's say allocations. There's monetary allocations in terms of more resource to develop the engine, all that stuff. And if you're outside of 4% then you get double that original bonus. There is now a new benefit which actually you can see right about here outside of 10%. So if your engine is like so bad that it falls in like the 10% plus window, you actually and even in these other windows, you get this dollar adjustment.

[00:03:43]So if your engine is more than 10% down on the benchmark, you get $1 million and all the other additional benefits. But it's kind of remarkable to think about that they've effectively created the Honda category. As far as I can tell, it's like it's that bad for Honda that they've decided to create a whole new category to help them get back on their feet as it were. Will it be enough? Will they actually qualify for that? I guess we'll see. But um yeah, this is the Auo Life jacket as it's being described and it's worth $11 million for Honda in terms of trying to make their engine a bit better. I guess we'll see what happens next on that. But that is how it appears and therefore after Canada that's when we're going to get our announcement what the engines are looking like who actually gets the ADO and therefore will Ferrari let's say be eligible to bring their big new engine in Belgium that is the plan as it stands for those guys for Ferrari it's got to be said it's not been a great few days the Miami Grand Prix was underwhelming given the upgrades and now there is talk about getting rid of the FTM is what they call it but this blown diffuseresque device they have towards the back of the car. They made sacrifices on the differential, on the gearbox setup in order to allow the legality boxes within the designer regulations to allow this to be possible. Other teams realize, damn, that's a good idea. And many other teams, basically all the teams, I think apparently 80% of the teams, they have something like this on their car now.

[00:05:09]It's not as big as Ferraris because they came up with this idea initially and they let's say pull out all the stops to make it happen as aggressively as possible, but the other teams are doing something whatever they can really around that diffuser area behind the exhaust to try and generate a bit more downforce. And in Ferrari's case, we don't think this is just a bit more downforce. There's talk that this could be worth 3 4/10 of a second per lap. is one of the biggest aerodynamic devices that we have seen in terms of innovation this season. Other teams have copied them but not to the greatest possible extent because they can't unless they redesign things for next year. But because the regulations are so broken in many ways, it really comes down to the fact that the batteries are quite small and they are enormously powerful and there's not enough ability to recharge them. Right? When it was 8515, the battery would recharge under braking. you could deploy, you know, one full charge would last you one full qualifying lap. And the battery did not take away, I don't think, from Formula 1 between 2014 and 2025.

[00:06:13]Was it ideal? Maybe not. Would we prefer a normally aspirated V10 with no battery? Probably yes. But it wasn't, you know, a huge problem. And if anything, it gave the opportunity for somebody to save a bit of battery, somebody to use a bit, give you the overtake mode to help you attack or to defend. Maybe it added a little bit of extra intrigue to the sport in that sense, rather than just everyone having the same thing all of the time. Because look, as much as I'm not a fan of these regulations and we made that clear from day one or even day zero before these regulations even hit the track with all the potential concerns that have now become reality, it does the battery offset allow overtaking opportunities.

[00:06:52]Although we want those overtakes to be done with talent really and bravery rather than being done by the computer sitting within the car. And the fact that the MGUK reh harvesting is only at the rear axle and there's no MGUH means that it was basically going to be impossible to allow the battery to get enough charge to do what they wanted to do. And it's led to the lift and coasting qualifying. It's led to the super clipping. It's led to the arguably artificial yo-yo racing depending on your perspective. But it's led to an environment which is clearly quite unsustainable. One of the problems here is that the cars actually have more downforce than the FIA predicted.

[00:07:29]They've literally said this that they were not expecting the cars to be as juiced as they are in terms of the performance they have through the corners. And as a result, they have more downforce. They take the corners faster, which means they get less recharge through those corners. And because they have more downforce, they tend to have more drag, which means that the battery has to work even harder on the straight.

[00:07:52]So, it's created a further issue. And therefore the FIA are saying that in order to deal with this problem we may need to reduce the downforce of the cars and effectively make them a weaker version kind of what we saw going into 2015 maybe in some respect. That is the current discussion and as a result there's talk that the teams are being forced or not being forced to but they're being asked to anyway conduct studies on model versions with reduced downforce because this might be the intention for next year to make quite radical changes to say okay we're going to remove certain elements of the rules and ban certain ideas to try to limit because look you may say this is unfair on Ferrari and it may well be right Ferrari have given a lot to create this new flick tail mode concept and now apparently it's getting banned. That's the big rumor anyway that they're just going to get rid of this thing and prevent it being the case at all. Now Ferrari, they made sacrifices to make this possible. They have been the pioneers in this regard. So if the FIA say right that's now banned going forwards that certainly hurts Ferrari more than others. Equally, everyone will have further time to adapt. And arguably, if it was still allowed, Ferrari's advantage would disappear next year anyway because usually the engineers get on top of these things.

