Last year’s Oscar-nominated and Apple-produced Formula 1 movie, F1, centers on a 60-year-old Brad Pitt who returns to Formula 1 after a 30-year absence. Pitt’s Sonny Hayes joins the worst team in the field and spearheads a strategy in which one of the team’s two cars crashes on purpose during every race, receives no penalties for those tactics, and incrementally remakes its season, finishing the year surviving attempts at internal sabotage by greedy investors and challenging for race wins in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. It was on one hand laughably unrealistic, and on the other, a fantastic time at the theater. It’s also only a little bit crazier than what’s actually happened in Formula 1 this spring.
The vast majority of Sharp Text readers are not F1 fans, but I’m sure everyone reading this is at least vaguely familiar with the sport’s meteoric rise over the last six years—Netflix, a huge ratings spike, multiple new U.S. races, friends you thought you knew who are suddenly saying the word chicane, etc. What’s unfolded in 2026, however, has been a sharp break with that trajectory. Ratings are reportedly down between 40 and 50% in multiple markets, Formula 1 may or may not be censoring its own highlights, and the series is being memed and mocked by racing fans around the world (including F1 rights holders).
As an erstwhile sportswriter and casual-but-dedicated F1 fan, I find these developments fascinating as a sports story, a business story, and maybe as an object lesson in the madness of European politics. But with F1 now on a break for the next month—two April races in the Middle East were cancelled because of the war—I’d like first and foremost to document, for posterity, what a mess this has been.
The Drivers Hate Racing Now
The source of this year’s drama is a set of new engine regulations. While hybrid engine technology was first introduced to Formula 1 in 2014, the cars of the past decade drew 80% of their energy from internal combustion engines and 20% from electric batteries. In 2026, that ratio has become 50/50, with energy deployment managed by software that drivers only partially control. This has created a new era of racing defined by what seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton calls “ridiculously complex” technical priorities and jargon, and which manifests across races that reward not driving on the limit, particularly in high-speed turns, and feature occasionally unpredictable changes in speed that can be outright dangerous.
After the second race of the season finished without much quality racing and with six cars unable to even complete the Chinese Grand Prix, complaints hit a crescendo after round three in Japan last weekend. In Suzuka, the racing and qualifying was once again forgettable and there was a crash that was a direct by-product of the new rules and unpredictable batteries, the third such incident this season.
That brings us to the drivers. Imagine if 10 to 15 of the most famous football players in the world spent every postgame press conference fielding questions about whether the NFL is fundamentally broken, and all of them answered with their own versions of “Absolutely.”
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was warning about these regulations beginning in 2023, airing his concerns publicly in what’s now an infamous and eerily prescient press conference. Three years later, he said in China, “If someone likes this, then you really don’t know what racing is about. It’s not fun at all. It’s playing Mario Kart. This is not racing. You are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight, they boost past you again. For me, it’s just a joke.”
Last weekend in Japan, before Verstappen finished the weekend by contemplating retirement at 28 years old, he said on Saturday, “In a weird way, I’m actually not that angry. I’ve already gotten past that stage. Which isn’t a good thing, either.”
Verstappen’s former teammate, Sergio Perez, rejected F1’s argument that the new era created a “historic number of overtakes” in the season’s opening race in Australia: “I found it very fake, to be honest. Because it’s all just on a button. You overtake, and then you get overtaken. It’s very early days on these rules, but what we saw in Melbourne, me talking as a fan, I didn’t like it. … I think everyone is looking for a bit of a change. What we currently have is not good for anyone.”
Two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso echoed Perez’s sentiments on overtaking: “No, not fun at all. What fun is there going to be in overtaking by accident? Overtaking these days is accidental. Suddenly you find yourself with a higher battery than the car in front, and you either crash into them or you overtake them. It’s an evasive maneuver, not an overtaking.”
“I told you in Bahrain,” the 43-year-old Alonso added, “the chef could drive the car. Maybe not the chef, but 50% of the team members, I think, at least can drive in Suzuka. Because, as I said a few times already, high-speed corners now become the charging station for the car. So, driver skill is not really needed anymore. You just need to back off the throttle or turn down the battery and you charge the thing. So, yeah, no more challenge in the high-speed.”
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, one of the biggest stars in the sport, screamed into his radio last weekend, “I honestly can’t stand qualifying. It’s a fucking joke! I go faster in corners, throttle earlier, for fuck’s sake, I’m losing everything in the straight.”
