FIA outline weight reduction F1 2026 ‘diet’ ideas following driver concerns

The F1 2026 regulations are unveiled, and here is how the FIA believe the cars of the future may look.

With several drivers sharing their scepticism that cars can reduce their minimum weight by 30 kilograms in F1 2026, the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis has explained how it might be achieved.

As part of the widespread regulation changes on the way for F1 2026, one of the intended changes is for the minimum car weight to reduce to 768 kilograms from the current 798 – a move that some of the F1 drivers believe isn’t currently possible.

FIA explain how F1 2026 weight target could be reached

Speaking after the reveal of the planned chassis regulations for F1 2026, reigning World Champion Max Verstappen shared his thoughts on why he believes achieving a 30-kilogram drop in weight could be difficult for the teams.

“At the moment, that is going to be very tough, I guess with how everything is. But let’s see,” Verstappen said in Canada.

“Even now some teams are overweight, right? So to go even 30 kilos less [is difficult]. Of course, I know that the dimensions change a little bit, but I’m sure that let’s say 30 kilos will be the perfect scenario. Let’s say it like that.”

Williams’ Alex Albon was another to say he doesn’t really understand how the cars can be made any lighter than they are currently.

“Let’s see. Lighter [cars], but they’re making the teams make them lighter,” Albon said when asked about the proposed new weight targets.

“I don’t know what parts of the regulations allow them to be lighter. I don’t know the details about it.

“I don’t know if they’re giving us lighter Halos or lighter wheels or whatever. But I don’t think that weight comes for free, it’s more of just a commitment from the team to try to get down to that weight.”

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But with the cars becoming a little shorter and narrower, this will help the teams find a little bit of weight loss due to the mass of the car thus reducing.

Other areas in which the weight might be reduced is through the wheels, with slightly narrower tyres also allowing Pirelli to reduce the weight of the tyres by as much as a couple of kilograms each.

FIA single-seater director Tombazis, who has been instrumental in creating the new regulations, has outlined how a key area related to car safety could also allow for a significant chunk of weight loss to be introduced as F1 goes on “a bit of a diet.”

“We are changing a few things on safety, evolution rather than revolution,” Tombazis told Tom Clarkson on the Beyond the Grid podcast.

“The biggest one is the size of the chassis. Currently, cars have what is called a Zylon panel. It’s been on the car since 2000-ish, I forget exactly which year it was introduced.

“This is bonded onto the chassis after it gets made. It’s to reduce the chance of some other object penetrating the chassis.

“We are now replacing that and the current sidewall of the chassis with an integrated panel which is much tougher but also lighter. That’s one step.”

Zylon is an exotic composite material, with similar characteristics to Kevlar and the strength and stiffness of carbon fibre. The current regulations state the two sides of the monocoque be coated in layers of Zylon no thinner than 6.2 millimetres. Another panel, no less than 3mm thick, must then be affixed overlapping the 6.22 panels.

Aside from the Zylon panels, Tombazis also explained changes will be made to the nose.

“The other big one for safety is the nose,” he said.

“We are making it in such a way that, if the car gets a glancing blow onto the wall, the nose will not just all snap off and then leave the chassis with no nose at all, a bit will remain and so, if the car takes a glancing blow and then bounces on the other side of a track and gets onto the wall again, it will still have some structure there to protect the driver.”

With F1 rolling out with vastly different technical regulations for both the chassis and power unit in F1 2026, the cars are likely to be a little slower than the current ruleset – Tombazis confirmed simulation work with the 2026 regulations suggests somewhere just over a second a lap slower.

But with F1 at the forefront of global motorsport, Tombazis isn’t worried that the cars will be too slow to the point where other series could be faster.

“It’s difficult to say because we don’t really race against other cars at the same venue, in order to be able to say,” he said when asked how important it is that F1 remains the fastest series over a race distance.

“Clearly, Formula 1 has to be the pinnacle of the sport – it is not that difficult to make a car that is faster, if one wants.

“We have a lot of regulations that limit how fast the car goes and we can, within two days, write regulations that make the cars go faster by 20 seconds a lap almost if you know what I mean.

“So it’s not the speed, the lap time isn’t a be-all and end-all.

“We want the cars to be challenging to drive, to be a test for the best drivers in the world. But to actually make a car that’s faster is not so difficult if you’re not limited by regulations.”

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