Lando Norris fears F1 2026 racing will remain unchanged despite FIA tweaks
McLaren driver Lando Norris
Lando Norris has welcomed the FIA’s efforts to refine the 2026 rules – but warns the racing itself may not change where it matters.
Norris said that the battery-influenced racing of 2026 is “not how proper racing should be done”. Norris put forward his desire for a karting-esque style of Formula 1 racing, which he believes the fans would get behind.
Lando Norris wary of limits to F1 2026 progress potential
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The FIA has introduced a series of tweaks to the regulations in time for Miami, aimed at encouraging more flat out driving.
Norris, the reigning World Champion, has been a vocal critic of the new regulations during the early stages of F1 2026.
Ahead of the Miami GP, PlanetF1.com asked Norris whether he believes the changes go far enough.
“It’s tough to go that much further honestly,” he said.
“I think when you start to cover up some problems, you also reveal other issues. So there’s only so much you can do with the rules that you have to keep things within.
“I think we would all love more in the direction that they’ve gone, but some of those are more hardware, bigger things to change, and those are hard things to change in the middle of a season when you have one team dominating and doing very well, and another team is struggling.
“It’s difficult from that end to do a lot more, but they have moved things in the right direction, especially for qualifying.
“The race really isn’t going to be that different. So some things are not going to change that much.
“The quali should be a bit more flat out qualifying style laps, which is a nice thing. It’s what we wanted as drivers, so I think we have to be happy with the amount of changes that they’ve done.
“But yes, we will want more. But that’s something we have to be patient for.”
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Despite the driver concerns, F1 president Stefano Domenicali has defended the current cars, while the FIA’s single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said that the sport was not in “intensive care”.
The new regulations appear to be popular with a healthy proportion of the F1 fanbase. Norris was asked for his stance on the driver and fan balance.
“We just have to give our input, honestly,” he said. “We want the fans to have a great time. We want ourselves to have a good time.
“We also want F1 to be what we’ve always grown up seeing, which is just flat out racing, which is not what we’ve had so far, and having good racing is not necessarily having someone at 100 per cent battery and having someone on zero. That’s not how proper racing should be done.
“It should be done by trying to allow cars to follow closer, by having less weight, better tyres, more resilient to following issues and temperatures and things like that, not by implementing batteries and wings that do all of the stuff that they’re doing now.
“It could just be done in a slightly different way, and that’s something that, as drivers, we’re all pushing for in the future.
“But because of the bigger picture, because of manufacturers and partners and teams, and it’s a business involved, some things are not so simple.
“But, I’ve been in Formula 1 for a while, and hopefully over the next five years or so, things can go a little bit more back to normality.
“And I think we can still create even better racing. Like George [Russell] said, like go karting, he gave the reference to go karting and the yo-yo racing you get there.
“The thing is in karting, you have no dirty air, you have no downforce. That is the most pure racing you can get. But you also don’t have an ERS pack that just does what it wants, and batteries that do what it wants.
“Now we do have yo-yo racing. It’s a fact. You can’t even debate it. But we want it to be more like karting in those early days, where you can follow on the guy’s bumper, you’re slipstreaming, you have one to 20 cars all in a big long line, and you’re racing like that.
“That’s what we want as drivers. So what we want as drivers is also what will be better for the fans to see.
“It’s just it’s a business at the end of the day, so you have to balance the business side, which is obviously where we don’t know what others say.
“But we’re making progress with the FIA. I think they’ve done a good job in trying to improve things. The bigger things and the things we want more in the future are the things that are going to take more time.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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