Nigel Mansell hasn’t needed long to form an opinion on Formula 1’s 2026 reset, and it’s not a diplomatic one.
With the championship only three races old under the new chassis-and-power-unit package, the 1992 world champion has taken aim at what he sees as the sport’s emerging tell: plenty of passes on paper, but too many that feel engineered rather than earned. In Mansell’s words, some of the overtaking is “totally false” — a product of how the new power units deploy energy rather than a driver forcing the issue.
That complaint has been bubbling around the paddock since the season opened. The headline numbers look healthy: more on-track overtakes, more position changes, more “action”. But the pushback — from certain drivers and now from one of the sport’s most forthright former champions — is about the texture of it. If the pass is dictated by when the car is allowed to give you the shove, and the counter-pass arrives almost automatically a straight later, what exactly are we applauding?
Mansell’s example was telling because it cut right to the driver’s seat perspective. He referenced Lando Norris’ comments after Suzuka, where Norris described being effectively compelled into a move he didn’t want to make in a fast section — not because the gap was on, but because the car’s delivery made him a passenger in the decision. The problem, as Mansell frames it, isn’t that drivers are making mistakes or misjudging risk; it’s that they’re being put into moments where the car commits them, then leaves them exposed immediately afterwards.
“I might get shot for saying this,” Mansell said in an interview with Autosport, before leaning into the point. Some overtakes look brilliant in isolation, he argued, then unravel the moment the next corner or straight arrives and the power swings back the other way. He painted a familiar picture from the first few rounds: a car surges through, the grandstand reacts, then the passed car “just blasts past you” as the other one “goes backwards” — because the deployment hasn’t arrived when the driver would have chosen to use it.
That’s the nub of his frustration: not that modern F1 is complicated — it always is — but that the balance between human decision-making and system behaviour is starting to show through in a way fans can feel, even if they don’t all describe it in technical terms.
Mansell’s read is that they do feel it. “An awful lot of them are very grumpy,” he said, adding that he doesn’t blame them. It’s classic Mansell: less interested in protecting the concept than defending the sensation of what a pass is supposed to mean.
He’s also stepping into a debate that has already split the current grid. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have been among those speaking positively about the new rules, while others — including Norris and Max Verstappen — have been more sceptical about where this is heading. That divergence matters, because it hints at a deeper truth: different cars, different power unit behaviours, and different driving styles are being rewarded — or punished — in ways that aren’t yet fully stable.
And the sport has heard enough noise to move quickly. During the April gap, teams met with the FIA, Formula 1 and the power unit manufacturers to discuss early-season trends and what could sensibly be refined without undermining the entire concept. The result is a set of changes due to come in from the Miami Grand Prix onwards, framed partly around safety and partly around improving how hard drivers can push over a qualifying lap.
From the governing body’s side, the tone has been deliberately calming. FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis insisted this hasn’t been a crisis response so much as an early tidy-up — “an evolution, it’s not a revolution,” as he put it. His metaphor was that F1 isn’t “in intensive care”; it just needs to “exercise a bit more” and “eat a couple of apples a day” — tweaks and vitamins rather than surgery.
That language is doing two jobs. First, it’s a signal that the FIA isn’t about to throw its 2026 project into reverse at the first sign of controversy. Second, it’s an acknowledgement — however gently delivered — that the opening races have exposed behaviours the sport would rather not normalise.
Because Mansell’s “false” overtaking line isn’t just nostalgia dressed up as critique. It’s a warning about what happens when viewers start treating passes as temporary, almost transactional moments. If everyone expects the DRS-era “swap back” rhythm to be replaced by a new, energy-led version of the same thing, you risk numbing the audience again — even while the raw overtake count climbs.
Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, for his part, has defended the new rules’ early impact by pointing to strong viewing figures and race attendance. That’s a fair play in the short term: interest in a new era is naturally high, and the sport’s reach remains enormous. But Mansell is talking about retention, not launch-day curiosity — whether the racing, once the novelty wears off, feels like a contest between drivers or a demonstration of competing deployment profiles.
Miami, then, arrives as more than a standard early-season stop. It’s the first proper stress test of the sport’s willingness to refine its new machinery quickly — and of whether those refinements can preserve what the regulations were meant to deliver: closer racing without turning the act of overtaking into something that looks impressive on TV but feels oddly predetermined to the people doing it.
Mansell won’t be the last former driver to lob a grenade into this debate. He might just be the one who said it in the simplest terms: if the car is deciding too much, the pass doesn’t land the way it should. And in 2026, with F1 trying to sell a new era as both cleaner and better, perception is the one thing it can’t afford to leave to chance.
