We tend to think of professional sports as the ultimate example of “survival of the fittest,” where winners and losers are determined solely by their performance on the playing field, but that’s not really the case. Most major sports tend to have some sort of built-in rules designed to promote parity. In the U.S., this usually comes in the form of an annual draft that rewards low-performing teams with a higher pick depending on their record from the previous season. The NFL goes one step further, rewarding less successful teams with an easier schedule for the following season, while many other sports employ a salary cap or luxury tax that prevents a franchise from simply spending its way to a title. These attempts at increasing parity might fly in the face of some established ideas about the purity of sport, but ultimately they’re instrumental in keeping sports interesting and, as a result, profitable.
This concept of athletic egalitarianism is now making its way into the world of motorsports, with two of the world’s top racing series embracing a new set of rules aimed at leveling the playing field and creating a new generation of safer, greener, and more nimble race cars. The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) made waves when it announced the elimination of its Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) class for the 2021 season. It was certainly thrilling to watch a multi-million-dollar car round the corners at some of the world’s most famous tracks, but the high price of entry and lack of limitations on certain engine specs was thought to have steadily turned the WEC into a sort of “pay to play” league where only the most affluent teams had any chance at success. While it was a controversial move in the minds of some race fans, it’s easy to see the impetus behind the decision. Since 2014, Porsche and Toyota have been the only real contenders for the World Endurance Drivers’ Championship, with the well-funded teams routinely trading off the title and making for something of a preordained racing season.
Now the world’s most popular motorsports series looks to follow suit with a new set of guidelines that will bring drastic changes to the world of Formula One. The preeminent racing competition will embrace radical changes to the regulations, including significant updates to the power generation, vehicle dimensions, and weight. These changes represent a “moderate revolution” that will make F1 cars “lighter, more powerful and more focused on driver skill,” in the words of FIA director of single-seat racing Nikolas Tombazis, who was largely responsible for writing the new regulations.
Whether you want to call it a revolution or simply an evolution, the new rules come at a cost: speed. Eliminating the top LMP1 class has had a small-if-noticeable effect on speed in the WEC, and the new F1 rules set to go into effect for the 2026 season are bound to cause a similar slowdown. The difference isn’t exactly drastic. By some estimates, F1 cars will only be around one second slower per lap. But it does seem like a step in the wrong direction, given the increasing power potential of the hybrid engines that are found under the hood of the average top-flight racer car. What’s behind these tightening regulations? What effect will they have on the world of motorsport, and will they succeed in improving parity? We’ll explore all that and more as we decide whether these new rules are worth the cost.
World Endurance Championship
While the FIA World Endurance Championship might not be quite as well known as the Formula One series, the competition has seen a dramatic increase in viewership over the last few years. Formed in 2012 as the result of a merger between the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and the European Le Mans Series, WEC events are a marathon compared to the all-out sprint of the average F1 race. The WEC’s marquee event, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, has recently been drawing more eyes than ever, with the 2023 race earning a record-breaking audience of 113 million. That represents a 150 percent increase over 2022, with the famous endurance race finding its way into the airwaves in 196 countries. The U.S., Japan, and Germany saw a particularly notable bump in viewership. While it’s tough to tie this uptick to any one factor, the new regulations are an obvious suspect.
At the end of the 2020 season, the WEC’s governing body embraced an overhauled set of rules aimed at increasing parity and participation in the famed endurance racing series. The Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) category was first introduced at the 1992 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and saw constructors pull out all the stops to create the fastest, most powerful entries they could muster. With no limit on engine displacement or the number of cylinders that could be used, these LMP1 models served to showcase the latest and greatest in automotive engineering. Introducing hybrid engines saw the LMP1 category become even more powerful but created a wider gap between the haves and have-nots. Case in point, toward the end of the LMP1 era, some races almost didn’t seem worth running, with dominant teams like Toyota Gazoo Racing representing the only realistic first-place finisher at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
This disparity led the WEC to nix the LMP1 class in favor of the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) and Le Mans Daytona H (LMDh) categories for the 2021 season. While LMP1 entrants were one-off prototypes with no real-world analog, the LMH and LMDh cars embrace an entirely different approach that’s significantly more cost-effective for the average racing team. While LMH models often employ a novel design, some are based on existing hypercars. The LMDh category goes one step further, requiring teams to use a standardized hybrid system as well as a chassis designed by a select number of manufacturers, including Oreca, Dallara, Ligier, and Multimatic.
An LMH model can still represent a substantial investment, but LMDh vehicles are far more accessible than their LMP1 predecessors. These two classes also have more restrictions than the LMP1 category, with the WEC dictating each category’s power output and minimum weight. These sorts of limits might result in a slightly slower race, but that doesn’t necessarily mean less excitement. The improved parity had led to more entrants and tighter competition, which is particularly important in the world of endurance racing. Watching a single car lead the pack during a two-hour F1 race might be a little dull, but that same sort of dominance is downright tedious when you’re talking about an insurmountable lead at a 24-hour race like Le Mans or even the WEC’s 6 Heures de Spa-Francorchamps.
The WEC’s rule changes have led to improved viewership and increased buy-in from participants who had previously bowed out of the LMP1 class. Between 2023 and 2024, the LMH category grew from 13 to 19 full-time hypercars, with brands like Alpine, Lamborghini, and BMW returning to the series. That’s a 46-percent increase, and that number only looks to be going up. Aston Martin will rejoin the WEC for the 2025 season, which brings the field to 36 cars from 13 different manufacturers across the LMH and LMGT3 categories.
