Mohammed Ben Sulayem has picked his next big fight — and it’s with physics, budgets and, inevitably, the current generation of Formula 1 cars.
Speaking to Canal+, the FIA president set out an aggressive long-term target to drag minimum weight down to 630kg by 2031, a reduction of more than 130kg from the 2026 baseline of 768kg. In other words: not a bit of trimming around the edges, but a fundamental re-think of what an F1 car is allowed to be in the next regulation cycle.
Ben Sulayem’s argument is blunt. The modern cars, he says, are too complex, too expensive and simply too big. And in his view, “a big and heavy car” isn’t just an aesthetic issue — it’s a safety issue.
“What is the worst thing in the cars now?” he asked. “Complexity, more money, expenses, and also a big car. A big and heavy car means what? Means it is not safe.
“We added 50 kilograms because of the safety. But now I would like to see a car, a total complete car for less than 650 kilograms. My target is 630.”
That framing will make some in the paddock bristle — the sport’s safety gains haven’t come by accident, and few engineers will accept a simple equation that “heavier” automatically means “less safe”. But Ben Sulayem isn’t trying to win an engineering seminar here. He’s pitching a political project: a clear, headline number that aligns with what drivers have been saying for years and what fans tend to feel when they watch these cars through slow corners.
Even with 2026’s rule reset shaving around 30kg off the minimum, the chorus hasn’t really changed. Lewis Hamilton called the new-era cars “still heavy” when the regulations were confirmed. Max Verstappen has been even more direct, arguing the sport should aim for “100–150 kilos lighter”. On Ben Sulayem’s numbers, Verstappen’s wish list suddenly looks less like a throwaway quote and more like a roadmap.
Where it gets properly contentious is how Ben Sulayem intends to get there — because the weight target is welded to his separate crusade to overhaul the power unit formula again.
He reiterated his push for V8 engines to return by 2030 or, at the latest, 2031. Not as a nostalgia tour, he insists, but as a tool to cut cost, reduce complexity and take mass out of the car. In his telling, a simpler V8 would deliver roughly 760 horsepower from the internal combustion engine, with a relatively small hybrid component — “10 per cent” electrification — and it would do so with a lighter package that also gives spectators the sound they still romanticise.
“The V8 has to come,” Ben Sulayem said. “You have the power from the ICE engine of maybe 760 horsepower with 10 per cent in it of electrification. That would give it the sound.
“It would be much cheaper. And R&D, research and development, much cheaper. As an engine alone, much lighter, enjoyable, and the sound will come for the spectators… You run it in what? Sustainable fuel.
“I can’t see where we will get it wrong. The fans [will] have something that we have to give [them] to.”
The politics are the point. He went further, claiming the FIA can force the switch regardless of whether the power unit manufacturers support it — “without any votes from the PUMs”, as he put it.
That’s a remarkable line to draw in public. In a sport that has spent the last decade courting manufacturers with complex, hybrid-heavy technology pitches, the FIA president is essentially saying the governing body can — and will — reset the direction of travel on its own terms. It’s hard not to read it as a message aimed at multiple audiences at once: to fans who miss lighter, louder cars; to teams tired of spiralling costs; and to manufacturers being reminded who writes the rulebook.
The timing is also no accident. 2026 was always going to be a year of scrutiny, because the new engine and chassis philosophies arrived with baggage before a wheel was even turned. The 50/50 split between combustion and electrical power has been a lightning rod, and while the chassis has avoided quite the same heat, it hasn’t escaped criticism either — particularly around the ever-present question of mass and agility.
Ben Sulayem’s 630kg vision, though, is where rhetoric meets uncomfortable reality. F1 last lived around that territory a long time ago: cars sat at roughly 600kg in 2002. By 2013 they’d climbed past his “ideal” number, reaching 642kg, and the hybrid era plus stronger crash structures only accelerated the trend. The cars hit 800kg last season before being brought down to 768kg for 2026.
Those numbers matter because they underline the scale of what’s being proposed. You don’t lose 130kg through clever packaging alone. You lose it by making different choices — about power units, about chassis philosophy, about how much hardware you’re willing to carry, and about what compromises the sport is prepared to accept.
That’s why the V8 angle isn’t a side quest; it’s central to the sales pitch. If the FIA can sell a simpler, lighter engine architecture as the first domino, it becomes easier to argue the rest of the car can slim down too. If it can’t, the 630kg target starts to look like a slogan rather than a plan.
Still, there’s a clear undercurrent here: the FIA president believes F1 has allowed itself to drift into an arms race of complexity — and that it’s now paying for it in weight, cost and spectacle. Whether teams and manufacturers agree is almost secondary at this stage. Ben Sulayem is planting a flag for what the post-2026 conversation will become.
The next few years will tell us whether it’s the start of a genuine course correction, or simply the opening gambit in a long negotiation that ends, as it often does in F1, somewhere in the messy middle.
