The specter of 2026 has long loomed large over the Formula 1 season. During the pre-season car launches, there were endless references to the need to balance 2025 and 2026 car development given the major overhaul of both power unit and chassis regulations, with talk of next year’s cars only increasing since. The battle for the ‘26 world championship already rages behind closed doors, long before this year’s fight reaches its climax. It is an unseen force that not only shapes what will happen next year, but also impacts what’s happening on track today.
Every team formulated a plan going into this year for how it would split its resources, which is partly thanks to the cost cap. Set at a baseline figure of $130 million – the real number is higher given there are myriad adjustments too convoluted to go into here – this limits how much teams can spend on the core business of designing, developing and racing their cars. There are plenty of exclusions that mean the real spend is far higher, but are mainly peripheral expenditures that don’t relate directly to the cars. A more significant factor is what’s called the Aerodynamic Testing Regulations (ATR).
This limits windtunnel and CFD work in terms of total runs, ‘wind-on’ time when the tunnel is active and gathering data, and occupancy, which is the amount of time you can be in your facility. This is monitored closely by the teams and closely scrutinized by the FIA. There’s no avenue for extra aerodynamic testing, meaning it’s essential you use the windtunnel in particular as efficiently as possible. If you consume runs on extracting a few more hundredths from your 2025 car, you are taking them away from ’26 development – the definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The trouble is, reality rarely co-operates and the notional split of resources teams planned for will have, in many cases, been adjusted. What’s more, the windtunnel and CFD resource allocation was changed between the Canadian and Austrian Grands Prix last month based on constructors’ championship position. There is a notional 100% figure for windtunnel and CFD work, although only the seventh-placed team gets that, the rest gain or lose in five percentage-point increments, with 70% for top-ranked McLaren and 115% for last-placed Alpine.
Arguably, despite its limited ATR allowance McLaren is in the best position given its commanding advantage in both the drivers and constructors’ championships. It has a car that is not only quick over a single lap, but is generally even stronger on race pace thanks to how well rear tire temperatures can be controlled. But even then, it’s not a straightforward task.
“Really tricky,” says McLaren engineering technical director Neil Houldey when asked about the difficulty of balancing this year and next during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend. “It’s a really good challenge to understand how much performance we can still get out of the 2025 car and how much performance we really need to be putting on to 2026. And at the moment, we’ve captured everything that we think we can on 2025. There’ll be another couple of small upgrades, potentially something a little bit bigger at the next event, that’s all in manufacturing now. And the technical office are, give or take, a couple of people, fully focused on the 2026 car now.”
A floor and rear brake duct inlet upgrade duly appeared the following weekend at Silverstone, although the former wasn’t raced with every indication that it will be used from the next event in Spa onwards. Given McLaren is in the ideal position, on top of the standings without concerning pressure from its rivals and no specific car problem requiring urgent attention, it arguably has the most straightforward equation in judging how to balance up its resources despite the need to close out the titles.
The other three teams in the top group, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, face a trickier decision. Max Verstappen is still notionally in contention for the drivers’ championship, although scoring just 29 points across the past four events means he’s slumped to 69 off the championship lead. In normal circumstances, that might eliminate any temptation to divert any more resources back to ’25. Outgoing team principal Christian Horner revealed at Silverstone that “pretty much 90% of the focus now is on 2026”. However, there’s still the need to convince Verstappen that he should be confident in Red Bull’s ability to fix balance problems that have existed for a couple of years and therefore stave off the chance of him departing. And who knows what else might change technically, with Horner unexpectedly getting axed after Silverstone?
Mercedes could arguably afford to write off the rest of the season to ensure it gets the most out of next year’s car, but must also understand why it struggles so badly with the tires in higher temperatures.
“Absolutely right,” says Wolff when asked about the need to get on top of its inconsistency. “Maybe for our benefit the opportunity lies [in the fact] that it changes completely [with next year’s rules], the ground effect cars go away with what they do to the tires, and we reset. But fundamentally, we carry the tire over in terms of the product. It may change the specification, but it’s the same product so we need to understand what creates those oscillations.”
