Andrea Stella: "Very dramatic" Australian GP qualifying "exposes weaknesses" of 2026 F1 rules

Stella has weighed in on the deluge of driver complaints about Formula 1's 2026 cars after the season's first qualifying session at the Australian Grand Prix

McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella thinks Melbourne's Albert Park circuit "definitely exposes some of the weaknesses" in the 2026 regulations as drivers voiced fierce opposition to the new power unit regulations.

The new 2026 rules force drivers to heavily compromise their driving style to focus on electric energy saving. Following early warnings last year when drivers got a first taste of F1's new rules era on the simulator, concerns grew over three weeks of winter testing but most drivers still wanted to wait for Melbourne's opening weekend before going public with their reservations.

But now the 2026 season has kicked off in earnest in Australia, drivers stopped holding back, voicing major concerns in Friday's drivers' briefing followed by depressing comments to the media post-qualifying on Saturday.

Lando Norris suggested F1 had gone from the "best cars ever to probably the worst", with further criticism from his team-mate Oscar Piastri, Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, as well as long-standing 2026 critic Max Verstappen.

Read Also:

Formula 1Lando Norris: F1 has gone from “the best cars ever” to "probably the worst”

According to McLaren team boss Stella, the drivers' comments are both a reflection of a fundamental issue with the new regulations as well as some exaggerated track specific problems in Australia.

Albert Park is generally known as one of the most critical circuits on the calendar for energy harvesting because it lacks a lot of heavy braking zones compared to some other circuits, like winter test venue Bahrain.

Instead, drivers are having to focus more on lifting and coasting, which McLaren's Piastri said he had to do three times per qualifying lap, as well as 'super clipping', which means recharging the battery while remaining at full throttle, a process that significantly reduces top speeds.

Cars were dramatically slowing on the flat out blast down to Turn 9, completely neutering the once fearsome Turn 9-10 switchback.

"Albert Park definitely exposes some of the weaknesses in the new regulations, which is the fact that you deploy power and deplete the battery at a high rate," Stella said when asked by Motorsport.com about the stinging driver pushback and F1's specific difficulties in Melbourne. "Therefore, you become very sensitive to how you harvest the battery.

"This is not only an engineering exercise, but this also has to do with how you drive the car. But these elements don't belong to what the drivers have done through their entire career as a driver.

"I think this will always leave the regulations exposed to comments from the drivers that will ask to improve the regulations, and I think that something can be done to improve the regulations."

"We've come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1 and the nicest to drive to probably the worst. It sucks, but you have to live with it." Lando Norris

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Stella previously tabled suggestions to make tweaks to the technical regulations, but the series' general consensus has been to wait and gather more data from the opening set of races before making major adjustments.

"We will see tomorrow, we definitely have to make sure that we have a robust execution from a power unit point of view at the start," Stella added. "We talked about the overtaking, again we will see tomorrow, so in a way the scenario is not complete after qualifying. We will learn a little bit more in China as well, which is another tricky one.

"We have spent six days in Bahrain, but Bahrain doesn't expose as much as here some of the structural limitations, especially from a harvesting point of view. After a couple of races we will have to look if something should be done, and what should be done to make sure that we retain the entertainment as well as some of the DNA of driving F1 cars, trying to just exploit the grip rather than having to exploit the harvesting and the deployment.

"But certainly, having Albert Park as the first race of the season has exposed this in a very dramatic way."