Carlos Sainz doesn’t tend to waste words when something in Formula 1 feels wrong, and at Silverstone he sounded genuinely irritated by what this season’s power-unit deployment has done to one of the calendar’s purest laps.
The Williams driver said the British Grand Prix circuit has effectively been “downgraded” by the way the current energy usage plays out across a lap — an issue that’s been bubbling away all year but hits hardest at the fastest, most flowing venues. Silverstone, with its long periods at full throttle and stretches of high-speed commitment, simply doesn’t give the car many natural opportunities to harvest enough energy to keep the electrical side of the power unit doing what it’s meant to do.
And when the battery’s not there, the whole character of the lap changes.
“Probably the most difficult one up until now for this concept of engine,” Sainz said in the Silverstone media pen, backing up criticisms already aired by Max Verstappen. “Yeah, the simulator was pretty shocking… a clear sign and understanding that whatever we came up with for this year is not good enough.”
That “shocking” verdict matters because it’s not just a performance gripe, it’s a feel thing. Drivers can live with a car that’s tricky; they don’t take kindly to a circuit being neutered by systems management. Silverstone’s magic is momentum — the way the car loads up through the fast stuff and the speed builds almost without pause. Take away deployment on the way into those corners and you don’t just lose lap time, you lose the sensation that makes an F1 car an F1 car.
Sainz described the pattern in blunt terms: once the energy is gone, the car becomes a different machine through the high-speed sequences because there’s no meaningful harvesting in those sections to rebuild what’s been spent. “You basically run out of energy and power very quickly into the high speed,” he said. “Because there’s a combination of very high speed corners you don’t harvest any battery… without the electric… you’re obviously a lot slower into the high speed and you don’t have as much power and as much momentum through it.”
There’s a wider implication here that teams don’t particularly love discussing in public: when the power delivery becomes situational, racing becomes situational too. Silverstone should be about bravery, aero efficiency and tyre management across long-load corners. Instead, Sainz expects it to lean into an energy chess match — and not always in a flattering way.
After qualifying 15th for the Sprint, he was fairly pessimistic about the on-track product. “Probably one of the most entertaining tracks, my opinion, for the wrong reasons, because we are very energy starved,” he said. “And we will be playing with the ‘I spend [energy] here, but then you pass me back’.”
That’s the “yo-yo” effect drivers have complained about at different points this year: you deploy to attack, get the move done, then become vulnerable as your battery state drops away — which encourages the car behind to do the same. It can create action, but it’s action that sometimes feels more like a systems swing than a hard-earned overtake.
It’s also why the championship has been so keen to tweak the direction of travel for 2026. Adjustments have already been made to offer drivers more usable performance — including increasing peak superclipping power to help them recharge their batteries more quickly — and Silverstone was always flagged as a circuit that could embarrass the new formula if the solution wasn’t found.
Sainz made the case in almost philosophical terms: the rules had to move because the sport can’t be seen to be spoiling its best venues.
“That’s why the regs change was necessary for next year,” he said, “because a great racetrack… being… downgraded because of the way you do an engine, is not what F1 should be about.”
Across the next two seasons, cars are set to shift toward a 60-40 split in favour of internal combustion power, reducing the dependency on battery deployment. In theory, that should put the drivers back in a more consistent window through long, fast sequences — and stop the sport’s most iconic laps from feeling like they’ve got invisible speed bumps.
Sainz expects an improvement, but he’s not pretending it’s a silver bullet. “It will improve it,” he said. “It’s not what we would want still… but the power will make you arrive quicker into these corners and cut later, so the feeling of the car should be better.”
For this weekend, though, Silverstone looks set to be a test of restraint as much as aggression — not just for Williams, but for everyone. The crowd will get the noise and the spectacle regardless; Sainz even pointed that out with a smile. But the underlying frustration is clear: when drivers talk about a circuit being “downgraded”, it’s not nostalgia. It’s a warning that the sport’s technology is starting to dictate the racing in places where the track should be doing the talking.