Mercedes could write off a disappointing 2025 and hope the 2026 rule reset works in its favor. But if it does so without fully understanding its current car’s tire issues, it risks baking them into the new one. Glenn Dunbar/Getty Images
Continuing to build understanding of this problem could require aerodynamic testing given technical director James Allison has indicated at least some of the answer may lie in optimizing the various heat transfer and cooling mechanisms around the rear tires – what he calls “very fussy bits of engineering”. The point is, Mercedes cannot simply assume that the problem will solve itself in 2026 as it very likely points to a blind spot in its own tools and design decisions.
Ferrari is perhaps in the most invidious position. Team principal Fred Vasseur has always been adamant that ’26 development must not be compromised, but amid pressure on his position and the beating the team has taken after its title aspirations turned to dust with a winless 2025 to date, there is a determination at least to salvage some victories.
“We are all lucid that it will be more than difficult to come back on McLaren,” says Vasseur. “First, they have an advantage. Sometimes at some track or (in) some conditions we are able to fight with them, but overall they have an advantage. And also they have a big advantage in terms of the championship and even if you win all the races until the end, I’m not even sure that you will be champion. But we are still in the fight with Mercedes and Red Bull, we are still in a fight to win some races and it’s important for the team. On the split between ‘26 and ’25, don’t worry – we know what we have to do.
Ferrari made big changes to its car for 2025, shortening the length of the gearbox in order to move the cockpit rearwards within an unchanged wheelbase to create aerodynamic opportunity. Unfortunately, that led to running too small a rear damper without the power to hold the car at the right ride height at high speed. As a result, the ride height has generally had to be set higher, sacrificing significant downforce. A modified floor appeared at Austria that helped matters, but the key change is the expected introduction of revised rear suspension internals, perhaps for Spa. If all works as planned, then this could mean a leap forward in performance.
For most, the decisions will already have been made but the fundamental problem in the trade-off is the increased yield of ’26 aero work. Let’s say a development loop requiring a certain amount of windtunnel and CFD resource might yield a few hundredths of a second now, the same resource might equate to a tenth or more for ’26 due to the steepness of the development gradient. As a general rule, the more mature regulations get the shallower that gradient becomes, but at the same time a gain of a few hundredths could make the difference between second or fourth in the constructors’ championship.
That’s no better illustrated than in the midfield. Currently, Williams holds fifth place on 59 points with bottom-ranked Alpine on 19. All six teams in that group could conceivably top it depending on how the second half of the season goes, and with every step in the standings worth over $10million, that’s a lucrative battle. Williams has long since focused its windtunnel work on ’26, yet has a cooling-related problem that must be understood and fixed. Sauber has made significant progress to leap to sixth, making the car significantly less ‘peaky’ and improving through-corner balance, therefore giving its drivers confidence, while Racing Bulls has a car that has always been relatively benign to drive but needs a little more downforce to return consistently to the front of the midfield.
Behind them, Aston Martin is making formidable progress as for the first time in this regulations era it has shown an ability to improve the car consistently with upgrades rather than causing itself balance problems and has therefore proven its development processes have improved. Haas, too, hit porpoising problems in the high speed corners early on but has fixed those problems, while at the back Alpine is all over the place with a car that doesn’t ride bumps well and is only a points threat at favorable tracks – but at least has gained significantly more windtunnel and CFD resource thanks to dropping to the back.
All teams have much to gain from perhaps introducing one more upgrade than rivals in ’25, but it comes at a cost. Aerodynamic development is a zero-sum game given any windtunnel or CFD resource you spend on ‘25 cannot be used for ’26. This means most will tend towards keeping focus on ’26 unless they have a specific problem to troubleshoot that risks carrying over into next year despite the car changes, or a significant fight on their hands to achieve results that are considered essential.
And it’s also important to remember that improving the performance potential of your car is only part of the battle. That’s because understanding how best to exploit this is in itself worth performance, and those who have little or no more parts to come might find their performances continue on an upward curve simply by being able to extract more from the existing machinery.
For most, given the lag in development between the start of the design phase and getting parts on the car, especially with the two-week break in August, the decisions will already have been made. But the effect of those choices will be felt not only through the rest of 2025, but well into next year – and even beyond given how important it is to start a new rules cycle strongly.
