Gasly brands ground-effect era “unsustainable” as drivers eye 2026 reset
Pierre Gasly didn’t sugarcoat it. After three seasons of low-slung, floor-hungry F1 cars, the Alpine driver says the ground-effect era has simply taken too much out of the people actually driving them.
“The one thing we haven’t really been too happy as drivers is just the amount of bouncing,” Gasly said, reflecting on the 2022–25 rules that rewarded teams for running cars brutally low. “Physically for our backs, I think we all agree that it’s been rough. It’s not sustainable over a full career, so I think that’s a good thing that they sort of moved away from it.”
The remarks land as F1 prepares to flip the script for 2026. The next-gen package dials back the floor’s authority and introduces more conventional aero, with active wings and a big step up in electrical energy from the power unit. In theory, that means less porpoising, less plank-smashing stiffness, and fewer afternoons spent rattling over kerbs like a jackhammer on four wheels.
The bounce, of course, became the symbol of an era. Teams chased downforce by slamming ride heights and stiffening platforms; the physics paid in lap time, but the feedback loop when the floor stalled — the porpoising — punished drivers on long runs and, just as maddeningly, sometimes popped up when the fuel burned off and the grip came up.
Haas rookie Oliver Bearman, who’s jumped into the deep end this year, didn’t hold back either. “The bounce thing and the ride and the uncomfortableness of these cars, they are horrible,” he said. “Coming from tracks like Las Vegas, Mexico, even Qatar a little bit, the stiffness that you have to run to achieve performance with these cars means that you are getting out the car and can’t sleep the night because your back is hurting that much.”
He’s not exaggerating the randomness, either. “You know you can go from FP3 with a certain fuel load and a certain grip level, and the car is absolutely fine, and then you get to qualifying, suddenly you start bouncing, and you lose an infinite amount of lap time, because the confidence drop is just exponential.”
There’s a performance angle and a human one. The former is obvious: a car that pitches and hops when you’re building speed is like trying to write your name on a trampoline. The latter is the reason the paddock will quietly welcome 2026. As Bearman put it: “I really hope the next year cars don’t bounce, especially if I want to have a long career in F1. If they continue like this, I don’t think many of us would see all those guys racing into their late 40s, like Lewis and Fernando.”
The Brit painted a vivid picture of race-day reality on the rougher venues. “I struggle to be comfortable, especially sleeping. It’s challenging, the day after a race, and you know, sometimes even two days after the race, when it’s a tough track; Mexico is a good example, where you have to ride the kerbs, and that is just painful. You’re really counting down those last 15 laps… there’s actually no rest in the race.”
The irony is that 2022’s reset was designed to make racing closer — and it did, to a point — but the unintended consequence was a generation of cars that, even after tweaks, often ran too low and too stiff for comfort. F1’s 2026 vision attempts a balance: shift reliance off the underfloor, allow the aero platform to breathe a little, and use smart, movable devices in tandem with beefed-up hybrid deployment to keep speeds up without turning the drivers into crash-test dummies.
Whether it all lands neatly is anyone’s guess, including Gasly’s. “I think it will take some time, and probably we need to be very open-minded on what we might see,” he said. “But ultimately, what I want is to be fighting at the front of the field, regardless of whatever type of racing we have — just want to be at the front.”
That’s the nub of it. Drivers will tolerate a lot in pursuit of lap time. The ground-effect cars asked too much. If 2026 delivers on its promise — better ride, less punishment, and a cleaner aero wake — the sport keeps the speed and loses the bruises. The rest, as always, will be down to who nails the regs first.
