F1 set to agree on more power unit tweaks for 2027 and 2028
More tweaks are set to be introduced to F1 power units after a trial in Miami
Further tweaks to Formula 1’s power unit regulations are set to be agreed and announced today, following the trial of the first round of changes in Miami last week.
As well as further refinements for this season, more extensive updates for 2027 and 2028 are also set to be confirmed, including changes to hardware that were not practical for the short term.
The proposals are being discussed today in an online meeting involving the FIA, F1, teams and power unit manufacturers as a follow-up to the similar gathering that took place on April 20.
The Miami package was generally well-received as a step in the right direction, although Max Verstappen described it as just a “tickle” with more needed.
“I think honestly, it’s never easy to do a change during the season,” Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur said in Miami. “Because as soon as you want to change something on the regulation, you are impacting the relative performance of the car.
“But I think for once that we were able to do, let’s say, good work, even if everybody wants to get more. But at the end of the day, I think we did a step forward, and I think it’s a good one.”
The gap since the last meeting and data gathered from Miami have created the opportunity for further study, which has been fed into today’s meeting.
The key longer-term elements are an increase in fuel flow – which, for example, would require future chassis to have a bigger fuel tank capacity – and bigger batteries.
There are also plans to trim downforce levels, although power units are the focus of today’s meeting.
“Hardware adjustments to the power unit in order to improve F1 in general, I personally think are required,” McLaren boss Andrea Stella noted in Miami.
“They will have to do realistically with the fuel flow to increase the power from the internal combustion engine, and I think they might have to do with harvesting more power than the power you actually deploy, because you spend much more time deploying electrical power rather than harvesting it.
“So this can be rebalanced by harvesting to a larger power than we do today, like from 350, can we go to 400? Can we go to 450? And then I think we just need bigger batteries.”
Stella stressed that at this stage, 2028 was a more realistic target for the major hardware changes than next season. That would also need less support, under F1’s governance.
“If I think about these three requirements from a hardware point of view, and I see things from the perspective of a power unit manufacturer, I see this [will be] difficult for 2027,” he said. “Because the implication for the battery size and the implication for coping with higher fuel flow, they are normally longer lead time than the time available to go into the 2027 season.
“And actually, I would urge that possibly this conversation needs to be finalised. I would say before the summer break, to be in time to do it for 2028.
“And definitely, I would hope that that's the case, because while we have done a good job as an F1 community of looking constantly at improving the exploitation of the engine with what's available, I think we can extract more out of these regulations, but this will need some hardware tweak.”
Adam Cooper attended his first F1 race at Brands Hatch as a 10-year-old fan in 1976. He became a freelance journalist for Autosport magazine in 1985 while still at university, initially covering everything from club racing to the FIA World Sportscar Championship.