Leclerc’s former teammate at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, is now at Williams and said of qualifying this weekend: “The more you push, the slower you went, so overall, not good enough for Formula 1.” Last year’s World Champion, Lando Norris, echoed that line: “It hurts your soul seeing your speed dropping so much, 56 kph down the straight.”
On Sunday after the race, discussing a theoretically exciting move to pass Lewis Hamilton in the closing laps, Norris admitted, “I didn’t even want to overtake Lewis. It’s just that my battery deploys. I don’t want it to deploy, but I can’t control it. So, I overtake him, and then I have no battery left, so he just flies past. This is not racing, this is yo-yoing. … There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s just not enough control for a driver, and that’s why you’re just too much at the mercy of [the hybrid engine] behind you. That’s just not how it should be.”
It should be noted that there are a few drivers who have been more diplomatic. Hamilton has praised the aerodynamics of the new cars, if not the engines, while Pierre Gasly has complained about the atmosphere of negativity that has engulfed the paddock. Meanwhile, Mercedes has by far the best engine in the field and has won all three races with relative ease; their drivers are mum, while Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has defended the regulations that he helped impose, saying, “This F1 is pure racing, seeing one driver recharging and the other using energy is exciting … Only conservatives and traditionalists and those who live in the past may not like it.”
Toto’s spin aside, safety may ultimately demand some changes. Prior to the season, Norris warned that the dramatic swings in speed that are now elemental to the new regulations would result in dangerous crashes: “Just depending on what people do, you can have 30–50 kph speed [deltas]. When someone hits someone at that speed, you’re going to fly and you’re going to go over the fence and you’re going to do a lot of damage to yourself and maybe to others. That’s a pretty horrible thing to think about.”
What Norris described in early March was close to the precise scenario the world saw in Japan last weekend, when 20 year-old Ollie Bearman exploded into a turn with a burst of battery power that coincided with Franco Colapinto slowing down as his battery recharged, unable to give Bearman room, sending Bearman careening off track and into the wall. “There was a massive overspeed,” Bearman explained afterward, “which is a part of these new regulations, and we have to get used to it. We need to be a bit more prepared, as unfortunately this was the result of a massive delta speed which we’ve not seen in Formula One before.”
“I was so surprised when they said we will sort out qualifying and leave the racing alone because it’s exciting,” Sainz said of the crash on Sunday. “As drivers we’ve been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, it’s also racing, and we’ve been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen. … I hope it serves as an example and the teams listen to the drivers, and not so much to the teams and people that said the racing was okay, because the racing is not okay.”
To summarize, then: the complaint after three races is that all of this is clearly unsafe, and also at odds with the spirit of racing. Drivers despise going full throttle only to watch their car slow down by 50 kilometers-per-hour. There’s not enough consistent speed overall, particularly in qualifying, and then far too much speed in specific circumstances during a race. Drivers have only partial control over how much energy is deployed by their constantly re-charging engines, rendering all the racing less organic, less rooted in skill, and more dangerous.
The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (“FIA”), the shadowy European organization that oversees the Formula 1 regulations and authored this disaster, released a statement Sunday conceding the new regulations played a role in Bearman’s crash in Japan. The statement promised “constructive collaborations” with teams about changes, but warned that any potential adjustments to the regulations “require careful simulation and detailed analysis” and that “any speculation regarding the nature of potential changes would be premature.”
The next race is May 3rd in Miami. That leaves a full month for teams and the FIA to first admit there’s a problem, and then find ways to fix it.
Stuck In Carbon Neutral
Speaking of going very fast before a violent drop in speed, all of this comes in the midst of momentum that has transformed F1 into an international sensation. I’d be shocked if business schools aren’t already teaching case studies about the past decade. Purchased by Liberty Media in a deal that closed in 2017, Formula 1 found a new international audience thanks to the launch of Drive to Survive, the aforementioned-Netflix reality series that began airing in 2019 and developed a cult following during the first few years of the pandemic.
Particularly over the past six years, the success has been staggering. After the Liberty acquisition, F1 initially brokered a deal under which ESPN would broadcast its races for free in 2018, an arrangement that eventually turned into $5 million-a-year in rights fees, and then a deal worth between $75 and $90 million annually—all to broadcast across ESPN platforms, beamed into the living rooms of Americans who were coming from Netflix after falling in love with the characters and luxury suffused throughout the greatest racing series in the world.
