McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia steers his car during the Japanese Formula One Grand Prix race in Suzuka, central Japan, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

This past Sunday, Formula 1 (F1) drivers were supposed to be racing around the Bahrain circuit, but both it and next week’s race in Saudi Arabia were cancelled due to the war in the Middle East. Since two of the three rounds of pre-season testing took place in Bahrain, the teams all have the most data at that track and it would’ve been interesting to see how the cars fared there.

Even though we missed out on racing action, I thought a look at the driver’s opinions on the current cars would be interesting now that they have completed three races. During the aforementioned pre-season testing, Fernando Alonso made it pretty clear he was unimpressed with the new cars. “Here in Bahrain,” he said, “we’re going 50 kilometers per hour slower through corner 12 than we used to. Just to save energy for the straights. Even our chef in the kitchen could drive these cars.”

Surely Alonso wasn’t meaning to disparage his team’s chef or chefs in general (never upset the people who could spit in your food!), but he was saying his Aston Martin car wasn’t challenging or exciting to drive this year. Also, many people thought Alonso was saying the car was easy to drive which is contrary to what many other drivers have said so far.

Instead, Alonso is alluding to not being able to drive the car on the limit like he has done in other periods of his long career. These new cars have so much battery power in their hybrid design that drivers need to spend a long time each lap harvesting energy. “High-speed corners have now become the charging station for the car,” continued Alonso in his critique of the new cars.

Generally in the past, when a car is driving down a straight, that is where you will find top speeds while cars zoom by. Now, the cars often shift to harvesting energy meaning their feet come off the gas pedal and the cars slow way down. McLaren driver and last year’s champion Lando Norris said, “It hurts your soul when you see your speed dropping so much down the straight. … [D]oes it feel as amazing as last year? No, I don’t think any track will. We’d better get used to that.”

The idea of lifting and coasting in a race is nothing new to F1 racing though. Ever since they went down to one tire manufacturer, Pirelli, and the governing body asked them to make a tire that degrades more quickly, teams have responded differently than intended. It was hoped the order of a race would get shaken up with more diverse pit strategy, but instead, teams realized managing their tires and having less pit stops overall was more effective. Managing tires meant drivers could not drive full speed.

What is different with this new generation of cars is managing the battery over the course of a lap. Engineers for teams will plan out the best utilization of a battery over a lap at the different circuits and program the car and battery for such a deployment. When drivers try to differ from that, it means they might have less battery power when they actually want it at more crucial moments of the lap.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was caught out in qualifying the last two rounds because he tried something new, broke from the mapped-out deployment strategy, and lost energy deployment when he needed it most. “I feel like, at the moment, consistency is paying off more than being brave and going to take something that you’ve never tried before, which is a shame and which makes qualifying a little bit less challenging.”

Carlos Sainz, Williams driver, lamented similar things, particularly in qualifying. “The more you pushed,” he said, “the slower you went.” That’s the opposite of what fans want, particularly in qualifying.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, I actually find the racing to be pretty exciting as there are so many pass and repass battles throughout the field this year. Seeing how much faster a car can go using the overtake and boost buttons, and seeing how much slower cars go when they are harvesting energy, it seems like there is potential for a huge accident.

In Japan, we saw that potential manifest itself in a scary way. Haas driver Oliver Bearman was deploying his battery and approached a high-speed corner at 191 miles per hour (mph). Meanwhile, Alpine driver Franco Colapinto was harvesting in his car and was going into the same corner at 155 mph. While both of those speeds are quick, Bearman was going 36 mph faster and had to make a split-second decision on how to avoid Colapinto’s car that was right in the middle of the track.

Unfortunately for Bearman, the slick tires of a modern F1 car don’t do well on grass and he lost control, careening into a wall with an impact 50 times the force of gravity. Fortunately for Bearman, the cars are very safety oriented in their construction and he hobbled away from the accident with just a right knee contusion.

Four-time world champion Max Verstappen has loudly criticized the new cars as well, labelling it “anti-racing” and saying he’s actually contemplating retirement because he’s having so little fun driving this year. Though he has walked those comments back a little bit, he is still not a fan of the heavy electronic load in the car and the new boost and overtake modes that come along with it.

He, among other drivers, has compared racing this year to being more like a video game. When asked if drivers who do a lot of simulator driving have an advantage this year, Verstappen quipped, “I found a cheaper solution; I swapped the simulator for a Nintendo Switch. I’m practicing with Mario Kart, actually.”

Leclerc agreed with Verstappen, but has actually been excited about it. In his pass and repass battle with Mercedes driver George Russell, Leclerc shouted on his team radio, “This is like a mushroom on Mario Kart!” This is a reference to a “power up” in the video game that gives a potent speed boost to the driver that drives over the mushroom.

Overtakes in the first three rounds were up more than double from last year. Australia saw 39 overtakes this year compared to 17 last year, China saw 71 overtakes compared to 31 last year, and Japan had 43 overtakes, up from a yawn-inducing 15 in 2025. “This is how racing should be,” said seven-time world champion and current Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton. “It should be back and forth, back and forth. It shouldn’t be, like, one move is done and then that’s it.”

He and his teammate Leclerc both had wonderful things to say about their back-and-forth battle for third and fourth place in China. Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli shared similar thoughts after the first race, saying, “The racing was incredible on the first few laps. With the overtake, it’s so powerful that it can give a lot of action, so it was really good fun at the beginning.”

As little more than a “couch pundit” myself, I’m not about to challenge the negative feedback of the talented F1 drivers who do not like the car this season. I will point out, however, that the loudest naysayers are the ones who are at the back of the grid, not the ones who are regularly competing for wins and point finishes.

Every time there is a major rule change in the sport, there are drivers who will not do as well as they did before and gripe about the change. Hamilton is one of the most notorious for this as he hated the “ground effect” era of F1 cars that ended last year. They were statistically the worst seasons of his career and that era of car never suited his driving style.

So, it is little surprise to me that Verstappen does not like these regulation changes considering he is in no position to contend for race wins, let alone the championship, this season. Will his prospects change? Almost certainly. Most likely all drivers will have more competitive cars throughout the season which will hopefully improve the dour outlook many drivers currently have on their new cars.

One of the only things faster than the cars in F1 is the speed that the teams advance, technologically speaking, to figure out how to build the best car under the current regulations. With the two April races cancelled, the teams have had an unexpected month to improve their car.

While it is unlikely any teams will have caught up to Mercedes’ pace already, anything can happen. Tune in on Sunday, May 3, at 4 p.m. Eastern Time to see what the teams have done and how the drivers fare with new upgrades.