Formula One
An unprecedented number of changes are coming to Formula One for the 2026 season. While the series traditionally focuses on updating its engine or chassis regulations with each overhaul, F1 has now decided to tackle both elements at once. “With this set of regulations, the FIA has sought to develop a new generation of cars that are fully in touch with the DNA of Formula One,” said Tombazis. “Cars that are light, supremely fast, and agile, but which also remain at the cutting edge of technology. To achieve this, we worked towards what we called a ‘nimble car’ concept.”
The most significant change comes down to power generation. While F1 will keep the turbocharged 1.6L V6 that’s powered all of its cars since 2014, newly imposed fuel flow limits will mean that it’ll cede a significant portion of the car’s power production to the hybrid electric system. In order to make up for the difference, the rest of the powertrain will see a major update, but before we start delving into the numbers, we should take a quick moment to review the inner workings of the modern F1 machine.
Currently, F1 cars are powered by three different units: the internal combustion engine, Motor Generator Unit–Heat (MGU-H), and Motor Generator Unit–Kinetic (MGU-K). The turbocharged 1.6L V6 engine will be familiar to most drivers, but the other two elements are a little more exotic. The MGU-K is part of an F1 car’s hybrid power unit and uses excess energy captured when braking to give the engine an extra boost of power. This approach isn’t that different from the average regenerative braking system you’d find on the typical hybrid or electric model, albeit a much more high-performance version. The MGU-H accomplishes the same end result with a very different approach, capturing exhaust gas and converting it into electrical energy for the hybrid power system.
Under the 2026 F1 rules, the maximum output of the internal combustion engine will be reduced from 850 brake horsepower (bhp) to 540 bhp, while the MGU-K will get boosted up to 470 bhp, and the MGU-H will be banned altogether. It’s easy to see why these changes have been characterized as revolutionary. For the first time in the sport’s history, half of an F1 car’s power will be generated solely by a battery, a 300 percent increase over the previous formula. This increased reliance on battery power means drivers might have to be a little more economical in how they approach every corner and straightaway since the hybrid system will now only top off the battery when the brakes are employed. The internal combustion engine will also run on a new type of fully sustainable fuel being developed by F1 itself, which will help the series meet its lofty goal of going carbon neutral by 2030.
These changes to the powertrain should help smaller racing operations keep space with some of the sport’s big boys. As in the case of the WEC, there has long been a massive spending gap between different F1 teams, with wealthy teams like Mercedes-Benz and Red Bull routinely spending more than $400 million while smaller operations like Haas and Williams get by on as little as $115 million. That issue was previously addressed with a cost cap implemented in 2021 that limited annual spending to $140 million, which has since been reduced to $135 million for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Has this attempt at equality succeeded in its goal? It’s tough to say. Despite the cap, Red Bull and Mercedes-Benz were the only two teams to capture the World Constructors’ Championship over the last 15 years, but that’s already beginning to change, with McLaren making history in 2024 with its first Championship in 26 years.
While the powertrain-related changes might be the most drastic update for the coming 2026 F1 season, they’re not the only alterations on the table. The powers that be have also introduced a number of rules designed to create a field of smaller, more nimble cars that can provide the sort of wheel-to-wheel excitement and competitive cornering that makes for such compelling races. New regulations will see smaller wheels and lighter cars that shed some of their width and wheelbase. They’re relatively minor tweaks. The cars will be around 4 inches narrower, 8 inches shorter, and 65 lbs lighter. But even a small change can make a big difference in a sport where every second counts. F1 cars might not be as fast as they once were, but by shrinking down the dimensions and promoting the adoption of new strategies, F1 executives hope to make up some of the difference.
These changes to the established F1 formula have been met with mixed reactions from drivers and fans alike. Seven-time World Drivers’ Champion Lewis Hamilton has been one outspoken critic, implying that the changes don’t go quite far enough when it comes to creating a lighter, more nimble car. “It’s only 30 kilos, so it’s going in the right direction, but it’s still heavy,” said Hamilton in mid-2024. “I have spoken to some drivers who have driven it on the simulator. I haven’t, but they said it’s pretty slow, so we will see if it is actually the right direction or not.”
These aren’t the only changes set to take effect for the 2026 season, with F1 also targeting aerodynamic elements and placing an increased emphasis on hybrid technology. Reducing aerodynamic downforce by 30 percent and cutting drag by over 50 percent will potentially allow F1 cars to reach higher speeds on straightaways but will have an impact on cornering due to a reduction in grip. This shift, along with the increased emphasis on hybrid power, will likely lead teams to adopt new strategies that are bound to subtly transform the sport for the future. Advancements in safety technology, specifically the “halo” driver crash-protection system, have provided a huge benefit in terms of on-track fatalities, but these new rules should help to improve safety further while also placing an increased emphasis on driver skill rather than pure engineering prowess.
It’s hard to envy those responsible for ushering in a new age of top-flight racing. No matter what sort of measures you take to improve parity, sustainability, driver safety, or fan engagement, there are always going to be critics. The WEC took a decidedly dramatic approach, eliminating an entire class in a bid to promote competition throughout the rest of the series, while F1 has embraced an unprecedented number of changes to both the chassis and powertrain for the upcoming 2026 season. It’s all part of a delicate balancing act designed to maintain the high-speed excitement that’s inherent to every form of motorsport while making way for new technological advances, promoting parity, and ushering in a new era of more sustainable racing. Sure, some of these changes might come at the cost of speed, but if they make for tighter races and more competitors entering the field, sacrificing a few mph seems like a small price to pay.
