I’m not from the “Drive to Survive” generation of Formula 1 viewers, although it was this Netflix show, as I deliberately classify it, that restored my interest in the sport. I actively followed Formula 1 throughout my childhood and teenage years – the era of Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen, Monza and Suzuka, races in which you knew exactly that the man in the car makes every decision, from braking to throttle control, and that the outcome depends on how fast, precise and crazy that man is.
Lando Norris, the current world champion, made a statement after yesterday’s Japanese Grand Prix that changed my perception of sports quite a bit. Asked about the course and outcome of the fight with Lewis Hamilton, he said that he didn’t really want to overtake him when he did, but that his battery activated itself, so he had no choice. Then, now with an empty battery, he immediately lost his position. “It’s not a race,” Norris resigned. “It’s yo-yo racing”. He added that drivers are “at the mercy of what the power unit delivers” and should have control – and they don’t.
Until that moment, I was convinced that, as part of the new regulations, drivers decide for themselves when and how much electricity they will use from the battery. I thought battery management was a skill, a strategic decision, something like tire or fuel management – a tool in the hands of the driver. That’s why I couldn’t understand the tireless lamentations of drivers like Norris and Verstappen; it seemed to me that they had a tool in their hands that they simply hadn’t learned to handle yet. However, they are not bad handlers. Moreover, they don’t seem to be any handlers.
How does the system actually work? Cars for 2026 have powertrains where power is split roughly half-and-half between an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. The electric part is three times more powerful than the previous generation – 350 kW instead of 120 kW – but the battery capacity remained practically the same. This means that energy is a limited resource that must be carefully distributed throughout the circuit. And this is where the problem arises: the distribution is not done by the driver, but by the algorithm.
The so-called deployment – the decision on when and how much electricity to use for propulsion – is determined by a pre-programmed strategy executed by the ECU, the central control computer. The driver presses the gas, but does not decide how much power that pressure will produce – neither when exiting a corner, nor on a straight. The algorithm follows a plan set by the engineers before the race, which adapts in real time to the conditions – how much the battery is charged, how much the driver used the gas or brake, what part of the track he is on. If the driver takes his foot off the gas a little because the rear end of the car has run away a little, the algorithm can interpret this as a signal that it is time to charge and redirect the energy to the battery instead of the wheels. If the driver presses the throttle all the way out of a corner, the amount of power they get doesn’t depend on their wishes, but on what the algorithm has decided to deliver at that moment.
What does the driver actually control? Three things. Can use lift & coast – taking your foot off the gas before the braking zone in order to regenerate the battery, which also slows it down. He can press the Boost button, which temporarily restores full power and is used for defense or attack, but only while there is enough power in the battery. And it can use Overtake Mode, a new system that replaces DRS and activates when it’s within one second of the car in front, giving it an extra 0.5 MJ of energy per lap. That’s about it. Everything else – when the battery is being charged, when it is being discharged, how much power the engine delivers at any given time – is decided by the computer.
It suddenly becomes perfectly clear how Piastri’s inexplicable crush on the scouting lap at his home Australian Grand Prix came about, and what Leclerc was thinking after qualifying at Suzuka when he declared that a tiny jolt in a corner had left him without battery – and therefore speed – for the rest of his crucial qualifying lap.
The consequences are absurd and the discussion after Norris’s statement clearly illustrates this. The post collected 17,000 upvote and more than a thousand comments, and the dominant reaction was – shock. A number of commentators described their racing experience as “algorithmic racing with human dummies” and “Formula E has become real F1”. Horror.
The user’s comment explaining what happens in technical terms is particularly significant: when the driver reaches 98% of the throttle, the drive unit is forced to activate deployment of a minimum of 200 kW for at least one second before it can start reducing power. This means that if the driver takes his foot off the gas because of a slight oversteeraand then presses the throttle all the way down again, the algorithm interprets this as a new cycle and delivers full power on the way out of the corner – whether the driver wants it or not. This is exactly what Norris describes: he overtook Hamilton because the car gave him the power he wasn’t looking for at the time, and then he ran out of battery and could only wave sadly while Hamilton regained his position.
Why is this problematic beyond the technicalities? Because it destroys what makes Formula 1 a sport, not a demonstration of technology. When I watch a race, I want to know that overtaking means that the driver was better – braver and more cunning in choosing the moment. If overtaking means that one car’s algorithm on that lap distributed energy differently than the other car’s algorithm, it is not a sport. It’s a simulation. We’re watching people step on the gas, but they don’t know how much power they’re going to get. The braking is theirs, the steering is theirs, but what the engine gives them is not.
The FIA, of course, claims that these rules are designed to make racing more exciting. 120 overtakings in Melbourne, compared to 45 last year – that stands out as an achievement. However, how many of these overtakings are the result of driving skills, and how many are the result of the confrontation between one car that had a battery at that moment and another that did not? If we don’t know the answer to that question, then we are no longer watching races, but cars whose order on the track changes according to a schedule written by the computer. Fernando Alonso commented in his unfiltered style that many of these overtakings are not actually overtaking, but simply avoiding a car that suddenly slows down in front of you. How much truth there is in that was best illustrated by yesterday’s incident between Bearman and Colapinto, from which the former came out limping, after receiving 50 G of negative acceleration to the knee, and the latter with a brown mark on his suit.
This whole dynamic, therefore, also has a large security dimension. Piastri’s accident in Australia is the result of the same algorithm deploymenta – something signaled the system to suddenly drain the battery and the car gained unexpected power. One commentator rightly wonders what would happen if the same scenario played out in Baku, before the infamous third turn, or in the Monaco tunnel. When the driver does not control how much power he gets, he also stops controlling how safe the situation on the road is.
The new rules also brought positive things – cars are smaller, more agile, less aerodynamically dependent on “clean air”. Active aerodynamics is a truly fascinating piece of technology. But a deep problem appeared: a driver who does not control his own drive is not a driver. He’s the operator. A passenger in a car seat controlled by software. It is not the same sport in which Schumacher and Häkkinen competed. Nor Norris and Verstappen even last year.