Formula 1 Chief Technical Officer, Pat Symonds, downplayed the concerns Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Max Verstappen raised regarding the 2026 regulations.
In 2026, F1 is planning new cars and power units. The new cars will have active aero components while the power units will drop the MGU-H part and will have a 50/50 power ratio between internal combustion and electric power.
Horner said Red Bull’s early simulations raised concerns that drivers might lose power at the end of the straights meaning they might need to down shift, while Verstappen described the situation as terrible.
That started a debate within the sport, as Horner suggested an increase in power supplied by the Internal Combustion Engine, which Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff staunchly refused accusing the former that he has issued with his power unit program.
Now F1’s tech boss Pat Symonds has weighed in on the subject, suggesting Red Bull might have sounded the “Alarm Bells” prematurely, as the regulations are more developed now.
“Teams spend a large part of their budget on buying alarm bells,” Symonds told the Motorsport network. “We had exactly the same with 2022, that it won’t work, and we [the teams] have been through it all before and we know what we’re doing.
“The 2026 car in my mind is no bigger a change than the 2022 one,” he added. “I would argue that it is actually a bit less aerodynamic [a jump]. Yes, it got more active components in there but there’s nothing magic about active aerodynamics. I’m quite confident.”
What Verstappen and Horner said simply not true
The FIA’s aerodynamics chief Jason Somerville, is doing a decent job trying to hit the drag targets set out for 2026 according to Symonds.
He said: “There are some impressive drag targets but Jason and his guys are there with it. So yeah, I think we can do it.
“And the team’s alarm bells, and talking about Max who has driven it in the simulator: he hasn’t driven what’s there. I know that, because we are obviously months ahead of where they are,” he insisted.
“We needed to get a set of regulations out for the engine, and put some energy management numbers in there,” Symonds explained. “They were very immature. We knew that they wouldn’t work and we knew that they needed to be developed. And where we’ve got to in the nine months since is transformational.
“The performance profile of a 2026 car in simulation now doesn’t look terribly different to 2023,” he revealed. “So all of this thing about hitting the top speed in the middle of the straight, it’s not like that anymore.
“You have to bear in mind that these cars don’t reach top speed at the end of the straight anymore; so all this thing about changing down gears on the straight simply isn’t true,” Symonds concluded.
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