The FIA has moved to cool one of the hottest arguments in the 2026 paddock, confirming that energy management rules will be adjusted ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix and teeing up a decisive round of talks on Monday with Formula One Management, team principals and power unit manufacturers.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said a meeting with the drivers on Friday proved “constructive and collaborative”, with the grid feeding in what he called “invaluable input” on changes they want to see — particularly around deployment and harvesting, which have dominated driver briefings and post-session debriefs since the new regulations landed.
That matters because this isn’t a minor sporting tweak. The way the current rules push drivers into lifting and coasting in qualifying to bank battery, or into aggressive “super clipping” at the end of straights to claw energy back from the internal combustion engine, has become a sore point across the grid. Drivers have been blunt: the constant state-of-charge calculation is dictating racecraft, creating poor starts when the battery window isn’t right, and manufacturing overtakes — or preventing them — depending on who has energy at the right moment.
The complaints have been framed in unusually colourful terms in recent weeks, with the “Mario Kart” jibes and “mushroom boost” comparisons reflecting a genuine frustration that the racing can feel staged when the energy delta is doing as much of the talking as the drivers’ right feet.
The safety angle has sharpened that debate too. Oliver Bearman’s huge crash at Suzuka, where he was caught out by the closing speed to Franco Colapinto and took avoiding action before ending up hard in the barrier, has been cited privately in the paddock as a reminder that sudden speed differentials aren’t just a spectacle issue. Bearman’s impact was recorded at 50G, and while he was able to walk away, the incident has only intensified the push to make the energy picture more predictable — and less prone to extremes.
All of that lands on Monday, when the sport’s key stakeholders meet to discuss potential changes to the 2026 regulations, with the power unit rules the main focus. The end point is clear: the FIA says “final proposals” will go to a World Motor Sport Council e-vote after those discussions.
Ben Sulayem’s statement was short but pointed: “Safety and the best interests of the sport are the main focus of these discussions,” he said, adding that the FIA has already held “a series of meetings” in recent weeks with technical representatives from the teams, the power unit manufacturers and FOM.
What’s shifted, notably, is the tone between the drivers and the FIA. There had been scepticism that the grid would have any real leverage ahead of Monday’s crunch meeting — Lewis Hamilton was among those publicly questioning whether the drivers had any power in the process. Yet the message coming out of Friday’s sit-down was that it was unusually collaborative by modern standards, and that there was genuine alignment on a handful of fixes.
Grand Prix Drivers’ Association director George Russell hinted as much when speaking to media on Friday, describing a more open channel than the paddock has been used to.
“The FIA has been in a lot of comms with a handful of drivers, and that’s been sort of collective, and at least from the FIA technical standpoint, it’s probably the closest relationship we’ve had with them in numerous years,” Russell said. “So that’s very positive to see.”
Russell also pointed to why the problem has become so visible: teams are optimising for lap time under the existing framework, and the easiest gains often come from manipulating the energy model rather than simply driving flat-out.
“There will be a compromise somewhere because, right now, the cars are set up to produce the fastest lap times possible, which is leading to this lift and coast driving style and a bit of energy management here and there, but there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit,” he said.
One of Russell’s examples was the “minus 350-kilowatt super clip”, which he described as “a no-brainer” because removing it would immediately reduce the amount of forced lifting and coasting. He also flagged the kind of detail that often decides whether a regulation works in the real world: constraints on how quickly the engine can be derated, which can make it impossible to transition in and out of the required modes on shorter straights.
In other words, the drivers aren’t simply lobbying for “less management” in abstract terms. They’re pushing for specific, targeted adjustments that stop the cars demanding unnatural inputs at awkward parts of the lap — changes that could make qualifying and wheel-to-wheel phases feel less like a resource-management exercise without unpicking the underlying 2026 concept.
Whether Monday delivers that is the bigger question. The FIA may have the drivers broadly on-side, but the decisive room is the one containing team bosses, manufacturers and FOM — and any meaningful change still has to survive the political reality of stakeholders with competing interests.
For now, though, the direction of travel is clear: the governing body has acknowledged the problem, the drivers have been invited in rather than kept at arm’s length, and the sport is preparing to redraw parts of the energy rulebook in-season. In 2026, that’s about as close as Formula 1 gets to admitting it needs to course-correct.
