The Athletic

The Races

The race is on

and with the first launch events imminent

we answer your questions on F1 2026.

How will Active Aero really work?

What drivers are best suited to thrive? Can FullWorks team

steal a march on customers? I'm Edstraw, and joining me to answer those questions and more,

are Scott Mitchell Mell and John Noble. We've had loads of questions from our listeners via

the Race Members Club on Patreon John, so we're not going to hang around, we're going to get straight

into it. The first question is from Matthew Dowling, who says, are any teams actually excited for this new

era? It feels like everyone bar the FIA and F1 are dreading 2026. And Chakaoki says it feels like

everything I've read or seen about the new regs is negative, or at least not optimistic. What does the best case scenario

look like? The best case scenario is that actually I think a lot of the rules are quite good

that I think we've got cars that aren't going to be so right-height sensitive. They should be

to follow each other closer. They've got tons of power. They should be able to be very, very quick down a straight, that we

punch themselves out of corners an awful lot. So there's a lot of positivity with them. I think

all the negativity and downside comes from the lack of energy that these cars are energy starved,

the batteries are going to struggle a lot. We don't know what impact that's going to have on

the racing. So I think you've got a bit of a mixed bag. And I think this is the feeling it from teams that they're quite excited by rules reset. They're excited by Active Aero, which would be really fascinating, excited about the challenges of the new rules. But there is this big question. And it's probably an answer. We aren't going to get probably until five, six

races in. What is it going to be like? What is the impact? And more importantly, will we see it?

Because it doesn't matter if the teams are unhappy. If the spectacle doesn't suffer from it,

...