No DRS, no problem? F1's new rules, 17 rounds in

Formula 1 spent fifteen seasons half-apologising for DRS. This year it binned it, and replaced it with wings that move on every straight and a battery that decides who passes whom. Seventeen rounds in, the racing is busier than it has been for years. It is also stranger.

What actually changed

When the FIA unveiled the rules in 2024 it cut the maximum wheelbase by 200mm and the width by 100mm, aimed for a 30kg weight saving and narrowed the tyres. Flatter floors replaced the long underfloor tunnels of 2022 to 2025. Less downforce, in theory, means less to lose when you follow someone.

Then the wings. Active aerodynamics opens both the front and rear wing flaps on designated straights and closes them for the corners: straight mode and corner mode. Unlike DRS, straight mode is for everyone, on every lap, whatever the gap. It cuts drag by around 20%, according to The Race, to save energy rather than to hand anyone a pass.

The passing tool is now electrical. Overtake Mode switches on when a driver is within one second of the car ahead at a single detection point. The attacker gets extra energy, half a megajoule according to Autosport, and can hold the electric motor's full 350kW for longer before deployment tapers off. Every driver also has a Boost button for maximum combined power, to attack or defend, battery permitting.

Underneath is a 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrid whose combustion side has been cut to around 400kW while the electric motor has nearly tripled, from 120kW to 350kW. That is the famous 50/50 split. The MGU-H has gone, and the fuel is now advanced sustainable fuel made from sources such as carbon capture, municipal waste and non-food biomass.

Sources: Formula1.com rules explainer, Autosport, The Race.

The battery runs the race

The energy behind all this is the problem. BBC Sport puts it at roughly 1,000bhp with everything deployed but only about 540bhp once the battery is empty, so cars harvest and deploy several times a lap and fast corners have become what Fernando Alonso called "charging stations for the car". After the opener in Melbourne, Carlos Sainz branded straight-line mode, or SLM, a sticking plaster: "I think the active aero and the SLM is a plaster on top of the issue of the engine."

The result has a name: yo-yo racing. You spend your energy to pass, empty the battery and get re-passed on the next straight. "It's just my battery deploys, I don't want it to deploy, but I can't control it," world champion Lando Norris said after swapping places with Lewis Hamilton at Suzuka. "So I overtake him and then I have no battery, so he just flies past [on the next straight]."

Not everyone hates it. Hamilton called China "the best racing that I've ever experienced in Formula 1", and Charles Leclerc was "quite positively surprised" by his early scrap with George Russell in Melbourne. By Monza the novelty had gone. With the slipstream feeding Overtake Mode, almost nobody could break away, Kimi Antonelli's win from 19th on the grid being the exception. "To be honest, [I didn't enjoy it] a lot when people just drive by you like you're a turtle," said Max Verstappen. Ferrari's Fred Vasseur was blunter: "When we were attacking someone, we were draining the battery, and next straight line we were losing the position."

F1 celebrated a near-tripling of overtakes in Melbourne on 2025. The Race urged caution, rightly. A pass made because the other car ran out of battery is not a pass made on the brakes.

Rewritten on the run

Norris warned in Australia that the speed differences would end badly. "We're just waiting something to go quite horribly wrong and that's not a nice position to be in," he said. Three weeks later Oliver Bearman hit the barrier at Suzuka's Spoon corner with a 50G impact, after a sudden difference in electrical boost left him closing on Franco Colapinto's Alpine far faster than expected.

The FIA, F1 and all 11 teams then agreed changes to apply from Miami in May. Maximum recharge fell from 8MJ to 7MJ, and peak super-clip power, the harvesting that had cars visibly backing off mid-lap in qualifying, rose from 250kW to 350kW so it eats less of the lap. In races, Boost was capped at 150kW above the car's power when pressed, with full 350kW deployment kept for the key acceleration zones.

More is coming. BBC Sport reports the split will move to 60-40 in favour of combustion, in two steps, by 2028. And on Tuesday FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said a new V8 will be launched in 2030. When the governing body names the replacement in this engine's first season, that tells you plenty.

Singapore's reminder

On a tight street track the old enemy is back. Russell climbed from 19th to ninth at Marina Bay and then got stuck. "The moment you catch the car in front, you have such a wake, so much dirty air that you lose downforce, and I think at that stage he was probably one and a half seconds faster than the guys in front of him, but you can't pass," said Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. Compare Hamilton in Shanghai in March: "There's not a bad wake where you're losing too much downforce." Both can be true. These cars follow better on open circuits. Nobody has solved Singapore.

Our scorecard

Our verdictNo DRS has been no problem. The problem is everything bolted on to prop up an energy-starved engine. Active aero has needed a late U-turn on a straight-mode zone in Melbourne, a half-open setting for the wet and no zones at all in Monaco. Overtake Mode has produced more passes and plenty of hollow ones. Give drivers real control of deployment, as McLaren's Andrea Stella has argued, and bring the 60-40 split forward. Until then, the rules get 6/10 from us.

Sources: Formula1.com, Everything you need to know about the new F1 rules for 2026 and FIA unveils Formula 1 regulations for 2026; The Race, active aero in Monaco, partial aero mode, Melbourne straight-mode U-turn, drivers divided after Australia, accidental overtakes and Australia overtaking analysis; Autosport, Monza slipstream racing and Overtake Mode in Singapore; BBC Sport, Sainz on F1's regulations; PlanetF1, Hamilton and Norris on overtaking and Ben Sulayem on V8s; Crash.net, Leclerc on Melbourne; Motorsport.com, Bearman's Suzuka crash and Wolff on Singapore; Motor Sport, the mid-season rule changes. Facts as reported up to 13 October 2026; opinions and ratings are ours. See all headlines on the wire →