Spa could be another harsh reality check for F1: ‘It will probably not be a lot of fun’

Drivers have made little secret of their frustrations with the new car designs that were introduced this year.

Shifting to a near-50/50 split in engine and battery power, this year’s cars were always going to drive — and race — much differently to the previous generation.

To some, the obsessive focus on battery management, and the concept of going slower in some corners to recharge the battery and then go faster over the entire lap, just wasn’t F1. “Anti-racing,” as Max Verstappen, the four-time world champion, put it.

When concerns emerged in preseason, the message from F1’s CEO and president, Stefano Domenicali, was to wait and then cast judgement. The sport was ready to respond and has already done so with plans to reduce the battery reliance in two steps across 2027 and 2028.

It hasn’t stopped 2026 from already being an exciting, story-filled year, especially with the rise of 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli and the revival of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari. Fans continue to tune in and the grandstands remain packed.

Yet for the drivers, the pangs of change were felt through the last race at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, and are anticipated again at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.

These are two iconic circuits, featuring some of the fastest and most exhilarating corners on the calendar. But when he spoke prior to Silverstone, two-time world champion Fernando Alonso expressed his fear that both tracks would be “quite sad” with these cars, even quipping that Maggots and Becketts, one of the hardest high-speed sequences around Silverstone, would become a “charging station.”

Both Silverstone and Spa are long circuits — Spa is the longest on the entire calendar — and have lots of straights, making them energy-starved and only exacerbating many of the drivers’ biggest gripes with the 2026 cars.

The experience of then driving Silverstone did not change Alonso’s view, especially when it came to the racing product. He lamented that overtaking no longer required “any driver input or driver talent” due to the battery tactics.

“You don’t need to outbrake anyone, you don’t need to overtake on the outside, you don’t need to take any risk,” Alonso told reporters after finishing one lap down in 18th. “You just press one button, and you overtake if you have a better power unit than the car in front.” Antonelli’s move to win the sprint race, sailing past a powerless Hamilton on a straight, somewhat supported his theory.

Alonso wasn’t alone in his disappointment with Silverstone. Verstappen said he got “no enjoyment” from qualifying, reflecting on what the track was previously like through the high-speed corners. Haas driver Ollie Bearman called qualifying merely “OK” and said it “wasn’t special,” as it had been with the 2025 cars.

Not every driver was so downbeat. Hamilton, who took sprint pole and finished third on Sunday for Ferrari, said it was “really a lot better than we anticipated. It’s still really great fun to drive this track.” But he did acknowledge the drops in power at some of the fastest points.

“You want the engines to keep going,” said Hamilton. “That’s more what racing, I would say, is probably about.”

To many, racing is also about the art of overtaking, especially the bravery required to make a move. Although there was plenty of back-and-forth passing at Silverstone, especially at the start of the sprint race, it was in the mold of the so-called ‘yo-yo racing’ we’ve seen this year.

This is where a driver will use more of their battery to make an overtake, only to then get repassed on the next straight as they don’t have enough energy to defend the position. Even a sensational move around the outside of another car can be quickly undone on the next straight.

“That’s F1 2026, unfortunately,” said Bearman. “It’s a shame, but that’s the harsh reality right now. I’m sure it will get better as we understand these engines more, but you’ll always find this here — and Spa next week, it’s going to be a similar story. So strap up for that one.”

And so to Spa, one of the most beloved, revered and tragic circuits; a 4.3-mile ribbon of tarmac carving through the Ardennes forest. Iconic corners like the uphill sequence at Eau Rouge and Raidillon or Pouhon, the long, on-the-edge downhill left-hander, and the kink at Blanchimont in the final sector have all given this track a place in F1 folklore.

But the energy demands will change Spa. Alonso explained that if you use up the battery from the La Source hairpin all the way to the braking point at the end of the Kemmel Straight some 1.2 miles later, a flat-out blast in previous years, “it is finito for the rest of the lap.” Instead, energy must be saved a bit for the run from Blanchimont to the Bus Stop chicane toward the end of the lap.

“But if you deploy in those two straights, which is the optimal deployment, then there is (a) one minute Sector 2 with no deployment at all,” Alonso said. “And with no deployment at all, we cannot forget that this year we have significantly less power than last year and less power than F2. That is the case when you cut the deployment. So, yeah, (it’s a) challenge.”

Verstappen was also downcast about Spa. “It will probably not be a lot of fun, yeah,” he said. “It’s a long straight there.”

There is some truth to Alonso’s prediction of where to best deploy energy. A simulation seen by The Athletic suggests the optimum deployment will indeed be using up most of the battery on the Kemmel Straight.

As has been the trend this year, the cars will reach an initial higher top speed than their 2025 counterparts approaching both Eau Rouge and the following straight. The speed then drops once the battery power is used up before braking into Les Combes. The same thing will happen on the flat-out run through Blanchimont in the final sector.

Unlike Silverstone, superclipping — where the cars harvest energy at full throttle through high-speed sections — should not be such an issue at Spa, given the increased number of braking points through the middle sector that will top up the battery. But, as Alonso highlighted, it does mean the cars will not be deploying the electric power for a large part of the lap, closer to 45-50 seconds than his predicted minute.

The corner that should impact the most is Pouhon, arguably now Spa’s most challenging turn given Eau Rouge and Raidillon have been comfortably taken at full throttle for some time.

The reduced speed of the corner means it’ll likely no longer require a carefully judged lift of the throttle, and, if cars lean toward a more medium downforce setup that is better suited to the corners than the straights, it may be power-limited instead of grip-limited as in the past.

Still, Spa is Spa. Teams will likely veer more toward low-downforce wings in order to maximize the flat-out sections, with five Straight Mode zones to also help them along the way. These are points of the track where the cars are allowed to open up their front and rear wings to increase straight-line speed, similar to how DRS worked in the past.

The Straight Mode zone on the Kemmel Straight is also longer than the older DRS zone, while there are now also zones on either side of Blanchimont. Overall, a lap should be around 3-4 seconds slower than last year.

F1’s loudest critics are likely to find plenty of easy ammunition this weekend, bemoaning what the new generation of cars has done to another iconic circuit, just as they did at Silverstone.

But it was Gabriel Bortoleto, the Audi driver in just his second season, who offered some perspective when speaking after Silverstone. The magic of F1’s greatest tracks endures; to pretend otherwise would be false.

“If there are still people complaining about it, just (turn) the page,” Bortoleto said. “That’s the regulations we have until 2030, if I understood correctly. And then in 2030, when we go to the new regulations, we will talk about it again.

“But we cannot spend three years talking about the same f***ing problem every time. That’s what we have. The cars are still fun to drive. It’s different. We need to adapt to that.”