2026 F1 General Discussion Thread

I think my diminished passion for F1 is correlated with the career of Fernando Alonso! I still think he's one of the best of all time but he hasn't been a front runner since 2013 and it's not nice to see him in the midfield/back of the grid in terrible McLarens, average Alpines and now Aston Martin.

The hybrid v6 engines.... does anyone have a background to their introduction? Like was it the FIA saying 'we want engines to be more fuel efficient, hybrid tech because we believe it will be more relevant to road cars in the future' or was it the engine manufacturers saying the same thing? I ask because has F1 tech made its way to road cars in the past 5-10 years?

Yeah that's fair enough but it wouldn't be cutting edge technology if it just worked from the beginning. That would just be normal technology.

The point, as I understand it, is to not change the rules too often, but make it challenging for them to get it right. That way the teams who crack the technology first by making it lighter/faster/more efficient/more reliable, get an advantage while the others catch up.

If they all hit the ground running, then they'd be at roughly the same level for the whole 8-10 years of the formula or however long it lasts. And they have to change formula every so often or else it would become like a spec formula.

There will always be some convergence towards the end of the formula, but that's unavoidable. So at the start of the formula you get some teams who take the wrong development path and are behind, and some teams who got it right and they're ahead. That sounds about right to me.

I don't think fans would be happier if it was straightforward enough and all the teams got it right at the start. They'd just continue to converge throughout the formula.

ICE isn't dead though. It's just reducing in prominence. Electric vehicles are becoming more popular alright but they'll probably coexist for a while yet.

If you want them to buy FE and turn F1 fully Electric, you could make that case

For companies of these sizes, you can either put it on the marketing budget like Red bull, Or the R&D budget.

R&D gets massive tax breaks in the UK where most of the teams are based.

No wonder they are pushing for spending all those $. If I remember correctly, the engines don't have a cost cap?

I seen social media posts yesterday about Newey dropping the team principal role but you'd take them with a pinch of salt. It's such a mess from Aston Martin

Motorsport.com are reporting it, would be considered a fairly legit source.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/adrian-newey-to-step-down-as-aston-martin-f1-team-principal/10806482/

One thing though, wouldn't Wheatley need to do some "Gardening leave" before joining Aston Martin?

I thought he was just in there keeping the seat warm for someone else anyway?

One year since Eddie Jordan's death today.

There's a few ex team principles that could step in straight away if needed. Gunther Steiner, Otmar Szafnauer, Jost Capito, Andrea Sidel.

Only a matter of time before AM announce him.

Aston Martin could but out the gardening leave possibly?

a weird statement - it doesn’t address the speculation at all, and simply confirms that Newey remains a key partner and shareholder in the AM project, something that wasn’t in doubt, even yesterday.

Odd.

They probably can't/won't announce anything until the papers are signed.