The brand new Components 1 guidelines have sparked debate and differing opinions on a variety of issues, not least what makes for good racing.
F1 boasted concerning the big variety of overtakes within the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, which was lauded by some however ridiculed by most. It uncovered a problem on the very coronary heart of racing: what makes for good racing and is extra overtaking at all times higher.
Our worldwide writers present their views.
The optics are sometimes deceptive
Stuart Codling, Autosport:
Among the many extra spurious items of cant issued by the business rights holder to defend the 2026 Components 1 laws is that “the followers” have been complaining for years that they needed to see extra overtaking, and that this has now been delivered. So what are you all complaining about, then? Pipe down!
F1 factors to fan-satisfaction surveys, which seem to point {that a} vital proportion of the viewers is of the more-is-better persuasion. It’s, nevertheless, straightforward to poke holes within the methodology of those statistics.
The argument towards more-is-better is that when overtaking strikes are showered round like confetti, and based mostly on little greater than relative battery ranges, the spectacle is devalued. Particularly so when the battery ranges and software program algorithms that decide who passes whom are background operations, largely invisible to the spectator.
This can be a legitimate argument – however is shortage in itself an excellent factor? Possibly, perhaps not.
Fernando Alonso, Renault R25, leads Michael Schumacher, Ferrari F2005
Photograph by: Motorsport Pictures
There are those that maintain that the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix is among the many most enjoyable races of all time just because Michael Schumacher didn’t handle to overhaul Fernando Alonso within the last half of the race. However you would additionally argue this can be a textbook instance of so-called ‘peak-end impact’, the cognitive bias whereby viewers over-rate an expertise as an entire due to the feelings they felt at its peak.
Certainly, there have been these in our editorial assembly this week who opined that truly San Marino 2005, taken as an entire, was fairly a boring race. However right here we’re coming into the territory of different cognitive biases influenced by our information of the result.
Such is life on the hedonic treadmill: we by no means enable ourselves to be pleased with what we’ve bought.
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Generally the chase is best than the catch
Filip Cleeren, Motorsport.com World:
When this dialogue comes up I am typically reminded of two extremes, the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix and the 2013 Indy 500.
Famously, at Imola Alonso was hounded lap after lap by Schumacher within the Ferrari, with the nice German unable to discover a well beyond. It was powerful to maintain your eyes off, and that was with out an overtake truly being made. Generally the chase is best than the catch.
I used to be fortunate sufficient to be on the 500 in 2013 and witness a preferred win for Tony Kanaan, however the race actually made the historical past books for its mind-boggling 68 overtakes for the lead. That is one each three laps. Because the vehicles had been again then, with their cumbersome rear bumpers, the chief was a sitting duck, so whereas passes firstly and end of the race had been vital and entertaining, the bulk within the center a part of the race felt inconsequential and synthetic.
Tony Kanaan, KV Racing Expertise Chevrolet takes the win
Photograph by: Jay Alley
Discovering a cheerful center floor, to me, is about guaranteeing driving talent is making a distinction. F1 vehicles must be troublesome sufficient to drive so drivers are punished for errors, and it must be straightforward sufficient to comply with for the motive force behind to pounce on these, or make a distinction on pure tempo however with out simply breezing previous early on the straights.
I would gladly take a pair fewer overtakes than now we have seen in 2026 with out a few of the battery-induced ‘yo-yo racing’, however I additionally perceive a return to 2005 shouldn’t be going to chop it from a spectator perspective. F1 should discover a solution to steadiness meritocracy versus leisure, which is less complicated mentioned than completed in a post-refuelling period with much less room for technique to make a distinction.
There is no worth in overtakes made “accidentally”
Stefan Ehlen, Motorsport.com Germany:
All of it will depend on what you outline as an “overtake”: a real transfer the place one driver outbrakes one other and earns the place by means of talent and racecraft? Or a synthetic go within the DRS period, the place one driver merely occurs to have the ability to deploy extra energy at a given second?
Personally, I vastly choose real overtaking strikes — high quality over amount. Because the introduction of the Drag Discount System (DRS) within the 2011 season, Components 1 has seen far too many low cost place adjustments, which then hit new heights firstly of the 2026 season below the brand new technical laws with all of the “vitality administration” concerned.