A relative scarcity of races meant that each one was an event and appointment viewing for new fans. That audience also created new demand for high-priced tickets—where F1 makes a substantial portion of its money—and the sport added two American races in Las Vegas and Miami over the last four years. Of the latter race, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said earlier this year, “We get more attendance for F1 races for three days than the entire (Dolphins) season tickets that we sold.” Likewise, F1 continues to churn out profits for Liberty, with overall F1 revenue up 14% to $3.9 billion, team payouts up 11% year-on-year to $1.4 billion, and operating income up to $632 million, up 28%.
There was also Apple’s aforementioned F1 movie, which grossed $600 million in theaters, and most recently, a new partnership with Apple that pays a reported $150 million annually for U.S. broadcast rights. That’s close to double what ESPN was paying on its previous deal, and 30 times what ESPN was paying for rights at the beginning of the decade. Also, Apple is now promoting the sport to 2.5 billion Apple customers all over the world.
So why did Formula 1 dramatically change its engines and remake the racing at the center of all this success? Per ESPN:
The 50/50 goal for the new power units was decided at a time when governments around the world were legislating against the long-term future of internal combustion engines and forcing car manufacturers to commit to the production of electric vehicles. In an effort to retain the involvement of major automotive manufacturers in F1 and attract new ones, the sport felt the need to mirror the industry’s shift toward electrification[.]
… The strategy was immediately successful in that it attracted Audi to commit to the new engine regulations while also convincing Honda to U-turn on its decision to completely quit F1 at the end of 2025. Although not entirely due to the change in regulations, General Motors has also put its name on a power unit program, which is targeting an engine supply for the new Cadillac team by 2029, while Ford partnered with Red Bull’s in-house engine project that was also set up with the new regulations in mind.
This is the interesting part. F1 is first and foremost a European pastime and as such has done its fair share of pandering to the continent’s obsession with climate commitments, net zero goals, etc. Agreeing to transform its cars, though, seems like it was a matter of more conventional incentives—F1 and the FIA wanted to keep existing stakeholders happy and attract new participation from the richest car companies in the world, and those car companies wanted a guarantee that the technology developed for F1 teams could eventually be used in consumer lines, which were increasingly subject to aggressive emissions regulations.
In other words, if you find yourself wondering why in the world the greatest racing series on earth would worry about making its cars more sustainable and less drivable, the answer is as much about the chronic anti-pragmatism of European bureaucrats as any of the people actually managing the sport, or even the car companies the FIA was trying to appease. Here, I’m thinking of German officials at the United Nations, laughing when they were warned in 2018 that de-carbonization efforts had left them overly-reliant on Russian energy. Or Iceland setting a goal of selling 100% electric cars by 2030, offering lush subsidies for those purchases, punitively taxing the country’s holdout ICE drivers, and then realizing in 2025 that its electric grid may not support the cars they’re selling. The EU, as a whole, attempted to impose a ban on all ICE sales by 2035 that was partially walked back in 2025 after companies convinced Brussels regulators that they were undercutting one of the continent’s strongest industries and leaving many of its proudest companies to be eaten alive by Chinese competition while jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The EU’s anti-ICE regulation was initially mooted in 2022, which is exactly when the current F1 regulations were devised. That timing, as ESPN notes, is not a coincidence. The question now is, what can be done? And how much damage can this mistake actually do?
I’ll start with the latter question, and reiterate that I’m a casual fan who’s not at all an expert in engines, energy deployment, or whatever “super-clipping” is. I’ve watched and enjoyed just about every race for the past six years, though, and therefore am squarely in the middle of the target audience that has made Formula 1 a considerably more lucrative business over the course of the decade. And what I find deeply frustrating about the new era’s racing is that the sudden centrality of the engines leaves me questioning literally every exciting moment a race has. Did Charles Leclerc survive George Russell’s charge in Japan because he was a better driver that day, or because of an energy advantage? In the moment, I had no idea; afterward, I learned about a software issue for Russell.
Overnight, the sport has become far less accessible to anyone not willing to learn about lifting-and-coasting, and harvesting, and how to monitor battery levels throughout the race, and less rewarding for those who do. Rarely this season have we seen a battle on the track that could be explained by driving skill and not technical quirks of energy deployment. By the end of all three races in March, I had checked out and gone to my phone.
