re: 2026 Formula 1 (F1) Season Thread

Lindblad is a revelation so far.

Hamilton is revitalized. He must like this car a lot better than the last car.

Hadjar is about 0.6s behind Max at the moment. I'm really interested to see what the gap is going to be at the end of qualy.

Some guy on YouTube was saying that Albert Park is not a good place to introduce the 2026 cars, because it's a flowing track with not enough heavy braking zones. The backside of the track is curvy, but it's essentially a back straight with no braking (maybe they tap the brake briefly to enter the Turn 9-10 complex). Some of you may remember that Turn 6 used to be a hard braking zone to start the "back straight" section, but a couple of years ago they increased the radius of Turn 6 so the cars could launch onto the back straight with more speed.

If you watch a cockpit cam, you can literally hear the engines lose revs on the back straight because they are "super clipping" -- harvesting energy at full throttle. It sounds ridiculous, like they're just taking it easy instead of trying to go maximum speed. The drivers must hate it, but the fans at the track aren't going to notice, and if you watch the main cams, you're not going to notice.

Aston Martin is in the place we all thought Cadillac would be

Also, just saw F1 say that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would not be replaced on the schedule if they cancel them do to the bullshite with Iran.

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Aston Martin is in the place we all thought Cadillac would be

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If Caddy showed up and started pulling the BS what Aston is pulling, people would be sky screaming about how they never should have been allowed in

Meanwhile, the Aston can't be driven a full distance, and Williams at one point couldn't make it to testing, or start 2 cars on the grid

Props to Caddy

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One word- Honda


Honda shut down their power unit program, the employees for that program went to work for Red Bull. Honda then signed with AM and hired a bunch of inexperienced engineers and mechanics to build this power unit.

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The whole situation is wild to me, that a team could miss so badly in 2026, this feels like something straight out of the 80s.

Honda has been more wishy-washy than Alpine the last 5 years or so regarding F1, there was a ton of hope surrounding this partnership and I don't think anyone quite expected such a faceplant.

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Williams at one point couldn't make it to testing, or start 2 cars on the grid

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Williams out here catching strays because of AM

just wild

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I genuinely don't know, but how often are they normally replacing batteries?

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Good questoin. I googled around but couldn't find any explicit answers about the maintenance of the battery packs. I did learn that they are made from individual lithium ion cells, and they have liquid cooling systems, which obviously makes sense since they are rapidly charging and discharging enomrous amounts of current. So conceptually they are very familiar, and you can imagine a severe vibration can cause issues with such a mechanically complex assembly.

I resorted to AI, and I asked Claude about F1 battery maintenance and rebuilds, and it gave the following answer (who knows if it is based on any real information ):

1. Season lifespan: Typically 2-3 complete battery packs per car per season
2. Cell replacement: Individual cells may be replaced every 3-5 race weekends depending on degradation
3. Rebuilds: Complete pack rebuilds every 6-8 races or after significant incidents

Even if these numbers are extremely rough, the implication is that a battery pack should last more than one complete race weekend. But vibration is a killer for an assembly that has hundreds of individual cells connected to each other, and any damage can be an extreme fire hazard.