Max Verstappen was asked in Spa how hard it now is to squeeze the maximum out of an F1 2026 car. He shrugged and reached for the shortest possible answer.
“Yeah, welcome to F1 2026, sometimes it can be a jungle,” he told reporters after finishing third at the Belgian Grand Prix, according to Planet F1.
Kimi Antonelli won at Spa on 19 July from Charles Leclerc, with Verstappen third in a race defined by drivers fighting the new hybrid power units rather than each other. His six-word verdict summed up months of debate about Formula 1’s biggest rule change in a generation.
What was actually behind the quip
Verstappen’s frustration at Spa was rooted in energy deployment. He described running his battery flat before the fastest parts of the lap and having no way to defend once cars behind flicked their electric power on.
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“Clearly, too much deployment from Turn 1 to Turn 2. Then I went through Eau Rouge, looked at my battery status and thought, ‘Well, that’s going to be a difficult run to Les Combes,'” he said, per Motorsport.com.
That is the mechanical picture behind the 2026 rulebook: a 50/50 split between the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, more energy to deploy per lap, and cars that can arrive at the end of a straight already spent.
The most vivid image came when Leclerc closed on Verstappen along the Kemmel Straight with a fully charged battery.
“I looked in my mirror and just saw a red rocket coming. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just hold my line because if I move here, we’re going to have an airplane shunt,'” Verstappen said.
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Piastri and Antonelli echo the frustration
Verstappen has been the loudest critic of the new formula, but the mood in the paddock at Spa was almost universal.
Oscar Piastri was blunt about the way qualifying now hangs on algorithms.
“It sucks. When you’ve got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it’s a crap way of going racing,” the McLaren driver said, as reported by Autosport.
“It’s just very difficult, but also very frustrating sometimes for a driver because even when you are doing your best, there are things in the background that change constantly, that’s not so nice,” race winner Antonelli said.
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The FIA has already blinked
The clearest sign that F1 has a problem is that its own governing body has agreed to redraw the numbers before the current formula is even a full season old.
From 2027 the power split moves from 50/50 to roughly 58/42 in favour of the combustion engine, the cap on electrical deployment drops from 350kW to 300kW, and fuel flow rises by 5 percent, The Race reports. By 2028 the balance shifts further, to 60/40.
Verstappen went on to finish second behind Lando Norris at the Hungarian Grand Prix a week later, as Formula1.com reported. Antonelli, third that day, took a 50-point championship lead into the summer break.
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