Fernando Alonso puts F1 2026 rules under scrutiny with ‘no driver talent needed’
Fernando Alonso hopes the upcoming Aston Martin upgrade can put the team into the midfield.
Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso has launched another critique of the F1 2026 rules, claiming no “driver talent” is needed to overtake.
Instead, the double world champion says it’s all about pressing one button to use battery power to overtake the car ahead.
Fernando Alonso says F1 battery-powered overtakes require no driver talent
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After a spate of relatively calm races, Formula 1 headed to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix with most of the drivers worried that concerns over the sport’s new engines would dominate the weekend.
And they did.
Battery-powered passes were evident in the Sprint where Kimi Antonelli powered past Lewis Hamilton to win the mini race.
Hamilton, who had used his energy deployment earlier in the lap to keep Antonelli behind him, had no answer for the championship leader’s pace.
The grand prix was no different as while there were wheel-to-wheel fights, such as Hamilton versus George Russell, the back-and-forth was dependent on battery power.
It had Alonso declaring that drivers no longer need talent to overtake, they just need a power boost.
“It depends what the fans and the sport want,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media at Silverstone.
“In the Sprint, people overtaking in the middle of the straight with more battery, so there is not any driver input or driver talent needed to overtake a car in front of you.
“You don’t need to outbrake anyone, you don’t need to overtake on the outside, you don’t need to take any risk.
“Just press one button and you overtake if you have a better power unit than the car in front.”
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McLaren’s Oscar Piastri went as far as to blame the current regulations for his Lap 1 incident with Liam Lawson.
Fighting the Racing Bulls teammates for position, he was caught in the middle of a sandwich that left him needing to head to the pits for a new front wing.
Piastri said: “Lap 1 one on these kind of circuits is just carnage.
“It’s almost like a multi-pass race start.
“I was trying to overtake Lindblad, and I seemed like I had more power than him. Lawson then passed me and seemed like he had even more power than me.
“It’s just a mess. You’re trying to judge your speed to the car in front of you, look at the car behind you, but to be honest, I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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