FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis open to F1 2026 tweaks despite strong start

FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis has insisted F1’s 2026 regulations are starting from a position of strength – but admits tweaks may be needed.

The first race of the new regulation cycle will be held this weekend in Melbourne, Australia, which will serve as the first litmus test for the complex new power unit regulations.

Nikolas Tombazis is open to F1 2026 regulation adjustments

The new cars are starting the regulation cycle just a few seconds off the pace of the F1 2025 machines in the last year of the previous regulations, with Charles Leclerc’s best time from the pre-season test in Bahrain just three seconds – tyre delta adjusted – shy of Carlos Sainz’s 2025 benchmark.

Given the infancy of the aerodynamic regulations, which have concentrated on a significant downforce reduction compared to last year, the performance levels of the cars are therefore very encouraging from a lap time perspective.

However, the unique driving requirements and some of the unusual characteristics introduced by the new power units meant some of the drivers were quite downbeat about the new rules.

With the cars being somewhat energy-starved on the electrical output of the power unit, a characteristic that will be exacerbated at circuits with long straights and fewer braking zones, the drivers currently need to engage in practices such as lift-and-coast and downshifting along the straights, while engine mapping techniques to harvest power on full throttle have reduced mid-corner speeds at certain turns.

At this early point of the regulations, the discovery of new and unthought-of scenarios means that the rules can be tweaked through constant evolution and, even over the weekend, the FIA revealed some of those changes in the latest iteration of the regulations.

This included the introduction of a new hot-temperature compression ratio test in the technical regulations, with the governing body having responded to the grey area introduced by the wording of a previous regulation that left the door open for different interpretations.

But, with the likes of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton expressing misgivings about the change in ethos required for driving with the new regulations, Tombazis said he believes the regulations are in a good place to start the new cycle, but that doesn’t mean further change won’t be made.

“The cars are new,” he said.

“In the period of last summer and last autumn, a lot of people were driving the simulators and expressing huge concerns.

“I think the comments in Barcelona and in Bahrain are certainly much better than what people [found] on the simulator.

“But there are still some comments, like what Max said. I think they are getting used to the new cars, but we are completely conscious that we may need to make adjustments.

“That has been a discussion we’ve been open about with the teams and the PU manufacturers for a long, long time. And with the drivers, indeed.

“So I think there are some ways that we can act as a sport to make adjustments in the rules.”

Any changes for introduction during 2026 would need to be introduced via a supermajority vote amongst the members of the F1 Commission, or through the Power Unit Advisory Committee for PU-related matters, while changes for 2027 would need a majority.

“I think there are some ways that we can act as a sport to make adjustments in the rules,” Tombazis said of this process.

“Clearly, they would also need approval through the governance process.

“While we can’t just say tomorrow ‘we’ll change this and change that’, there’s a process.

“We are taking the drivers’ comments into consideration, and we are asking them a number of questions to give us feedback, and to the teams.

“The teams and the PU manufacturers are being extremely constructive in this process. So I don’t think we are exactly where we’re going to be in a few months from now, we may have to make some adjustments.

“Frankly, I don’t think the adjustments are huge that we need to make.”

What kind of changes could be made?

With the cars proving tricky to drive from an aerodynamic perspective, thus increasing the challenge for the drivers, the main area in which changes could be made is in the refinement of the power unit and energy deployment rules.

For example, the possibility of increasing the harvesting rate during ‘super-clipping’ to 350kW has been explored from a dynamics perspective during the final day in Bahrain, which reduces the need for excessive lift-and-coast into corners.

But nothing is planned regarding this potential change until the data from a sample set of a few races has been gathered.

With revisions of this nature being software-controlled rather than being part of the hardware design, Tombazis said there is the possibility of further change, but doesn’t feel such tweaks are urgent.

“There wouldn’t be any need for any change of your system,” Tombazis said.

“It would be more about how you run your system. Clearly, if you go to a power unit engineer, they would say, ‘Well, that changes a bit the duty cycle. And if I had known it, I would have maybe done this slightly different,’ or whatever.”

That’s true, but fundamentally, cars are on different levels of electrical energy, and how that is deployed can affect some of these issues.

“We think we are not in a bad place where we are now. But, if there needs to be some adjustments following these comments, we will discuss them all collectively as a sport and do what’s needed.”

Compared to the doom-and-gloom predictions from the drivers based on their simulator experiences throughout 2025, Tombazis believes the real-world findings show that the new regulations are starting from a decent position.

“I think, if you take the comments that were being made in November or October or last summer, I think we are way, way better, and we’ve addressed a lot of the concerns.

“Have we addressed every single concern? No. I think there are some topics that are still open.

“Drivers are used to driving, extracting the maximum performance and driving a certain way, and they have to adapt. And, until we solve these issues, it is correct that they give this feedback and, sometimes, that will sound like complaining. It’s part of the game.

“Of course, it is very easy to say, yes, if the internal combustion was much bigger and the ERS were much smaller, there would be fewer of these problems. And that is true. We’ve known that the 50/50 power solution has challenges, right from 2022.

“It’s not new or a surprise. We’ve done a huge amount of work to work on how this energy is deployed. And I think we’ve done, in my view, 90 per cent of the work to get to a reasonable place. There may be some adjustments as we’ve learned about the cars, and we are fully open to doing that.”

If an issue or topic does arise that needs quick adjustment, just how fast could a proposal make it into the regulations?

“We are learning as we go along,” Tombazis said. “And the first real test will be the first race, because here [in Bahrain testing] they’re not really racing each other and so on. These changes do need a bit of discussion. There may be a few weeks of discussion, and we also need to go through the governance process.

“It’s unlikely to be something between Australia and China, for example. But it’s also not months and months.

“We’ll take the decision for the best of the sport. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I definitely hope that Australia will be exciting. But I don’t think Australia is the [be-all and end-all]. We have five years to go through, and we have very clear tools on how to act on things.

“We will see where we stand. And, as I say, discuss them openly and transparently, and do our best.”

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