Ahead of Saturday’s session at Suzuka, the FIA confirmed the maximum permitted energy recharge per lap in qualifying had been reduced from 9.0 megajoules to 8.0 megajoules following unanimous agreement from the sport’s five power unit manufacturers.
The change comes after concerns the 2026 regulations were forcing drivers to lift and coast heavily during qualifying laps in order to harvest energy, resulting in “super clipping” where cars slow on straights while recharging their batteries.
By lowering the energy limit, the FIA hopes drivers will spend less time managing energy and more time pushing the car, allowing them to attack corners more normally during a qualifying lap.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc welcomed the adjustment but doubted it would have a dramatic impact this weekend.
“I don’t think it will be a game changer,” he said.
“I think it will be pretty similar, apart from for the driver where maybe there’s a little bit less lift and coast, which is I think a good thing.”
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His team-mate Lewis Hamilton said the previous energy management demands during simulations had made qualifying laps particularly frustrating.
“They have changed it coming into the weekend,” he said.
“When we were on the simulator, you were having to do a tonne of lift and coast, which is really, really not enjoyable to do, particularly for a qualifying lap.”
Championship leader George Russell played down the significance of the change, describing it as a relatively minor adjustment.
“It’s just a small detail. It doesn’t change anything,” he said.
“You can recover less from your battery, so it means you need to be slightly more wise with how you spend it.
“Hopefully, what it means is we’ll be going slightly slower in the middle of the straight, but slightly faster at the end of the straight.
“It’s small adjustment. I’ve yet to sort of see any data of the difference from what I drove on the simulator, so I’m not exactly sure.”
Reigning world champion Lando Norris was also unsure how it would affect the driving, although he believes the impact will vary depending on the circuit.
“It’s different,” he admitted.
“I need to go out and drive with it first. I think it will eliminate some things and it will shift around some other bits.
“I think the thing is you also have tracks where it will be better. Some tracks it will work and be a much better thing, some tracks it won’t change too much.
“So it should be a little bit better here. It’s not like it’s going to change the whole world.”
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the 2026 regulations, said he hopes the tweak brings qualifying closer to the flat-out laps drivers are accustomed to.
“I’ve not practiced it on the simulator so I cannot give you a clear answer,” Verstappen said.
“It was before not flat-put, basically, so I hope this can be closer to flat out.”
Not every driver was convinced the change was a step forward, however.
Haas driver Oliver Bearman argued the adjustment could simply make the cars slower over a qualifying lap.
“I mean it’s just making us even slower,” he said.
“On one hand we don’t have to do any lift and coast any more, which is probably a bit better for us.
“I mean we still have to recharge the energy and we spend a lot of time just with no energy because we’re losing one megajoule compared to what we had on the sim and prior to coming here.
“I think there’s better ways of achieving the same thing. If we could harvest at negative 350 kilowatts while on full throttle, I think it would make everyone’s lives a bit easier.
“But this is also a solution, I guess.”
The tweak is expected to reduce super clipping by several seconds across a lap, although the FIA believes it may also leave cars roughly half a second slower due to having less electrical energy available to deploy.
Further discussions over energy management and the impact of the new 2026 regulations are expected in the coming weeks as teams, manufacturers and the FIA continue refining the sport’s new technical era.
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