What we most want to see in F1 2026

Having gone through what we are happy to leave in the season just gone, our writers have gathered to discuss what they are looking forward to most in the F1 2026 season.

With the slate effectively being wiped clean with all-new regulations, one all-new team and Audi taking over from Sauber, there are a lot of choices in play, but here is what our writers await with anticipation.

Technical ambiguity

By Thomas Maher

While, in an ideal world, we’d go back to properly light and simple F1 cars, I do enjoy a good engineering scrap as well; after all, F1 is supposed to reward the very best at finding innovation and skirting the wording of the rules.

My gut tells me that the upcoming regulations set may prove overly complicated, but I am hopeful that, for this season at least, the complications are such that no team is properly on top of every aspect right from the get-go.

Even if one manufacturer nails the power unit side of things, the active aerodynamics is another area entirely, and I think it could be quite nice to see a battle between cars with very different strengths and weaknesses again, much like the old days of the 1980s when turbocharged cars first went up against their normally aspirated rivals.

I doubt the differences between the cars nowadays will be quite as pronounced as back then, but I do enjoy the idea of one car being superior in aerodynamics and another in straight-line speed optimisation.

The technical stability of the last few years may have created a field of cars that were close in terms of lap time, but it created a situation in which, short of mistakes (rare, due to the stability of the cars) or DRS assistance, imaginative overtaking largely disappeared.

Greater disparity between the cars may sound counterintuitive, but, short of one team absolutely crushing it right from the start, I’m quite hopeful that the teams won’t be the picture-perfect outfits on track that we’ve grown so accustomed to.

A properly silly driver ‘silly season’

By Henry Valantine

Yes, there is an enormous amount to look forward to on track, but off the circuit, there is potential for huge moves in the driver market, after a year with hardly any switches.

As we understand it, only a handful of drivers go into the new season already contracted for 2027, as most teams offered multi-year deals to their drivers in 2024 to bring continuity before and after such a massive regulation change.

With many of those deals potentially set to come to a conclusion, though, there is potential for some blockbuster moves up and down the grid.

While many drivers could stay where they are, I’d wager there is at least one move that will make everyone stand up and take notice on its way.

Will one team suddenly have multiple drivers clamouring for a seat if it proves to be the class of the field? Will Max Verstappen’s future suddenly come up for debate if Red Bull does not live up to the mark? Will George Russell meet the thresholds required to trigger a contract extension at Mercedes? Will any drivers choose to retire?

All that and so much more to come…

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust.

More than one team in the title fight

By Oliver Harden

My worst fear for 2026 is that it will prove to be a repeat of 2014: Mercedes getting the jump on every other manufacturer under the new engine rules and dominating from start to finish.

So the recent rumours that more than one manufacturer has identified a loophole in the 2026 power unit regulations offers encouragement that a single team might not have it all its own way after all.

That is no guarantee that the manufacturers concerned will all be winning races – Toyota and Williams both began 2009 with the double diffuser but only Brawn GP did the winning – yet it at least opens the door for some serious competition at the front.

If only one team wins in 2026, F1 itself will lose out.

Evolution at the top

By Jamie Woodhouse

Tying in to Oliver’s point, I hope we get a situation where the picture at the front actually evolves during F1 2026.

I’m not asking for no dominant team starting out. This could very possibly happen. Plus, as Oliver mentions, there is previous for this with Mercedes.

But, with such sweeping changes on both the chassis and engine fronts, surely, there will be enough room for gains that the team which starts out on top, will at least come under threat when rivals find their big wins, or follow a winning concept.

When Red Bull shook off Ferrari early in the ground effect era, we had Christian Horner repeatedly saying that convergence was coming. We had to wait until midway through 2024 until McLaren emerged as a consistent threat.

The talk is back, this time from F1 chief Stefano Domenicali, of a 2026 development race which should mean that the team which leads at day one, will not necessarily finish there.

For the good of the sport, this better be a spoiler, not a prediction.

Read next: Five things we’re glad to see the back of ahead of F1 2026