George Russell reveals ‘sketchy’ F1 2026 concerns with huge top speeds predicted

Mercedes driver George Russell

While George Russell thinks the new power unit regulations coming to Formula 1 are “exciting”, he believes there could be “sketchy” moments with the chassis in certain situations.

The F1 2026 regulations were unveiled to the public for the first time ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix and drew a mixed reaction among the drivers, with the key takeaways being that the cars are set to have significantly less downforce.

George Russell reveals crash concerns at ‘pretty crazy’ predicted top speeds

Russell, one of the directors of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, helps represent the drivers’ interests with the FIA, and he believes the governing body are listening to their concerns around the new cars.

The reduced downforce will take effect through active aerodynamics, which will see not only a moveable rear wing but a moveable front wing too, which looks set to lead to increased top speeds on the cars – while the cornering speeds are set to lower significantly.

There is still much to be ironed out as the regulations take shape ahead of the 2026 season, but in their current form, Russell admitted he hopes they retain their “fighter jet” feel from recent years.

“I think the PU regs are exciting,” Russell told reporters in Canada.

“I think the cars are going to take a quite a big turn in terms of how they perform. They’re going to be exceptionally quick in the straights. 360 (kilometres per hour) probably most tracks, which is pretty impressive.

“Obviously, then the safety needs to be probably improved, because if you have a crash at 360, 370 (km/h) it’s going to be pretty crazy.

“But then, the cornering speeds are going to be massively reduced, so I’m sure the teams will find a way to bring that closer to where we’ve been recently.

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“But from a driving standpoint, you want the fastest cars, you want to feel like you’re in a fighter jet. In 2020, 2021, that’s how it felt.

“Now these cars are getting very quick again, in this current era, and I’m sure next year, maybe we’re even going to be battling 2020 lap times.

“[It] would be a shame to lose some of that performance of the car, but on the flip side, it will improve the racing if there’s less downforce and there’s less dirty air. So I think to conclude with that, you can’t have it all.”

Expanding further on the safety element of the cars, however, the Mercedes driver explained that the catalyst for significant safety changes often come after accidents.

While the FIA stressed that safety is at the forefront of the new cars, just one area being the roll-hoop having been strengthened in the wake of Zhou Guanyu’s horror crash at Silverstone in 2022, the Briton said that having a lack of downforce at even higher speed could make the cars much harder to control than they are now, particularly in changeable conditions.

“I think when it comes to safety, unfortunately, history has told us that incidents need to happen before changes are made,” Russell explained.

“Everybody needs to do a really thorough job ahead of these regulations, because the cars are going to be so quick.

“It’s going to have so little downforce in the straights, it’s almost going to feel like probably you’re floating as you’re flying through the air.

“And you can imagine in a race that starts raining, and you’re on slick tyres and you’re doing 250 miles an hour on a street circuit – that’s going to be a bit of a sketchy place to be.

“So these are questions that need to be answered and, to be fair to the FIA, they are fully aware of this and talk to us and they’re looking at all of the possible scenarios of what could happen.

“So time will tell, but you know, the cars are already bloody fast as they are. Suddenly, you know, where do we stop? Are we going to get up to 400 kilometres an hour? Do the fans really need or want to see this? What is it that we want to achieve?

“For me, it’s good racing. I don’t really mind too much about how quick the cars are around the track.

“You want to have good racing, hard racing and strong competition, ideally, between every team and every driver.”

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