Formula 1 tore up its rulebook for 2026 and the sport is already patching it back together. Three races into the season, the FIA introduced regulation tweaks to fix an "energy-starvation" problem that nobody on the pit wall seems to enjoy — and several people warned was coming.

The headline change was a move to power units that split their output roughly 50-50 between a traditional internal combustion engine and electrical power. In practice, the real-world split is closer to 53-47. The issue is what happens when the battery runs dry: the car drops to about 540 brake horsepower — less than a Formula 3 car, albeit with considerably more grip through the corners. BBC Sport

Fernando Alonso put it colourfully. Many of the great corners on the calendar, he said, have become "charging stations" — places where drivers lift and coast simply to pour energy back into the battery rather than pushing for lap time. The result is what the paddock has dubbed "yo-yo racing": cars swapping positions repeatedly over consecutive laps because one driver suddenly has a 350-kilowatt (470bhp) advantage over another, then loses it again when the battery depletes. Drivers have called the effect artificial. BBC Sport

Max Verstappen was blunter still. The racing, he said, is "not really realistic," and driving on reduced horsepower is "a little bit painful." BBC Sport

The root cause is twofold. The 2026 rules removed the MGU-H — a component that recovered energy from the turbocharger and exhaust gases — and did not permit energy recovery from the front axle. That left cars with fewer ways to harvest electrical power during a lap. The FIA was warned repeatedly in the years leading up to the regulation change that this would happen. BBC Sport

Technical heads from the teams and engine builders began a series of meetings in April 2026 to review the new rules, and safety concerns over outright speed were raised alongside the energy debates. Reuters

Amid the engineering headaches, the racing has produced a genuine title story. After five rounds, 18-year-old Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli led the drivers' championship with 219 points — a 43-point margin over his teammate George Russell, who sat third on 160. Formula1.com Lewis Hamilton, now at Ferrari, held second place with 169 points. Charles Leclerc was fourth and Lando Norris fifth. Formula1.com

Antonelli's lead is the early headline of 2026, but the background noise — engine maps, battery deployment, yo-yo overtakes — keeps intruding on the narrative.

The FIA has already mapped out a path away from the 50-50 split. An intermediate step is planned for 2027, with the balance shifting to 60-40 in favour of internal combustion by 2028. BBC Sport

Further out, FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has proposed a return to naturally aspirated V8 engines for the 2031 season. That idea has limited support among the sport's stakeholders, but it signals how much unease the current formula has generated. BBC Sport

Away from the engine room, the 2026 chassis rules have been broadly well-received, and the cars are only marginally slower than their predecessors. The problem is not how they corner or brake. It is how they are powered between the corners — and everyone, from the stewards to the drivers to the fans in the grandstands, can feel it.