After the first half of the 2026 Formula 1 season, Pierre Gasly made an assessment of the category’s new cars. In an interview with Autocar, the Alpine driver stated that the regulations changed the essence of driving by requiring more energy management and less attack in the corners.
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“But I think that went a bit too far, because now we have a lot of things to manage. You need to drive efficiently, which means you no longer go as fast as possible in every corner.”
According to the Frenchman, now it is necessary to choose in which sections to attack and where to preserve performance to achieve a better lap time: “You need to have some control and understand which corners require you to push 100% and in which it is better to keep a bit of driving margin and in how you resume acceleration to get a better lap time.”
Gasly also commented on the use of batteries in the 2026 cars, although he avoided going into detail on the subject. “Whenever you can extract full power out of a corner, it’s a unique feeling, something I will never get tired of. As for all this battery stuff in 2026, I won’t go into details because I’m not a fan of it, and I don’t want to speak too boldly about these battery-related matters.”
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In the driver’s opinion, this change goes against everything he has learned since the beginning of his career. “If you ask me, since the day I started karting at six years old, there has always been only one rule: when you are behind the wheel, you simply go through the corners as fast as you can. That’s how it has to be.”
Despite the criticism, Gasly highlighted that the cars still impress with their level of aerodynamic load. “We still have a lot of aerodynamic load and downforce on the car. If you take Maggotts and Becketts [Silverstone corners], you go through those corners at 270, 280 km/h, reaching a force of 5G; it’s definitely a feeling you don’t find anywhere else except in an F1 car,” he concluded.
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