If there are others like me (and the thousands of people complaining on Twitter), the economic consequences of that apathy may take time to materialize, which is another way of saying that the FIA does have some breathing room. Despite reports of large TV audience drops in Germany and Spain, Apple claims the U.S. audience for the Australian Grand Prix was up over last year’s ESPN numbers, and in any event, the Apple deal is signed for the next five years. That money is coming regardless of whether fans do, too. Likewise, tickets to races should continue to be in high demand—luxury ticket packages for the Miami Grand Prix are all sold out, while the resale market for grandstand seats has three-day packages going for mid-four figures.
F1 and the FIA clearly have a problem, though. Apple was buying into a sport that was cool and ascendant, not one where fans all over the world are mocking the races, and even the drivers themselves are admitting they hate what F1 has become. Unfortunately, scrapping these regulations won’t be easy. Developing engines takes years, and it’s incredibly expensive. In fact, beginning early last year FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem tried to sidestep this year’s problems by leading a months-long campaign to keep last year’s engine regulations in place for an additional two seasons before eschewing electric engines altogether and returning F1 to V10 engines in 2029. That proposal reportedly had support from Red Bull and Ferrari, but was voted down by Honda, Audi, and Mercedes, which reportedly spent $1.4 billion developing its hybrid engine for the current regulations.
A year later, the seats are getting hotter for everyone, and there’s been at least one report of “interesting admissions off the back of Suzuka—namely, that there’s a growing awareness within the FIA that the 50/50 split has been the wrong direction. It’s understood that, in the short-term, energy deployment limits are being looked at while, longer-term, a change in the ICE vs. electrical split.” On the other hand, it’s not at all clear how much the racing can be improved in the near future, and the next set of engine regulations won’t come until 2030 at the earliest.
The challenges for the FIA, in the meantime, will be both technical and political. There are competitive implications to any changes that may be made, as any changes will inevitably favor certain teams that are behind (Ferrari, Red Bull) while handicapping others that optimized for the current specifications (Mercedes) or that simply don’t have the resources to pivot their engineering on the fly (Audi, Honda). Ferrari has already complained about repeated tweaks to the start procedure in the new era (“FOR US, THE CASE IS CLOSED!”) and more substantial changes will bring even more pushback. Even before the season began, FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said that regulation changes were possible, but would have to be agreed upon by the teams.
“When teams and manufacturers discuss these matters, they think of a combination of the good of the sport and the good of their own competitive position,” Tombazis explained in February. “And of course, one bit influences the other bit. So unavoidably, there will be some different opinions.”
Meanwhile the drivers remain publicly upset, and in private it’s likely worse. The president of the driver’s union, the GDPA, said that a WhatsApp group with all the drivers—a concept that I absolutely love—is “basically exploding” in the face of the status quo. “I have rarely seen it that active,” Alexander Wurz said. “It’s full of emotions and possible solutions to convince everyone that the drivers should be heard.”
If the sport’s popularity suffers because of all this, EU regulatory madness aside, the FIA and the car company stakeholders deserve it. All the problems currently plaguing Formula 1 were flagged explicitly by Verstappen and other drivers beginning at least three years ago. That was the time for “careful simulation and detailed analysis” of the ways this might go wrong and changes that could still be made. Even last year, there was an opportunity for Toto Wolff and the rest of the sport’s power brokers to pivot—an escape road, if you will—but that was ignored.
Instead, the best drivers in the world spend half their weekends charging batteries, while fans are left questioning whether the most exciting moments in racing are the product of skill, bravery, or software decisions. Even the very beginning of F1 races, the most fundamental of thrills in racing, is now accompanied by five seconds of engine management and a multi-step start procedure. It’s horrible.
There is, however, one more character here.
What Will Max Verstappen Do?
Personally, I put Max Verstappen in a category alongside Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods as the most impressive athletes I’ve seen in my lifetime. And while it’s true that signed rights contracts will insulate F1 from the immediate impact of declining interest, losing the 28-year-old Verstappen to retirement would be a much bigger problem. It’s not an accident that Tim Cook heralded the beginning of Apple’s F1 journey with a Verstappen-themed promo at Apple Park. Max is the biggest star F1 has. He’s the best driver in the world and in the conversation for the best driver the sport has ever seen. Potentially losing a star of that caliber, without any credible replacement, is the sort of risk that may well compel billion dollar stakeholders to find a real solution.
