Charles Leclerc warns of ‘extremely difficult’ overtaking under F1 2026 regulations

Charles Leclerc has warned overtaking will be “extremely difficult” with the new regulations and the price of doing so will be “a lot more costly.”

Max Verstappen has led a wave of negativity surrounding the new rule set which sees cars becoming increasingly dependent on how well the driver can manage the battery levels.

Charles Leclerc makes worrying overtaking prediction

A 50/50 power split between the ICE and the battery has resulted in drivers having to get their heads around a new way to race, focused on preserving battery power rather than outright speed.

These changes come after an era in which it proved difficult to overtake due to the dirty air produced by the ground effect cars but even now, it seems drivers are still having a difficult time passing.

While there has yet to be any competitive action, testing in Bahrain with other cars on track has allowed teams to get some data and the feedback has been far from positive.

Esteban Ocon was one of the first to raise the alarm, suggesting his first thought was that it would be “difficult to pass.”

“I’ve been following a few cars. You seem to lose quite a lot of front load, a bit more maybe than before, but we need to see. And the overtake [mode], yes, I played with it.

“I don’t want to give too early conclusions on how it’s going to be because obviously, you know, it needs to be adjusted, optimised, etc. for that to work in a perfect way. But so far, it looks to be difficult to pass. That’s my first thought about it, but I hope it’s going to get on the easier side.”

Ocon’s words have been echoed by Ferrari driver Leclerc who foresaw that it would be costly on the battery for drivers to get round their rivals.

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“We’ve checked it, and I kind of share what my colleagues have said,” he said. “I find it at the moment extremely difficult to get any overtakes, but it might improve with time in how we manage these kind of situations.

“But it always comes with a price whenever you’ve got to overtake, and the price is a lot more costly than it was in the past. So that’s why I think it’s very, very difficult to make an overtake and then pull away like it was the case last year. That’s tricky.”

Asked about his thoughts in general on the regulation changes, Leclerc was not quite as pessimistic as Verstappen but did say they had lost an aspect of the “attack” that he loved with the previous generations.

“It’s getting better but the starting point was extremely different to whatever I’ve been used to in my career previously,” he said, having been an early critic of the rules this time last year.

“I think it’s a huge change for Formula 1, it’s different. There’s a little bit less of attack, which is what I loved with previous F1 cars.

“Now it’s different but it’s getting better and obviously we are still trying to find our marks with these, with these new cars, so many different things, so many new systems that we as drivers need to understand in order to extract the maximum out of those. So a lot of work, but it’s getting better.”

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