The proposed regulation changes for the harvesting and deployment of the electric side of the engine don’t go anywhere near far enough. I don’t understand why Formula 1 as a whole has refused to bite the bullet and admit a big mistake has been made.

This theoretical 50/50 horsepower split between the internal combustion engine and the electrics is nothing more than a number plucked from the air. It’s not really even 50/50, it’s probably more towards 45/55 in favour of the internal combustion engine. But this has created the situation where the cars are driving the driver, as opposed to the driver driving the car. That is the heart of it for me.

F1 needs to put the driver back in command of the car and take away these algorithms that decide what power output the driver is going to have. The regulation already exists: the driver must drive the car alone and unaided. So the framework is there, you just need someone to stand up and have the guts to make the changes.

The trouble with the current approach is not just that it looks wrong, it also behaves wrong. There are times when there is a full-throttle trigger and you get a 350kW boost from the MGU-K, which destroys the rear tyres, and that is going to be dodgy in slippery, wet or changing conditions and cars will suffer the consequences. Yes, there is a regulation that is part of the raft of changes expected to go through that will cap that electrical power, but that doesn’t mean a better F1 car overall, it’s an artificial patch that fails to fix the fundamental problem.

My view is simple. The electrical power output should be mapped to the torque curve, or the power curve, of the internal combustion engine. No combustion engine has a flat power curve. Power is torque multiplied by RPM, so if every engine manufacturer had to supply the FIA with a validated power curve, then you would create competition in the right place. Ferrari, Mercedes, Audi, Honda, Red Bull - they would all be competing on the quality of that curve, with the FIA making sure nobody was pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes.

You wouldn’t need an absolute number hard-wired in the way it is now. You would simply work from 100% ICE (internal combustion engine) power and apply the equivalent electric power relative to the percentage of ICE power at whatever RPM the engine is running at.

So if, let’s say for the sake of having round numbers, the V6 makes 350kW at maximum power, that is what you get from the electric motor at that point. Lower down, it scales accordingly - 100, 150, 175, whatever it may be.

The electric power rises with the engine power instead of arriving as an instant hit. If you lift the throttle, it drops down the same way. It becomes like driving a car with more power, rather than one where you are constantly tripping over a software event. Basically this would meet the ‘advertised’ 50/50 power split right through the ICE RPM range.

For circuits where it is deemed impossible to meet that 50/50 split then the percentages of electrical power can simply be altered, reducing the battery consumption.

That, to me, is a much more logical hybrid concept. It also saves energy, because you are not deploying the full 350kW immediately every time. And it reduces the feeling that the system is making decisions for the driver instead of the driver making decisions for themself.

The regeneration side is confused as well. Around a track like Suzuka, the driver wants full power for well over half the lap, but is only braking for a tiny proportion of it. That’s a huge mismatch. Until you can address that, you are not going to have a proper hybrid system that genuinely connects the two up and gives you a meaningful 50/50 split in operation around the whole lap.

Then there is superclipping. If the recharge rate means the engine is effectively acting as a generator, then you have gone too far. Yes, there will always be a balance somewhere between what is used and what you can harvest, but you need to limit that so you still have engine power driving the car rather than everything being sacrificed to feed the system.

What is frustrating is that Formula 1 has missed the bigger philosophical opportunity here, which is to give the driver more responsibility, not less.

In my book, the driver should have a boost button that effectively acts as a replacement for DRS. Give them, say, an extra 50kW or whatever is calculated to be the appropriate amount to pull off an overtake. If they are within a second of the car in front going across the start finish line then they have it for that lap for a limited amount of time (my initial suggestion would be 10 seconds). They can use it in one hit or split it into smaller bursts, but crucially it would be at the driver’s discretion.

If they are within one second across the start finish line, they can use it. Simple. It is still battery power, still hybrid, still modern - but crucially it is up to the driver to decide where and when to use it.

The same should apply to the active aerodynamics. If the driver is on full throttle and there is a button to press, then it should be their decision rather than dictated by the mandated activation zones. Do they want less downforce here? Is it OK in the wet, in the dry, on a dirty track, in changing conditions? Let them decide. If the driver wants to go around the whole lap with the active aero shut, fine, that’s their decision.

Instead, what we get is mollycoddling. We pay drivers millions per year to be the best in the world, then take responsibility away from them and hand it to systems and software engineers in the back of the garage. That is ridiculous.

I’m disappointed Formula 1 has gone down this route. The changes being made - most significantly a drop to 7MJ per lap harvesting in qualifying, the increase of superclipping rate to 350kW and measures designed to reduce the speed offset between cars - are logical enough but they are nothing more than a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. At best, that means a slight improvement, but at worst it’s stagnant and that’s not good enough.


To use a fly-fishing analogy, Formula 1 should be brave enough to cast the line a bit too far, then drag it back and see where the right balance is, rather than endlessly dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

Unless you have some extra mechanism for recharging like a front wheel regenerative system - or dare I say it a MGU-H - then it will always be the deployment that you have to address.

The failure to do so means that much of the competition disappears into management, automation and compromise. The driver wants to go flat out, they have a throttle pedal to make the car go faster and a brake pedal to make it go slower. Let them use those to optimise the car’s performance, as has been the case for over a century of motorsport.

Give the driver back control. That is the fundamental fix. Without understanding the need to do that, it’s no surprise these changes don’t go anywhere near far enough.