Oscar Piastri reveals what's "tough to manage" with F1 2026 cars

Drivers adapting to the significantly different 2026 F1 regulations has been a major talking point during pre-season

Oscar Piastri has pinpointed an area that’s tough to manage with the new-for-2026 Formula 1 cars - claiming it’s the “crazy amount of power” they have on corner exit.

This year the championship will debut a new set of regulations, which are arguably the biggest in F1 history with changes to both the chassis and engine.

The chassis is now approximately 32kg lighter with significantly less downforce, while the power unit features more electrical energy with a near 50-50 split alongside the internal combustion engine.

It is this added reliance of electric power that has been a huge talking point thus far, mainly because energy management will play a greater role in races with drivers sometimes downshifting on straights to harvest the battery.

But one aspect that hasn’t been as widely talked about is how the increased electric energy means cars now accelerate quicker, leading to higher corner exit speeds.

“Things are just different to last year,” said Piastri during Bahrain pre-season testing. “In certain conditions the cars don't feel that different, in some conditions they will, and I think it will change a lot from track to track. I think it still feels in terms of grip, like an F1 car should.

“We've got a crazy amount of power out of the corners now, and it wasn't like we didn't have much power before. So I think that is pretty tough to manage at times, but I think we also need to remember that the cars we had last year were, at some tracks, the fastest F1 cars ever.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / LAT Images via Getty Images

“So anything that feels worse than that is always going to be not quite as fun at the start. I think it still feels sensible, there's just a lot of other things that are very different besides the grip level.”

Those changes are therefore across the board from revving the engine longer for race starts to the use of active aerodynamics, backing up Esteban Ocon’s claim in January that “we can forget everything that we’ve learned since go-karts”.

“It's just complex,” added Piastri. “There's a lot of things that we've never had to do before and they are just challenging by nature because some of them are not very instinctive.

“And when you've kind of driven a certain way for the last 15 years, it's pretty tough to undo some of those things, especially when some of them are lifting on straights or stuff like that, that obviously as a driver you never want to be lifting at any point.

“I think even without some of the challenges that we've got and the things we need to address as a sport, ultimately they are cars that are slower and have less downforce and probably more power out of the corners, so they're always going to feel difficult to drive and tricky.

“That aspect is kind of one thing and then there's all the aspects that are new and need some reform.”