Speaking in a press conference at Bahrain pre-season testing, Williams F1 driver Carlos Sainz voiced his thoughts regarding the 2026 regulations.
Out of all F1 teams, Williams didn’t have the best start in 2026 with missing the Barcelona shakedown. Despite having one of the best mileage out of all teams, their lap-time was far from their expectations.
Sainz called for open-mindedness regarding new F1 regulations ahead 2026 campaign
The start of the F1 2026 campaign in Australia is not more than a week away, the challenge of the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit already raised concerns in terms of the energy management.
“Yeah, I think Melbourne is going to be more challenging for sure. But I cannot tell you how much because I haven’t run the calibrations in the simulator of what we’re going to find ourselves in Melbourne with,” Carlos Sainz admitted.
“I think in general, my message to FOM and FIA is I think the start of the year, we need to stay a bit open-minded in case the regulations that we’ve come up with are maybe a bit exaggerated on the amount of harvesting or deployment that we have to do through a lap, which might make some circuits OK, like potentially here, even though I still think here is not fully OK with what we’re seeing so far.”
Call for flexibility and adjustments
Especially Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit and Jeddah Corniche Circuit are power-consuming tracks. Carlos Sainz, therefore, urged FIA and FOM to go easy on the new F1 regulations ahead 2026.
“But tracks like Melbourne or potentially Jeddah, tracks that might be more energy demanding, yeah, I think we might need to adjust a bit the regulations.”
With the F1 pre-season testings in Bahrain and Barcelona, many teams have struggled to remain within the limitations. The Spaniard admitted that the results of the testings were unpredictable and shared that he could see adjustments being made.
“So fair play, it’s not easy because it’s such a big change that I don’t think anyone knew how to predict how much downforce drag the car was going to have, what level of deployment the teams would come up with. But so far, I would say I would only ask to stay open in case we need to fine-tune or adjust to make the category and make the show better.
“That’s my only message. I think we should stay flexible rather than committed to a certain level of energy management.”
