Lando Norris didn’t bother dressing it up in Miami. Yes, he can see what the FIA was trying to do with its latest tweak to the 2026 energy rules — but in his view it’s lipstick on a problem the sport has created for itself.
Miami was the first grand prix weekend run under the FIA’s newly clarified “flexibility” on battery charging allowances, a mechanism intended to stop the current generation of cars from slipping into energy-management theatre. The headline from the rulebook is that the FIA now has the option, event-by-event, to trim the permitted maximum recharge down to 7MJ per lap rather than committing the whole calendar to a single number.
That particular lever wasn’t pulled in Florida. Instead, the notable change was a limitation of energy deployment to 250kW in certain sections of the lap — an attempt to rebalance how drivers use electrical power without yanking the overall system around too violently mid-season. Miami, categorised as an “energy rich” circuit, was always going to flatter the new formula a little more than some venues; there’s enough opportunity to harvest and enough straights to deploy that the cars can feel closer to “normal” when you’re chasing time.
Even so, Norris’s patience with what he sees as the fundamental philosophy of 2026 appears thin.
“It’s a small step in the right direction, but it’s not to the level that Formula 1 should still be at yet,” he said after the race.
That’s the key point with Norris: he’s not arguing that the FIA hasn’t listened, or that nothing has improved. He’s arguing that the underlying premise is wrong — that F1 has built a set of cars where trying to drive like an F1 driver is, too often, something you get punished for.
“I think we said yesterday still in qualifying, if you go flat out everywhere and you try pushing like you were in previous years, you still just get penalised for it,” Norris explained. “You still can’t be flat out everywhere. It’s not about being as early on throttle everywhere.
“You should never get penalised for that kind of thing and you still do.”
For an audience that’s watched this season unfold, the complaint is familiar. Drivers have been wrestling with a peaky window where extracting lap time is less about commitment and more about not tripping the system into a state that leaves you short at the wrong moment — a dynamic that can make qualifying feel more like threading a needle than throwing a punch. The FIA’s April adjustments were framed around encouraging more flat-out driving in qualifying and addressing safety concerns that have been part of the conversation since Oliver Bearman’s heavy 50G shunt at Suzuka.
But Norris isn’t asking for another round of calibration. He’s basically questioning whether this version of Formula 1 can ever be “fixed” by trimming numbers at the edges.
“So honestly, I don’t really think you can fix that,” he said. “You just have to get rid of the battery. So hopefully in a few years, that’s the case.”
It’s a striking line not because it’s some nostalgic call for the past, but because it’s coming from a front-line driver in the middle of a season where the rules are still being actively massaged. It’s also a direct challenge to the very identity of the current power unit era — the battery isn’t just an accessory in 2026; it’s integral to how the cars are designed to perform.
And yet Miami also offered the counter-argument in real time: the racing was busy, fluid, and aggressive. The lead changed hands, fights developed and then evolved, and the grand prix ultimately settled into a straight contest between Norris and Kimi Antonelli after a three-way phase that included Charles Leclerc.
Antonelli won, just over three seconds clear of Norris, making it three victories on the bounce — the sort of run that tends to calm a storm around the regulations, because winning makes most things look acceptable. Even so, the Mercedes driver’s assessment wasn’t wildly different in tone; he simply sounded more willing to work within what’s there.
“Qualifying feels better, more natural,” Antonelli said. “Races, the closing speed is massive, and you also need to trust the guy who is defending because also with this active aero, the car is pretty lazy when you want to change direction, so you need to think in advance. And as I said, you need to trust as well, the driver who is defending.
“But it was a small step in the right direction and let’s see what’s going to happen next.”
That “trust” point matters. The new cars, with active aero in play, can be awkward when you’re trying to react late — and when closing speeds are high, the margin for miscommunication shrinks. It’s not hard to see why the FIA is trying to keep a tight grip on the energy side of the equation too: any system that creates big, sudden deltas in performance along a lap has consequences for how cars meet each other in braking zones.
The political reality is that 2026 is already being treated like a moving target. The FIA has since announced an agreement to tweak the electrical versus internal combustion power ratio for 2027, effectively acknowledging that the first draft of this era hasn’t landed cleanly. And FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has declared that V8 engines will return with minimal electric in play.
That bigger picture is what gives Norris’s Miami comments extra bite. He’s not just venting about a difficult weekend or a minor inconvenience; he’s planting a flag in an argument that’s already started to shift above his head. If the regulator is openly talking about rebalancing the formula for 2027 and beyond, drivers are going to push harder for the sport to prioritise what they consider “real” performance — flat-out laps, instinctive racing, and fewer invisible constraints.
Miami may have been labelled “energy rich,” but Norris’s verdict was that Formula 1 still isn’t.
