Formula 1 is moving quickly to put a lid on one of the more awkward side-effects of 2026’s power unit reset: qualifying laps that look fast on the timing screens, but don’t feel remotely “qualifying” from the cockpit.
After a wave of complaints about lift-and-coast, heavy harvesting phases and the now-famous “super clipping” routines — all of it driven by the new 50/50 split between combustion and electrical power — the FIA has agreed a set of targeted tweaks with F1 management, team principals and the power unit manufacturers. They’ll arrive immediately, starting at the Miami Grand Prix.
The headline numbers are simple enough. In qualifying, the maximum permitted recharge drops from 8MJ to 7MJ, while peak super-clip power increases to 350kW. In the race, maximum Boost power is capped at +150kW. The intent is equally straightforward: stop drivers having to nurse the lap like it’s the final stint on a tight fuel target, and let them actually attack the lap again.
McLaren technical director for performance Mark Temple is convinced the most visible change will be psychological as much as technical. From Miami onward, he expects the amount of lift-and-coast and super clipping required on a qualifying lap to shrink to something resembling the minor compromises drivers used to make under previous regulations — more like the occasional short management phase than a lap built around energy games.
“You have this, let’s call it lift and coast, or coasting into corners,” Temple explained when asked about the driver feedback that has been bubbling up since the season began. The pattern has been familiar across the grid: sacrifice corner approach speed and throttle time to harvest as much energy as possible, then spend it on the straights to hit the “very high speeds” these cars are still capable of.
It’s been messy to watch at times, but more importantly it’s been messy to drive. Even the best qualifier in the world doesn’t want to build confidence by rolling into a braking zone and hoping the energy numbers line up a few corners later. As Max Verstappen put it earlier in the year, it took the “fun” out of it — and when drivers start using that kind of language about qualifying, it’s usually because the lap no longer rewards the instinctive, committed approach fans associate with a Saturday.
Temple’s take is that the new framework shifts the burden away from the driver’s right foot and back into the control systems of the power unit.
“One of them is what we call lift-and-coast, which should no longer be a thing in qualifying,” he said. Previously, that meant a driver physically lifting early, coasting into the braking zone, and only then getting onto the brakes. The updated approach, as Temple describes it, is that the car can stay at full throttle longer and let the power unit recover energy more efficiently without forcing the same exaggerated, visible lift phase.
In McLaren’s view, the important bit isn’t just lap time — it’s the feel. Drivers want the clean, natural sequence: flat out, then hard brake. Not flat out, then a strange, deliberate pause, then brake. Temple suggests the revised rules should keep “Straight Mode” active and reduce how much the car bleeds speed before the braking event, which in turn restores a more conventional rhythm to the lap.
The second part is about the duration of the worst of the super-clipping behaviour. Temple says the total time spent in any single clipping or coasting phase is “significantly reduced”, making it a smaller compromise rather than a defining feature of the lap. He framed it as something closer to what drivers have lived with for years: the kind of tiny management adjustments you’d make for tyres or fuel rather than a lap dictated by harvesting.
“That will make qualifying feel much more natural to the drivers,” he said, adding that there are also “more complicated rules” around deployment that have been simplified, again with the driver workload in mind.
It’s telling that the sales pitch here isn’t “this will make the cars quicker” — although it may well do that in certain segments — but “this will make the cars nicer to qualify.” That’s a very 2026 problem. The new power unit philosophy has created a scenario where the sport can hit its efficiency targets and still end up with something that doesn’t pass the eye test on a Saturday. The FIA’s response is essentially to admit that the first iteration leaned too far into the energy-management theatre, and to rebalance the equation before it becomes normalised.
There is, of course, a wider competitive subtext. Any mid-season (or early-season) rule adjustment creates winners and losers — not necessarily in outright pace, but in who has already built their operational habits around the old constraints. Teams that were sharper at scripting those awkward harvest-and-deploy patterns may find that advantage diluted, while those that hated the compromises could suddenly look cleaner and more consistent over a single lap.
Miami will be the first proper read on whether this is a neat course correction or the start of a longer calibration process. Temple is optimistic; others in the paddock have been more cautious about whether tweaks like these can fully restore the “purity” drivers are asking for.
But the direction of travel is clear: F1 has listened, at least on qualifying. And if Miami delivers what Temple is suggesting — fewer contrived coasting phases, less of the strange staccato throttle trace, and more laps that look and feel like pole laps — then this might be remembered as one of the quickest, most pragmatic fixes the sport has made in the early days of a new regulation era.
