I’m one of the older fans who did not like it when the Silver Arrows clearly had a far superior package compared to everyone else. I also didn’t like it when Vettel and Red Bull were dominating before them. I can’t fault them for implementing the rule changes so much better than everyone else. I just don’t have to like it. F1 is pretty boring when who know that whoever gets thru turn 1 on lap 1 in first place is going to win the race.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Apple is doing any sort of production or narrative work, they’re merely feeding through the Sky (or maybe the F1TV?) broadcast to their users.
My understanding is they’ll be using the TV feed from the FIA and you’ll be able to choose between the Sky or F1TV announcers.
P1 coverage is live now (8:30pm EST). It’s F1 TV on Apple TV.
Video quality is really good.
I forgot it was on and didn’t remember until 9:00. I was able to start from the beginning, but that meant I couldn’t play around with multi view or move around between teams. I’ll try that tomorrow evening for P3.
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It looks like F1 has a major screw-up with their contradictory rules of when battery power should/must be applied. That video shows that unanticipated problem with the rules. At the Chinese Grand Prix, Charles Lecrerc had his machine perform radically differently in two different qualifying runs; he and his crew had no idea why. After much analysis, they’ve figured it out. The video’s commentators noted a past crazy good qualifying lap at Singapore 2019 for Charles. They speculate that laps of that quality are unachievable with the byzantine energy-management system rules that we have in 2026. Besides outsmarting the physics of the car and the road, the drivers must outsmart minutia about that quirky car energy management at the exact split-second moment.
A question that arose for me: why couldn’t this have been anticipated? Why couldn’t they have seen those small changes that would have an impact further down the line of qualifying laps? Did they not understand the metastable dynamics of their design? It should have been obvious that this year’s formula was fully capable of implementing a Butterfly Effect – and it has. Those butterflies don’t taste very good. 
The video provides a spectacular visualization of the problem. Other than that, this entire story is a downer.
It was. This was the formula that the commercial end of the sport envisioned and implemented. It’s designed in the spirit of the Formula E series to fully embrace artificial competition. The design of the PU is intended to maximize the number of overtakes throughout a race, which generates much more shortform content that can be published on shortform video platforms like tik-tok and instagram reels. F1 feels this is the demographic they want to go after. Many would argue (including myself) this has been done at the expense of the sport. It’s really hard to watch.
Fortunately Indycar, WEC and IMSA have all been quite fantastic this year so my motorsport itch won’t go unscratched.
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The “it” I was talking about was the trivial changes that Lecrerc experienced between the two qualifying laps. It was almost like inputting – or failing to input – a cheat-move in a video game.
I noticed that Indycar is using ultracapacitors rather than batteries. That sounds like a superior solution: let physics determine how much energy you can store and how you can retrieve it. Limit the total amount of stored energy to the (smaller) capacity of an ultracapacitor. Allow the driver and his team to figure out when they want that energy. None of this “UUDDLRLR” stuff!
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Yea I went a little beyond the video you posted, but the problems are all inter-related. Like you said the entire solution is just wrong. Maybe a capacitor is a good answer. But I don’t think the energy storage medium is the crux of the issue.
I think this hybrid avenue they’re pursuing is a dead end. They’re prioritizing this ratio of electric vs combustion over all else, including the performance of the car. But they can only legally get to a 50/50 ratio as the Formula E series holds the rights to electric racing through 2050 I believe? Madness.
Anyway.. I think they need to get back to making the fastest car on the planet, where the only compromise is a budget limit for competitive balancing purposes. Formula 1 ICEs are still far and away the most efficient way to transform potential energy into forward motion - that technological marvel should be the focus of the series.
That’s not to say electric motors have no place in the formula. My totally unqualified opinion is that the electric components should fill the gaps of the combustion motor up to the capability of the energy storage medium. Use the electric power to cover gaps in the torque curve of the ICE to make the car as fast as possible, not to gamify the sport with boost modes and nonsense energy deployment rules.
I think we’re stuck with what we got for a while though.
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