Three races in, and F1’s brand-new rulebook is already heading to court. The April 9 emergency summit could determine whether this era becomes a classic, or a cautionary, tale.
It takes a lot to rattle the Formula 1 establishment. Years of lobbying and millions in development budgets created the 2026 regulations. And yet, after just three Grands Prix, the sport is scrambling to fix what it built.
On April 9, technical directors from every team, power unit manufacturers, and representatives from the FIA and Formula One Management will meet in London to assess the damage and discuss potential solutions before Miami on May 3. The goal is to agree on a package of changes fast enough to actually matter. That’s a short runway.
So what exactly is broken? The biggest headache is what happens at the end of straights. Under the new rules, cars split their power roughly 50/50 between an electric motor and a traditional combustion engine. The problem is that the electrical energy runs out. When it does, the car doesn’t just slow down a little; it falls off a cliff. Lando Norris described watching his speed bleed away at Suzuka as something that “hurts your soul.” Watching it from the grandstand is arguably worse.
The fix being discussed is relatively simple in concept: allow drivers to harvest more energy while still on full throttle, a technique called “super clipping,” rather than forcing them to lift off the accelerator to recharge. Currently, super clipping is capped at a lower energy recovery rate than lift-and-coast, which is why drivers keep choosing the more disruptive option. Equalising that limit could go a long way toward keeping cars at consistent speeds down the straights.
But speed drops aren’t the only item on the agenda. Qualifying has become a bizarre lottery. In China, Charles Leclerc’s car essentially confused itself mid-lap because of an algorithmic quirk in the power management system. He backed off the throttle ever so slightly, tripped a threshold, and lost a bunch of energy at entirely the wrong moment. Leclerc called it “a bit silly.” That’s a generous reading. The meetings will look at stripping out some of the more arcane rules in the energy management playbook so that drivers, not code, are setting lap times again.
There’s also the thorny question of politics. Mercedes and Ferrari are said to be resistant to sweeping changes as both have built their 2026 cars around the current rules and are leading the championship. Toto Wolff has publicly insisted the racing is fine while conceding qualifying needs work. Red Bull, struggling at the back, want more done. That tension is going to fill the room on April 9.
No one is pretending this is a quick fix. Fundamental changes to the combustion engine’s fuel flow would require hardware modifications that teams couldn’t implement mid-season even if they wanted to. What comes out of London will almost certainly be targeted and surgical, and enough to improve the show, not enough to redraw the competitive order.
But the fact that the meetings are happening at all, barely a month into the season, tells you everything about how the opening three races have landed. F1 built something new and exciting. Now it needs to make sure it’s safe, as well as admit if some of it isn’t working yet.