[00:09:06]And if it really does have that kind of performance advantage, everyone is going to turn up with it next year despite whatever potential compromises and down downsides it may have. And given the cars are going to get faster, they're going to get more downforce on them as time goes on, the FAA are probably wise, given the strength of the battery and the importance of it to say, "Okay, let's try to find a way to rein in these engineers because otherwise it's going to only get worse, right? I mean, we saw in the very first races these regulations where these current power units sit and what the problems are. And if the cars get even more high performance, then that only makes those issues worse. So, there's two sides to this. Do you reduce the downforce on the cars or do you take it or try to take it one step further and change the engine regulations as well or do you do both which is probably where we are going to be now this is all aligned with the problems that we started to see at the start of the season and we continue to see in Miami. This is a clip that has been doing the rounds a lot over the last couple of days. This is Charlotte and actually notably in this clip this is Kimmy Antonelli. So this is Oscar Pastry at the bottom here. Now, what you will see as we play this clip out, if you guys haven't seen this already, is that Charlotte has an absolutely huge moment coming out of the end of the first sector, he has a massive snap. He very nearly hits the wall here. He came this close to his race ending here and you can still see the puddles from earlier in the day. He comes back onto the track. This then is Pestri and absolutely eases past him onto the main straight. So, GG overtake done right now. The reason why this caused a lot of controversy over the last couple of days is becauselair then gets into the slipstream very easily makes the reovert and Pestri afterwards in the call room said there was nothing that I could do and people have said that this is the most artificial thing ever. I can't believe that this was ever possible. Look, I'm not here to defend these regulations.

[00:10:59]I've been very critical of them. We're going to talk about changes to them being a positive. I don't think this is the most outrageous clip I've ever seen.

[00:11:06]The reason why it's compelling is because of one specific regulation item.

[00:11:11]Effectively, what happens here, Llair makes a big mistake, loses time in the process. Pestri is coming into this corner a second and a half behind him, at least a second behind him. So, it's not a massive surprise that by the timelair gets going again, Pestri gets through, but then the guy behind is now in the slipstream and manages to make the overtake happen again. But there is a bit more to it than that. And the reason why there's more to it than that is due to the overtake mode. So actually going into this lap, as Yellow Senna pointed out, was within a second of Antonyelli. Pestri was outside of a second oflair. So that meant that on the back straight, he had overtake mode enabled, which means at the higher speeds, he can deploy more energy whereas Pestri couldn't because he didn't have overtake mode, which yeah, this is a quirk of the regulations for sure, but this is not that dissimilar to like DRS. That is what overtake mode is this year is it's effectively a new version of DRS. So effectively what we are seeing here driver makes a mistake gets overtaken because he made the mistake but then actually that driver in front had DRS from the car in front of him and therefore he then gets the repass is basically what happened here.

[00:12:19]So I'm I don't think this is the most outrageous thing that I've ever seen but it does sum up some of the complexities of the regulations and also some of the reasons why we could do with some changes. Now today, this is a bit of a bombshell as far as I'm concerned. This kind of came out of nowhere. They had this crunch meeting and it turns out that they've agreed that actually, yeah, we're going to scrap everything, at least in terms of what the 50/50 intention was. Now, we've talked over the last few days, in a few years, we will go to V8s. The FIA have literally said that. Ben has said that. The teams have pretty much said that 2031 at the very latest. 2030 probably at the earliest. We'll see. So, we've got a few years until we go to a V8 to in some form or another. That is the rumor. The next rumor was that actually it will be 2028 where we have big changes to these current rules. It will stay as the V6 turbo hybrid, which is kind of still what it is, but they will find a way to reduce the electrical side, increase the combustion side, and do that substantially in 2028 as kind of like a middle ground between going from what we have now to the V8s in a few years time.

[00:13:23]There was talk that they wouldn't make changes as early as 2027 because the teams didn't want to deal with the implications of that. What I mean by that is if you increase the power of the IC, you do so by increasing the fuel flow rate and unless you also increase the let's say density of the fuel and there's other complicating factors, but effectively it means the cars need more fuel and the fuel tanks have to be bigger, which they've designed into the chassis to accommodate the current amount of fuel that they have. that would require redesigns, that would require chassis redesigns, and apparently some teams were not very happy with that idea and they were like, "No, we'll just save it until 2028." But it appears the teams agree that that's a worthy sacrifice to make or that Formula 1 is in such a strong position in many respects that and the FIA itself can just strongarm the teams because we've talked about this when these regulations were getting created back in let's say 2020, Formula 1 was not in the same position. Some teams were certainly struggling more financially and Formula 1 and the FIA couldn't just say what they were going to do and the teams were forced to comply because Audi wouldn't have come into the sports. There was all these other questions right about Honda as well among others. Nowadays, I think the FAA that the teams are so valuable like they want to be here. They kind of not need to be here, but the teams are going to take some they're basically going to take what they're given in a way right now. And whether they agree or not with that, if they get told you've got to change your your power unit for next year, you've got to change your size of your fuel tank or something, like what are they going to do? Pull out of the sport? Right? It ain't going to happen, right? So, I think that F1 and Formula 1 management and the FIA themselves realize that they have a more power now than they used to. So, they've gone into this meeting today and the conclusion has been between the team bosses and the FIA to go away from 50/50. Now, it never quite got to 50/50.

