The Athletic

The race is on, and now that we've seen 10 of the 11, 2026F1 cars in action,

we can take a close look at the technical themes and trends that are emerging for these new cars. But what design concepts are a hit and what might be a miss? I'm Ed Strawn,

joining me to talk all things tech are Gary Anderson and Mark Hughes. Well, Mark,

2026F1 cars, they're lighter, 20 centimetre shorter, 10 centimetres narrow, all new power units.

You haven't seen the cars in person, and none of us have really up close.

But what do you make of them aesthetically?

I like them.

I think you can see that they're smaller and, you know, more traditional.

It's one size, still a lot bigger than we used to have, but significantly

smaller than what we've recently had. And I do think that's for the good, not just aesthetically,

but also in terms of like car behavior in slow corners. Hopefully, when I see some more of that old agility come back into the slow corners,

which always used to be a very impressive thing to see.

I also like just these regulations seem to have introduced a bit more of an aggressive look in terms of the cars,

in terms of those really aggressive downwash side pods with a lot of

floor opening and around the sides. I think it's really aesthetically more satisfying than what we had.

And also, with it being a new reg set, there are many different solutions as we saw the beginning

of the previous reg set, but they all converged after two or three seasons and they all look pretty much alike. So we're seeing that

variation again. So for all those reasons, I think aesthetically, it's a positive. Yeah, I've

certainly enjoyed the variety. Now, Gary, you've had experience of more F1 cars the most in your

half century in and around Formula One.

When you first saw one of these cars, you were impressed.

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