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Welcome to Saturday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Formula 1 has made a worthwhile change to its engine rules by dropping the 50-50 power split target for next year, says Alesici:
Assuming Domenicali doesn’t have the power to block this change simply to try to save the remains of his face, this is an encouraging step in the right direction. Not as big a step as it should have been, but at least they’ve had the wisdom to act relatively promptly (though really it shouldn’t have required any racing to take place to realise the rules were broken).
Alesici
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to kbc, taurus and JerichoKane!
On this day in motorsport
- Born on this day in 1951: Formula 1 designer Gary Anderson, whose cars included the Jordan 191 Michael Schumacher made his debut in
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Social media and links
FIA 2026 F1 Regulations – Section E (Financial – power unit manufacturers) – issue 05 – 2026-05-07 (FIA – PDF)
Formula 1’s revised rules relax the budget cap further for power unit manufacturers who are furthest behind the leaders. Any manufacturer whose power unit performance, based on the FIA’s index, is at least 10% worse than the leader, will be allowed an extra $11 million to spent on development (rule E4.1.1t). Those within 2% get nothing added. An additional $8m is also allowed only for manufacturers more than 10% behind in the first season of the new rules only. The changes are expected to benefit Honda, given the difficulties they have experienced at the start of the season.
IndyCar cracks down on illegal push-to-pass use (Racer)
‘IndyCar has revised its rulebook to include language that makes it illegal for drivers to use the 60hp boost provided by the push-to-pass (P2P) button when the system is meant to be disabled. The rule update comes after the most recent race at Long Beach, where the software that governs P2P failed to turn the system off during a late restart and nearly half of the field exploited the error to their advantage.’
Brundle’s verdict on F1 power unit regulation tweaks, ‘genius’ Verstappen spin recovery and Antonelli ‘magic’ (Sky)
‘In front of the whole pack except Leclerc, (Verstappen) deftly used the throttle, brakes, and steering wheel to execute a full 360-degree turn, pointing nicely down the racetrack and somehow maintaining some forward speed. I can’t tell you how hard that is in these plus-sized F1 cars full of fuel in the heat of battle.’
Toyota ‘knew it would be a tough weekend’ at Spa (Sportscar 365)
‘Three weeks after Toyota was within a whisker of taking pole for the Imola season-opener and then executed a perfected strategy to win the race, the two TR010 Hybrids struggled far more at Spa and languished down in 12th and 16th places after qualifying. Floury ‘knew it would be a tough weekend’ heading into Spa but dismissed any notion that Toyota was sandbagging in Belgium by pointing out that it went faster in qualifying this year than in 2025.’
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