Another race down another classic circuit, in this case Spa-Francorchamps, left neutered for drivers and so their slow, dissonant discontent rumbles ever onward. In the wake of the Belgian Grand Prix, there was an overwhelming sense they wished to simply escape. Not so much from Spa but away from the numbers.
George Russell was at the centre of attention in Belgium, the Mercedes driver’s championship hopes taking a severe blow as, inexplicably to him and his team, his engine did not recover energy through turn one and he was left with no electrical power to deploy. He was swallowed up by the Ferraris and vying with Lewis Hamilton, who clipped him through Les Combes, was pitched out of the race.
He was understandably furious. Not with Hamilton but that the energy issue meant he was in a fight with him at all. “I had no fucking battery down the straight. Guys, unacceptable,” he told the team over the radio.
Mercedes are investigating but his fury is the tip of the iceberg of the knock-on effects of this year’s regulations that were once more laid bare in Spa.
Nor was it a surprise, pre-race predictions from drivers proving all too prescient. With two sectors of long straights and little chance to harvest, the cars were energy starved, reducing the middle sector to internal combustion engine power only, effectively half of their potential output. It meant the cars were so down on power that corners such as Pouhon, an exquisite test of risk and reward, of seeing quite how far a car could be pushed, were now barely worth a consideration.
Cornering with the speed of an F3 car but with F1 downforce had emasculated one of Formula One’s great tests, as Lando Norris noted: “It’s not a corner any more, it was easy flat.”
Race-winner Kimi Antonelli’s pole time was almost four seconds slower than last year’s and while F1 is taking comfort in the fact that the racing is entertaining, those who drive the cars continue to bemoan the actual experience behind the wheel.
Part of Russell’s experience at Spa highlighted another issue that cuts to their very core – that they too have been neutered. The computer-controlled deployment of electrical energy now so central to the sport has become F1’s new darkest art, more arcane and far less interesting even than the tyre management which used to be of such import. Remember when tyres were a thing rather than an algorithm?
The algorithms are now vital, determining when and how much energy to deploy during a lap, and drivers are, to an extent, at their mercy. It turns out they don’t like Skynet driving their cars.
When asked about the importance of these algorithms and energy deployment in Spa, Max Verstappen gave an entertainingly blunt answer. “Welcome to F1 2026, sometimes it can be a jungle,” he said.
Verstappen has been clear in his dislike of the role of energy management but in Spa it was damningly clear that his views were widespread. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, ordinarily an even-handed observer – who notably was also suffering from an unfathomable deployment issue from his engine that was robbing him of time – had lost all patience with the AI overlords nestling in the F1 matrix.
“It sucks. I can’t really say it any other way than that,” he said. “George has had a lot of issues with that this weekend and maybe the last couple of weekends, and speaking to some others, it’s a similar story.
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“When you’ve got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it’s a pretty crap way of going racing.”
Nor did it end there. Just as damning was Antonelli. “Sometimes, especially on tracks like this that are very energy-demanding if you start driving differently, then for the system it’s a bit crazy,” he said.
No one wants a crazy system, not least when unexpected changes in closing speed can be extraordinarily dangerous, as was demonstrated by the great sudden concentration of cars hurtling past one another on the Kemmel straight and into Les Combes on that opening lap.
Second-placed Charles Leclerc was part of it and came up like a rocket behind Verstappen. “These power units are so complex that there are some days when you scratch your head trying to understand why you are losing so much on the straights,” he said. “It’s just very difficult but also very frustrating sometimes for a driver because even when you are doing your best there are things in the background that change constantly and that’s not so nice.”
So it goes on. It is not a good look for the sport but it is not going to change this season at least and will come up again and again. On the basis of the reactions to Spa, the sport had better brace itself for an orgiastic wailing and gnashing of teeth when it arrives in Monza.
