Expect a lot of carry-over parts from 2024 to 2025 & very little development during the 2025 season due to budget cap restraints.

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Development plan for 2026 car

In order to prevent some teams from pushing too early onto the 2026 regulations, the start of development is to be artificially pushed backwards. This has an impact on work in the 2025 season.

One has the feeling that the last rule revolution has only just begun. The ground-effect cars introduced in 2022 are still in their infancy in terms of development. The big lead of Red Bull shows that not all engineers have decoded the secrets of the current generation of racing cars. But although many teams are still struggling with the current technology, the next big reform is already around the corner.

In the 2026 season, Formula 1 will start its major sustainability initiative. New cars are launched, which draw their performance 50 percent out of electric power. The rest comes from a combustion that runs with CO2-neutral biofuel. To reduce the energy required, the cars are to become smaller and lighter and not offer so much drag. Experts expect the downforce to fall by 30 percent.

“Then the cards are completely reshuffled. Everything that was before does not count anymore. Everyone starts with a blank sheet of paper,” says Mercedes Technical Director James Allison, already looking ahead. The discussions and plans were not yet cast into finished regulations. So the engineers do not know exactly what they expect. And yet the reform is already having an impact on its current work.

Cars 2024 and 2025 related

“In order to have the necessary firepower for the 2026 development in times of the budget lid, the 2025 model will probably not become a completely new construction,” explains Allison. “Many parts probably need to be taken over from 2024. The next two cars are therefore likely to be closely related. The development work we are now carrying out is therefore doubly important to be well positioned for the next two seasons.”

To benefit twice, the teams are now plugging in all existing resources into the development of 2024 cars. In many places, two seasons were ridden with the same monocoques or only slightly adapted. Now a new chassis is being built almost everywhere, which in many cases is also combined with a completely revised gearbox. This is primarily intended to create aerodynamic freedoms under the car.

In the current season, many engineers had noticed that they were limited in the rear of the car by the position of the shift box and in the front area by the crash structures sideways on the cockpit. This should not happen again. “We try to be as flexible as possible when building the chassis,” reveals Aston-Martin Head of Technology Mike Krack. “We are definitely planning in the back of their heads for 2024 as if we did 2025.”

Aero development starts only in 2025

The development timetable until the presentation of the 2026 cars must be carefully considered. If you want to ride directly at the front with the next model generation, you cannot start working too late. At Sauber in Hinwil, particular attention was paid to 2026. With the new cars, the new car is also coming as an Audi factory team. Project manager Andreas Seidl already indicated at request that there is hardly any further development on the old car in the season before the change of regulation.

Because the budget cap resources are limited, the number of upgrades to the 2025 car is not only allowed to be limited in Sauber. The technology fans have to prepare for a hard season. After all, it seems like this today that even more time may be sacrificed for the 2026 cars. A change of rule is to prevent some teams from getting fully involved in the development as early as 2024 and then set an early start.

In recent weeks, the technical directors have discussed in their meetings of the Technical Working Group (TAC) that the 2026 aerodynamic development in the wind tunnel and in CFD simulations must not start before January 2025. There is obviously a majority for this solution, but they have to be confirmed again in the next meeting. The F1 Commission and the FIA World Council must then also nod the thing. However, this should only be a formality.