Key F1 concern raised after latest change to 2026 regulations

Former F1 driver Anthony Davidson has raised concerns that overtaking may become more difficult due to the recent regulation changes that were announced.

Across the opening three rounds of the campaign, drivers voiced their concerns with the new cars which differ greatly from the previous generation due to the influence of the battery.

Last time out at the Japanese Grand Prix, a major crash saw Oliver Bearman hit the wall after being caught out by the speed differential as he approached the rear of Franco Colapinto's car.

As Davidson highlighted, the incident was caused by the use of the 'boost' button, which offers the driver a short burst of straight-line speed.

“The boost in the race situation, as we saw in Suzuka, with the Bearman and Colopinto incident going into the Spoon curve, that wasn't to do with necessarily Colopinto’s Alpine slowing down unexpectedly,” Davidson told Sky F1.

“It was actually because of Bearman's press of the boost button, in an area where, to be fair, you wouldn't usually expect someone to be pressing the boost button there. w

“When you’re pressing the boost button for the first three races, they were getting the full 350 kilowatts deployment, so around 470 horsepower, if the battery had enough state of charge to deliver that, which it did for Bearman.

“That’s what caused the massive 50 kilometres an hour speed differential between the two cars. It was hard for us to watch, especially from the helicopter cam shot.

“You see one car catching the other one, you naturally assume that it's the car in front going too slow, but it wasn't. It was the car behind overspeeding in that situation.”

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Fresh changes to hurt overtaking?

As part of the changes to the regulations, the FIA has now adjusted how much extra power is delivered via the boost button.

Whereas before the driver was given an extra 350 kW of energy, it has now been reduced to 150 kW.

While it may make the situation safer for the drivers, Davidson is worried that it will impact the opportunity to overtake.

“They've capped it now to 150 kilowatts instead of the 350, just to avoid that ridiculous speed difference between the two cars,” he said.

“So hopefully it will mitigate that. I just hope that it will still allow overtaking to happen. 

“For me, the jury's out on that one but hopefully it will.”