In fact, individuals are free to take pleasure in these fixed place swaps. They actually look spectacular. However to me, lots of them really feel reasonably meaningless as a result of they’re so closely depending on circumstance. When even the drivers themselves admit that they generally overtake “accidentally” as a result of the tech-assisted automobile successfully dictates the transfer, then the sporting worth of such manoeuvres needs to be questioned.
I’d a lot reasonably see a handful of actual overtakes per race — strikes which can be fastidiously arrange, preceded by a hard-fought battle, or executed with real cleverness. Easy drive-by passes do little or no for me personally. They lack the aspect of sporting achievement.
Lando Norris, McLaren, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photograph by: Clive Rose / Components 1 by way of Getty Pictures
No, although that is what many followers needed (and now reject)
Jose Carlos de Celis, Motorsport.com Spain:
All too typically, social media has been flooded with feedback labelling any random F1 race as “essentially the most boring,” exactly due to an absence of overtaking and, simply as often, the existence of these DRS trains the place nobody passes anybody. Everybody fortunately embraced the concept that by 2026 there can be extra overtaking, forgetting that this isn’t at all times synonymous with extra pleasure, and now that’s exactly what many are criticising.
Folks say that the overtaking in 2026 is synthetic, forgetting that DRS was too, and though I’m not a robust defender of those guidelines – I’ll have gone mad the day I like an F1 automobile that runs out of energy on the straights – however wasn’t extra overtaking what followers had been asking for?
Each April (or each time F1 returns to Imola), movies go viral reminding us that twenty years in the past, on the 2005 and 2006 San Marino GPs, first Alonso received by warding off Schumacher for a lot of laps, and the next yr Schumacher did the identical. And talking of Alonso, I’m positive most of his followers keep in mind with extra pleasure – past the podiums he achieved in 2023 – the 2021 Hungarian GP the place Esteban Ocon received, partly due to a masterful defence by Alonso towards Lewis Hamilton.
In different phrases, thrilling battles don’t at all times have to finish in overtakes, as a result of they may also be nice strikes to carry place. Though there would at all times be one other facet to criticise. As a result of it is mentioned that ‘you possibly can’t please everybody’, and I’d add which you could by no means create F1 guidelines that please everybody.
It is about high quality, not amount
Federico Faturos, Motorsport.com Latin America:
I will be very sincere right here: Components 1 celebrating the sheer variety of overtakes firstly of this new guidelines period felt, at greatest, like an entire misreading of the state of affairs. And issues solely turned worse when Stefano Domenicali himself saved pushing the narrative as if it had been the best factor possible, just for Nigel Mansell to elucidate what the fact truly seems like.
In fact, a race with overtaking is best than a race with out overtaking. However that alone doesn’t inform the total story. If these passes occur past the motive force’s management as a result of the battery deployment had already determined the result, in the event that they happen just because one driver has used up his vitality and is left defenceless afterwards… then sure, technically, they’re overtakes. However what’s their actual worth?
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photograph by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Pictures
Possibly it’s as a result of I get near 40 and not totally align with the logic of youthful audiences, though I’ve at all times thought of myself old style on the subject of debates like this. I by no means favored DRS both. Even that already felt synthetic.
An overtake on the pinnacle of motorsport must be the results of a racing driver — an athlete — pushing their machine to absolutely the restrict of grip, braking impossibly late, committing fully, forcing their well beyond a rival who’s concurrently doing all the pieces potential to defend and maintain on to trace place.
Does anybody genuinely keep in mind any of the lots of of overtakes now we have seen to this point in the course of the 2026 season? Has any of them actually stood out? Will folks nonetheless be sharing clips of them on social media 10 years from now?
The reply isn’t any. We’ll nonetheless keep in mind strikes like Nelson Piquet on Ayrton Senna at Hungary 1986, Mansell towards Piquet at Silverstone 1987, Mika Hakkinen on Schumacher at Spa in 2000, or Juan Pablo Montoya on Schumacher at Brazil 2001, simply to call a couple of.
Components 1 doesn’t want extra overtakes. It wants extra unforgettable ones.
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