[00:15:14]It was 5446, but that was the intention and it's quite clear that whatever Demenardi says that it's all perfect.

[00:15:20]There's no problems. Don't know what you guys are talking about. Clearly, that was not going to work. And this is a pretty big change. It's look, you may argue it's not it's not enough. We need to go further and I think we will. But frankly, I was not expecting this change for 2027. I thought we might get this or more in 2028, and we still might. But I think this is a very good change for 2027, about as much as realistically we could have expected. What they're going to do is they're going to take the IC and it's going to go from 400 kW up to 450. Now, you can times that by roughly 1.3 to get what the horsepower of that looks like, but it's 50 kW up through increasing the fuel flow rate and the electrical element is getting pulled back from 350 kW down to 300. So instead of it being 450 or 400 350, it's now 450300, which changes the game substantially, right? A split of 450 kW for the IC and 300 kW for the battery is exactly 6040 between the two of them. But as we know, the 400 kW number currently associated with the IC actually underestimates how powerful the combustion engine really is. We think Mercedes are pushing 420 430. This is kilowatt, right? So, you know, not far off 600 horsepower at that point. So, if you increase the value of that by 50 kW, it's actually quite possible that the combustion engines are even more powerful than that. So, we might not be talking 6040. We might be talking closer to I don't know, let's say 6337 or something in that ballpark, George Russell's number on the first instance. So, that's where we're going.

[00:16:56]And I think this is a pretty big change really. Is it a big enough change? I guess we'll see. There was talk that in 2028 they're talking about 7030. So maybe this is the interim, right? We say 50/50 was never going to work. We're now getting closer to 6040. Maybe we can even go 7030 in 2028 29 and then we're in a much better position. Super clipping will be far less of a factor.

[00:17:19]Look, already with these changes to the reduction of the MGUK value, the maximum length of time that you can deploy the battery for increases substantially, right? It's going from 11 seconds of just absolute power up to, you know, 13 14 seconds. That's already a big change because of the tweaks that we've made now and this additional changes coming in for 2027. Super clipping is going to be much less of a factor because the engine's more powerful as well. If they need to use the engine in a super clipping manner to charge up the battery, that will happen very quickly, very easily, or at least easier and quicker than it used to be, which leaves more power left to actually drive the car. So, all the issues that we are seeing are getting addressed by these changes. Is it obviously going to be enough? Right? But the 100 kow swing, that's a big deal between combustion and between electric and it's about as much as we really thought were possible. It is interesting to look back at what her and Vistafen said about this when Red Bull were really banging the drum that these regulations weren't going to work.

[00:18:23]And this is what he said. He was like, "Look, these regs aren't totally compromised, but the issues that we are going to see, I mean, these are comments from years ago now. the issues that we are going to see which are unavoidable if we shift the distribution five or 10% in favor of combustion the problems could be and possibly will go away and they've now had to admit that is exactly what we need to do so very much to your thoughts on all this stuff in the comments below who does it hurt who does it help I guess that's the question as we've said the teams that are able to generate a nice juicy amount of downforce such as what Ferrari have done with some of their ideas they finds problems here. If their car gets limited from an aero performance perspective, as we discussed earlier in the video, from an engine side, the IC getting more powerful benefits the teams that can make the better ICE. Right now, Ferrari have not delivered that and Mercedes obviously have, but who knows, right? Maybe by the time Ferrari bring their new big upgrade to the engine in the middle of the season, they'll be well on track to deliver a similar story in 2027 and beyond. But as I say, fuel flow rate goes up, fuel tanks got to be bigger. Sacrifice that the teams might have to make even if they wanted to carry over some chassis ideas. But it looks like the bosses agree this is better for Formula 1 more generally, right? The teams obviously are aware that let's say Mercedes, they have something to lose if the regulations change. Right now they look to be in prime position but if nobody cares about the sports if the value of the sport decreases because of the problems that we have seen at the start of the season then nobody is benefiting certainly not Mercedes even in that scenario where they win. So very much interested your thoughts in the comments. Hit the like button if you enjoyed subscribe if you're new. Take care and I'll see you next