Steering Wheel Engineers
In the fifth weekend of the 2026 season, there are still many fans who have not yet fully understood the workings of the new era of Formula 1. Words like megajoule, kilowatt, superclipping, recharge are still obscure to most of the public and many, to be honest, are not even interested in understanding what is being talked about.
Certainly, the drivers in 2026 have almost become skilled engineers, with Lewis Hamilton confiding in February that to drive this generation of single-seaters “a degree would be needed“. He also added that it took as many as 7 meetings to explain it to him.
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Norris and the frustration of the formation lap
In recent years the formation lap – the one before the fast lap in qualifying – has become a key moment of the weekend, useful to optimize the tires and the entire car package to get the most out of the car’s potential. With energy management, another parameter has been added, which is driving the drivers crazy.
Interesting in this regard is the story of Lando Norris from Thursday in Montreal: “If you go too slow, you are penalized. If you go too fast, you are penalized. In short, it’s really difficult. You spend your laps not only watching who is behind you and where others are with blue flags and things like that, but you spend half the time looking at the display trying to make sure you don’t go too fast or too slow. Going too fast is very easy and this makes you lose boost pressure, you have a bad exit, the battery drains. If you go too slow you don’t recharge the battery enough and here too you have problems. If you then encounter blue flags you have to slow down and then accelerate again, but if you accelerate again you consume the battery again.”
Read more Hamilton: “I still have a contract, retirement is not even in my thoughts”
Just reading Norris’s story causes anxiety. The Englishman then concluded on a bitter note: “No skill should be required for these kinds of things. Yet to have a perfect execution you have to be quite good. In any case, we analyzed things after Miami and we will try to do a better job in this regard.”
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