The FIA has implemented technical adjustments, enhancing the 2026 F1 cars’ performance and narrowing the speed gap with current models.
The FIA has confirmed that the performance of the 2026 cars has significantly evolved behind the scenes, after engineers modified certain technical aspects of the regulations.
The cars will be “barely slower” once the new radical rules take effect. That’s according to Nikolas Tombazis, FIA’s single-seater director, aiming to dispel concerns that the shift to more electric power units would result in losing several seconds per lap.
During recent meetings of the F1 Commission and the World Motor Sport Council, both held in October, stakeholders addressed concerns that the 2026 F1 cars would be drastically slower by introducing a series of amendments to the technical regulations.
Tombazis confirmed and even quantified the expected progress with these changes.
“Car performance has been increased by about 50 points of downforce,” Tombazis said. “This brought the performance from being 40% down compared to current cars to around 15% down in terms of downforce. In terms of lap times, they are very close to the current cars. All of this was done as we promised in June.”
The engineer confirmed that the modifications made after the last publication are responsible for this progress: “If we hadn’t changed anything after June, I think it would have been about two seconds slower.”
Tombazis described the changes that led to these performance gains: “The main aerodynamic changes consisted of slightly increasing the box where the front wing sits.”
“We converged towards the style seen on previous cars. We added space for devices at the front of the floor, like fins and the edge of the fins. We increased the size of the diffuser, which now starts a bit further forward and is slightly larger.”
“We also redesigned part of the bodywork around the front wheels, and there’s ongoing work that we hope will lead to some final tweaks at the next World Council concerning the rear bodywork and how it interacts with the diffuser in that area.”
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FIA tweaks boost 2026 F1 car speed by ‘two seconds’ FIA tweaks boost 2026 F1 car speed by ‘two seconds’