I wasn’t always a Max guy (we can unpack the 2021 season in a different article), but he won me over for three reasons. First, there are occasional slip-ups, but Verstappen is considerably less testy than he once was. Winning four world championships and starting a family seems to have softened him off the track. He laughs at himself more now, he loves his wife and daughters and most of all his beloved sim-racing, and, particularly with younger drivers, he’s extremely supportive of his peers behind the scenes. Second, he remains an absolute maniac on the track. He concedes absolutely nothing, makes virtually no mistakes, and he finished last season winning six of the final nine races, closing a massive gap with McLaren and inspiring ads likening him to the shark from Jaws as he nearly stole the title in the final race. Finally, he’s not at all preoccupied with how he’s perceived, and coupled with his talent, stature and insight, that combination makes him more interesting than 99 percent of athletes in the world. Look again at his note-for-note prediction in 2023, warning about the existential crisis that F1 is experiencing today. Max is not only unusually smart, but bracingly candid.
He also tends to be curt with assembled F1 media—again, smart—and rarely provides more information than is absolutely necessary to get to the next question and to the end of an interview session. It’s notable, then, that he’s now in the final year of his contract and talking expansively about walking away.
Max has floated early retirement before, but he’s never been this openly unhappy. Whether that posture is strategic or merely honest is subject to interpretation. What’s clear is that the most famous driver in the paddock has spent practically every interview session this season talking about what racing is supposed to be, agitating for rules changes, and highlighting the problems F1 has in the meantime.
So, Max gets the last word. Sunday’s interview with the BBC broke F1’s rules on follow-up questions, but a Red Bull PR staffer could tell Verstappen wanted to talk and allowed it to continue. The three-minute audio is here, and a transcript of Verstappen’s answers is below:
I see it like this: You hear it from a lot of sports people when you speak to them about how are you successful. It all starts with actually enjoying what you’re doing before you can actually commit to it 100%. Now I think I’m committing 100% and I’m still trying, but the way that I am telling myself to give it 100%, I think is not very healthy at the moment because I am not enjoying what I’m doing.
And now people can easily say, ‘Yeah, well, you’ve won so many championships and races and now just because the car is not good you are complaining.’ Maybe you can see it like that, but I see it different.
I can easily accept to be in P7 or P8 where I am. Because I also know that you can’t be dominating or be first or second or whatever, fighting for a podium every time. I’m very realistic in that and I’ve been there before, right? I’ve not only been winning in F1. But at the same time when you are in P7 or P8, and you are not enjoying the whole formula behind it, it doesn’t feel natural to a racing driver.
Of course I try to adapt to it, but it’s not nice the way you have to race. It’s really anti-driving. Then at one point, yeah, it’s just not what I want to do. And of course you can look at it and make a lot of money. Great. But at the end of the day it’s not about money any more because this has always been my passion.
As a kid this is what I wanted to do and back then I had no idea what I was going to achieve and how much money you make. You never think about that as a kid. And it’s also not about that. I want to be here to have fun and have a great time and enjoy myself. At the moment that’s not really the case.
Of course I do enjoy certain aspects. I enjoy working with my team. It’s like a second family. But once I sit in the car it’s not the most enjoyable unfortunately.
I’m trying. I keep telling myself every day, to try and enjoy it. It’s just very hard.
I’m not enjoying Formula 1 as a whole. That’s what I’m saying. I’m thinking about everything within this paddock. Privately I’m very happy. You also wait for 24 races, or this time 22, and then you just think about, is it worth it? Or do I enjoy being more at home with my family? Seeing my friends more when you’re not enjoying your sport? I want to be here to have fun.
I have a lot of other projects anyway that I have a lot of passion about. The GT3 racing. Not only racing it myself, but also the team. It’s really nice and fun to build that. And I really want to build that out further in the coming years.
It’s not like if I would stop [in Formula 1] that I’m not going to do anything. I’m always going to have fun. And also I will have fun in a lot of other things in my life. But it’s a bit sad to be honest that we’re even talking about this. It is what it is. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’ll be fine.
When the interviewer, BBC’s Jennie Gow, told him, “You will be fine, but the sport won’t be as fun without you,” Verstappen finished by saying, “They know what to do.”
And of everything Max had to say last weekend, that was the only line that gave me pause.
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