I won't lie, that pleasantly surprised me. The early battle between George and Charles was fun. I think the race would have been more exciting had Max not crashed in quali.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Apparently George wasn't using his energy properly in some of those battles which is why Charles kept getting past.
It's battery racing.
Well yeah, and it's tire degradation management racing, and fuel conserving racing. Also used to be floor/plank conserving racing, which isn't much of a factor anymore.
I was quite excited during that fight, excellent racing. Gave hope for the new regs. Those Mercedes are fast, ย but Leclerc knows how to race.ย
Yeah I thought George would get past and sail into the distance. Was refreshing.
I think Max vs Lando showed that the new regs actually make it harder to pass because last year DRS gave you a huge boost in speed due to the car ahead having much bigger drag. This year the active aero makes the car ahead faster and cuts down on the slipstream hole that would help the car behind. If the car ahead is as good if not better the attacker has nothing to help them pass the line. Russell having the faster car is why he was able to continue attacking Leclerc for as long as he did. Had the positions been reversed Leclerc probably would've had no chance of attacking Russell.
I hope I'm wrong but it seems the defenders get a huge advantage this year. You get to set the pace and then use the battery to instantly retake the position if lost.
I agree with your points, and when you look into rules on energy flow especially, you can see how elements of regulations work against each other. 50/50 power split fundamentally changes how you drive a race car.
- DRS was available at no cost, but increasing your deployment with Overtake has an energy cost and you will need to recover that energy or risk your opponent coming back at you.
- Overtake allows you to harvest 0.5MJ additional energy (baseline is 8MJ). Again, that extra 0.5MJ will likely compromise your straight line speed or braking, as drivers are already struggling to hit 8MJ. Any harvested energy comes from the 3000MJ/h energy fuel flow allowance.
- Battery capacity is 4MJ, FOUR, that's the same as last year! And it can barely hold half of your allowed energy per lap. This makes any macro strategy impossible, battery management is all about the next straight, you just can't sit in someone's slipstream and bank energy for 2-3 laps and wait for an opportunity.
That's exactly what Palmer said on the broadcast.
I enjoyed the race. Those Ferrari starts are something and will definitetly spice up the next few races. No doubt the other teams will figure something out with the starts as the season progresses.
Poor Oscar, what is it with Aussies having such shit luck at their home race? Lindblad looked decent, hopefully it's not just a one-off like we sometimes see.
I wonder how the race would have gone if Ferrari did not fuck up their strategy and instead chose to pit at least one of their drivers during the first VSC.
If Ferrari doesn't fuck the strategy, is it still considered a Formula 1 race??
Ferrari F1: I sleep
Ferrari WEC: real shit
This seemed like a glaringly obvious tactical error. You can never underestimate Ferrari to blow a good car on strategic failures.
If they'd pitted Hamilton (as he said they should have pitted one of them) then he would be either 1 or 2 on the podium.
Sacreligious. How dare you assume Ferrari doesn't clown it up. This is Formula One! We have traditions here!
I'll admit I found the race much better than I imagined especially with all the doom and gloom.
I feel that the drivers who are being most vocal are the ones who are less adaptive at the current time.
I get Max is not enjoying it, but he's on over $50 million to race, and he's arguably the best fucking racing driver of all time so get good.
I just find the whining of people a bit much when they get to live a life how they do.
Glad I didn't wake up in the middle of the night to watch that. Overtakes just felt artificial, the only interesting battle was Gasly v Ocon, and we saw barely any of that because the coverage seems somehow even worse than last year.
I think that's what's making me lose interest more than the new rules. We saw basically nothing of cars lower than 6th place other than stupid picture in picture, if I wanted a screen that small I'd watch the whole thing on my phone. There was minimal graphics and even less talk about strategy with the new rules, where and why battery is being deployed etc. We're watching cars breeze past each other as the commentator screams about how exciting this is and keeps banging on about sweets. (This is Sky coverage, so idk if it's better elsewhere, but I assume everyone has the same images at least.)
The coverage was absolutely weird. I remember looking at the standings mid race and suddenly going "hold on, when did Hulkenberg drop out?" and when Alonso came back on track and retired again I was like "when did that happen?" And I didn't even know about the absolutely shocking Colapinto almost driving into Lawson until after the race when I saw Russell react to it in the cooldown room. I'm 100% sure I missed some fights because the broadcast was too busy showing Merc and Ferrari and then Max and Lando.
When did you start watching? Hรผlkenberg never started the race, so maybe you missed it because it happened before you started watching?
I guess I was too shocked from Piastri not starting that I didn't notice Hรผlkenberg wasn't on the grid.
At least on the Austrian feed we get told such things in audio (at least three times, because the commentators wants to drive home everything he says lol).
Overtakes just felt artificial,
Sure, Russell shoots by from 100M back while the other guy looks like he hit the brakes. As long as F1 relies on the aero slot cars formula, it will all be processive races with fake passing. It will get worse as all teams will use data to train algorithms to harvest and deploy power in exactly the same way.
Complaining about the images the international TV directors are choosing to show, is a tradition for Austrian commentators lol
Outside of the early Russell and Leclerc fighting. It was your basic boring race.
Gasly/Ocon and Lindblad/Bearman also was interesting for a while, and of course the eternal "rivalry" Lawson has with Perez
Hey Max, I thought you said it wasn't racy enough? Not from you, no.
Racing has evolved. I most definitely approve of the added strategy elements in how to plan overtakes now. The Swedish Viaplay commentators likened it to Indycar oval racing and I agree.
So basically a lottery every race.
You need to watch more Indycar oval racing ;)
But in some ways yes - adding more strategy to the drivers' toolboxes will hopefully mean the race results are less predictable than based purely on the cars' performances.
FIA fucked up again. Once again, cars are getting stuck behind each other because of dirty air and the only passes are because of battery power. It looks like racing, it's fake, and with Oscar Pastrami, dangerous when the electric motor kicks in.
Once all teams learn to harvest and use the battery power the same way, we will go back to the processions of two formulas ago and slot car racing.
Dirty air will be gone once we ban all aero elements, including wings, and go back to 1950s cars lol
1000hp soap box racing sounds fun.