How can teams have a ‘feel’ for who is ahead in developing the new engines for 2026 when the manufacturers presumably keep everything as secret as possible? – Alex
It’s a good question because, on the face of it, no one should know anything about the relative performance of next year’s engines, because the manufacturers are all working on them in isolation.
In reality, though, F1 might be big business and have a huge following, but it is a relatively small world, and people talk.
For a start, the manufacturers have to discuss their engines with governing body the FIA for a whole bunch of reasons.
Then there is movement between teams and manufacturers in terms of employment – people leaving one team or engine company to work for another. When they get there, they will obviously take knowledge of where their previous employer was, and be able to share that with their new one.
And then there is just general gossip between people in the paddock.
So, while individual manufacturers do their best to stop performance figures creeping out, inevitably they do, to some extent.
That’s how an impression forms.
The last time there was a major change of engine design, there was a lot of talk about Mercedes being ahead of the rest. No one knew for sure whether that was true until the cars first ran in pre-season testing, when it became immediately apparent that it was.
The situation this year feels very similar. Again, no one knows for sure, but the grapevine says that Mercedes are ahead.
There is a lot of complexity in the new rules.
The engine architecture is changing, with the removal of the MGU-H, the part of the hybrid system that recovers energy from the turbo.
The power split of the engine is changing, with the electrical part of the engine now set to produce about 50% of total output, up from about 20% currently.
The need to recover that much energy – in combination with the removal of the MGU-H, which had a powerful impact on recovery – has led to a change in the aerodynamic rules.
F1 is introducing moveable aerodynamics – both the front and rear wing have high- and low-drag modes. The idea is that drag can be reduced on the straights, to increase speeds, to make braking distances longer, to increase the time energy can be recovered during braking.
The deployment and recovery aspects of the engines will also be very different from now.
For example, the engines will likely be run at high revs during cornering simply so energy can be recovered for use on the straights. In that situation, the internal combustion engine is effectively being used as an energy generator for the battery.
Then there is the fully sustainable fuel, which is being manufactured without any use of fossil fuels. These will also have an impact on performance.
Effectively, snippets of information about all these aspects of the new engines creep out one way or another, and a sense of who is in a good place and who is less so starts to coalesce.
But it is, of course, all guesstimation at the moment.
