In this F1 for engineers even the launch lap becomes a puzzle

Steering wheel engineers In the fifth weekend of the 2026 season there are still many fans who have not yet fully understood how the new direction of Formula 1 works. Words such as megajoule, kilowatt, superclipping, charging are still obscure to a large part of the public and many, to be honest, are not even interested in understanding what we are talking about.
Certainly the drivers in 2026 have almost become expert engineers, with Lewis Hamilton confiding in February that to drive this generation of single-seaters “you would need a degree”. And he also added that it took 7 meetings to explain them to him. Norris and the frustration of the launch lap In recent years the launch lap – the one that precedes the fastest qualifying lap – has become a key moment of the weekend, useful for optimizing the tires and the entire car package to get the most out of the car’s potential. With energy management, another parameter has therefore been added, which is driving pilots crazy. In this regard, Lando Norris’ story from Thursday in Montreal is interesting: “If you go too slow, you’re penalized. If you go too fast, you’re penalized. I mean, it’s really difficult. You spend your laps not only looking at who’s behind you and where the others are with the blue flags and things like that, but you spend half the time looking at the display trying to make sure you’re not going too fast or too slow. Going too fast is very easy and this makes you lose boost pressure, you have a bad exit, the battery runs out. If you go too slow you don’t recharge the battery enough and here too you have problems. If you encounter blue flags you have to slow down and then accelerate again, but if you accelerate again you use up the battery again.” Even just reading Norris’s story is anxiety-provoking. The Englishman then concluded on a bitter note: “No skill should be required for this kind of thing. And to have a perfect execution you have to be quite good. In any case we analyzed things after Miami and we will try to do a better job in this sense.” Click here to add Formula Passion as your favorite source on Google Discover: you will find our content more easily!

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-23 23:25:00