F1 cars of '26 slower than F2 cars? 'True, but we'll fix it!'

Nikolas Tombazis, the director of single seaters at the FIA, confirms the teams' findings. "I think the fears are accurate, because people are taking a snapshot of what the regulations on a piece of paper are now and are making comments on the basis of what they see. So I don't have any concern about these issues raised by people. We have full expectation to make some steps up for performance. And that's exactly why we've set the bar reasonably low to start with, so we can build up on that. with the collaboration of the teams."

According to Tombazis, it is relatively easy to increase downforce. "SSo I understand the comments. I don't think there's any concern these cars will be not faster than F2 or anything like that. I think that would be 100% resolved by the time we are in the final regs," believes the Greek, who is supported by Jan Monchaux (technical director single seaters at the FIA).

FIA state that new rules can still change

"So we are still in discussion and we are always in discussion with the teams," says the Frenchman. "They have expressed concerns for sure. Typically, teams are always a bit reluctant at implementing large changes. So it's a bit of an ongoing compromise that needs to constantly be found. As Nikolas said, the approach we had, since we needed to respect the framework in terms of date of publication, the regulation as has been presented now and which hopefully will be voted is probably the most restrictive teams will be seeing, because we think also it's going to be far easier in the next months to start increasing the freedom."

According to Monchaux, there is now a "solid basis" to talk further with the teams. "Now to review some areas where for the moment we offer little or no freedom," he says, keeping in mind that adjustments will only be made if the original goals can be achieved with the '26 cars. The main one he mentions is that the car should be more agile.