Clear: ‘F1 2026 will put engineering and technology back in the headlines’

What the former Ferrari said After a technical cycle that lasted four years, F1 will turn the page in 2026 with the greatest technical-regulatory revolution we have ever witnessed. In view of this year zero there is great curiosity as well as equally apprehensive about reliving a replay of 2014 when a team, then Mercedes, dominated the season. According to former Ferrari coach Jock Clear, it is necessary for F1 to periodically change the regulations: “When you manage something, be it a company, a country or a sport, you have to keep up with the times – the words of Clear reached by CasinoHawks – we often find ourselves in situations where, as I think happened in 2013, we had seven winners in the first seven races and people say: ‘Why change? Why don’t we leave everything as it is?’. And I think if you look at it from the point of From the organiser’s point of view, if you fall into that trap, then it’s very difficult to react when the sport starts to lose interest.” Clear believes that the 2026 rules are capable of ‘winking’ at both the technical enthusiast and the latter-day fan who discovered F1 through the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’: “The technophiles, and I’m one of them, are F1 fans because they are fascinated by technology and I like the fact that F1 is at the cutting edge of engineering, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Yes, Netflix has brought a new kind of fans, but there are still the core fans who are technophiles and love technology and love the fact that engineering is always evolving, and I think we’ll see some good things next year. The headlines might be all about the engineering of cars and powertrains, but that’s not a bad thing, you know? It’s a technology-based sport and, as such, we like the fact that there’s a lot of technology involved and that there’s a lot of discussion about that technology.”