Alex Brundle urges FIA to act over F1 2026 start safety fears

Formula 1 pundit Alex Brundle has called for the sport’s authorities to “step in” to eliminate safety concerns over race starts in the F1 2026 season.

The F1 2026 season is scheduled to begin in less than three weeks with the Australian Grand Prix, the sport’s traditional curtain raiser, in Melbourne.

Turbo lag and stalled cars raise fresh concerns before Melbourne opener

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The race at Albert Park will mark the start of Formula 1’s new era after the engine and chassis regulations were overhauled over the winter.

F1 has embraced 50 per cent electrification, fully sustainable fuels and active aerodynamics for the new season in some of the biggest rule changes in its history.

The new F1 2026 cars have received a lukewarm response so far, with Red Bull driver and four-time world champion Max Verstappen branding the new machinery “anti-racing” last week.

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Verstappen’s concerns were echoed by Lewis Hamilton, the Ferrari driver and seven-time world champion, who added that some demands of the new cars are “not what racing is about.”

Safety concerns have grown in recent days over race starts in F1 2026 due to an increase in turbo lag with the new-generation cars.

With the MGU-H removed from the engine’s architecture for 2026, turbo lag has re-emerged as an issue, leading to calls for a prolonged race start procedure to guard against potentially dangerous incidents off the line.

As reported by PlanetF1.com on Saturday, Ferrari is understood to have resisted efforts to tweak the race start procedure for 2026 last year.

However, the FIA can push through a change on safety grounds ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.

Brundle, a former racing driver and the son of veteran Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle, had called for the sport’s authorities to “step in” on the issue, warning that stalling on a packed grid is “one of the scariest things in racing.”

In a post to social media, Brundle wrote: “The smart thing to do is step in on these grand prix start protocols.

“It’s a pure safety concern. Sitting on the grid stationary, waiting for the unsighted driver from P20 to hit you, is one of the scariest things in racing.”

Put to him that introducing a 10-second gap between the last car arriving on the grid and the start of the lights procedure would resolve matters, he replied: “Yeah exactly something like that will help.”

Asked to outline the problem faced by drivers when a car stalls on the grid, he added: “They don’t know ‘which one’ will stall, then they get unsighted by all the other cars trying to miss them them at the last min[ute].”

Andrea Stella, the team principal of reigning constructors’ champion McLaren, was among the more outspoken voices on the topic in last week’s test in Bahrain.

Stella told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “We need to make sure that the race start procedure allows all cars to have the power unit ready to go.

“Because the grid is not the place in which you want to have cars slow in taking off.

“This is a bigger interest than any competitive interest, so I think all teams and the FIA should play the game of responsibility when it comes to what is needed in terms of the race start procedure.

“I’m thinking about the timings, for instance, the timing of the lights, the timing before the lights – they need to be in the right place to make sure that, first of all, that’s a safe phase of the way we go racing.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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