F1 News
Shocking: F1 cars from 2026 may possibly be slower than F2 cars
- Ludo van Denderen
The new regulations for '26 had barely been presented and F1 teams were already showing their concerns. Although the 10 teams had not seen the final version, they were familiar with drafts of the new rules. Those earlier drafts had already been tentatively tested in the simulators. From these, one remarkable fact became clear: the '26 F1 cars may be slower than the current Formula 2 cars.
Formula 1 likes to present itself as the premier class of motorsport, with the most sophisticated technical gadgets and, of course, the fastest cars on the planet. The latter comes into question if the regulations proposed by the FIA are actually adopted. "The way cars are in the draft version of the regulations – and we need to say draft, because like we say, there's a lot of work to do – the cars are not fast enough in the corners and too fast in the straights. So these two aspects need to be rebalanced," said Andrea Stella, McLaren's team boss.
Williams saw slower cars in the simulator
His colleague James Vowles watched Williams test the regulations in the simulator, and when asked if the cars are slower than the current F2 cars, he says: "In the sim. It's imperative that we are still the leading series in motorsport. That's how I see us. We're the pinnacle of this. And therefore, as a result of that, we need to make sure that we're maintaining the performance and speed we have. And right now, I think Andrea summarised it well, there's a mismatch there, fundamentally. The performance difference to an F2 car could be as small as a few seconds."
Still, Vowles also believes it will not come to the point where F1 and F2 become equivalent in terms of speed. "And just this week, in fact, there were two changes which took quite a bit of downforce away. I'm confident we'll get to a better solution in that regard. It's not that we're so far away. Just a little bit more work required, though." Stated the Williams boss