Jean Alesi, a voice out of the chorus
At the Suzuka weekend, the former driver Jean Alesi gave an interesting interview to the French of Canal+explaining about not having appreciated the many criticisms rained down on the 2026 regulations especially by some former F1 drivers. The former Ferrari driver underlined that as a spectator he found the new course of the category truly enjoyable and invited enthusiasts to take a less engineering approach.
Alesi: “This F1 puts on a show”
“I hate former drivers who speak badly of this new generation of cars“, underlined Alesi, arguing his statement as follows: “Most, if not all, of them wouldn’t be able to drive them! I find this F1 extraordinary on television. The battles we have seen recently, in the last 2 GPs, have not been seen for a long time, and they were achieved thanks to the new regulation”.
Alesi then invited everyone to approach more as spectators than technicians: “It takes a great adaptation on the part of the pilots to force themselves to think: ‘Here I recharge the battery, here I use it’. So it is certainly a new way of piloting. But we too, on the media side, we have to send a positive message: what is important is the battle on the track. We all look for the show and starting to be an engineer is not good.”
It is no mystery that after the Japanese Grand Prix, F1 will evaluate whether to introduce changes to the regulations and the first point of discussion will concern different energy management in qualifying. In fact, there has been a lot of talk about how unproductive it is for drivers to look for the crazy lap in qualifying: Leclerc on Thursday at Suzuka explained how an early release of the accelerator by 2-3% caused a recalibration of the software that manages the energy and then caused a loss of lap time.
