F1's radical new 2026 car: active aero, smaller cars and auto crash prevention

“It’s active aero – absolutely,” said Symonds when asked how the low drag targets – and therefore greater fuel efficiency – could be achieved. “You can’t just reduce drag to cut fuel consumption because the car won’t go round corners.

“So it’s all about active aero – having two modes to the car effectively. So rather different to DRS, there’s a mode where the car has high downforce and consequently high drag when it’s in the corner, and a mode where it has low drag when it’s on the straight and consequently low downforce.

“That’s a simplistic view [and] there are variations to that, but that’s essentially the real basis of what active aero for future F1 is about.”

Symonds also expanded on an area which has seen increasing criticism from both fans and drivers in recent years, but which F1 and the FIA is working to change.

“One of the things we want to do is make the cars a little smaller because they’ve grown massively over the last few years,” he revealed. “We’ve put a limitation on wheelbase for the 2022 car, which in my view was was generous. My 2014 Williams was actually shorter than the current regulations require, so it can be done [though] it needs a little bit thinking about. Our aim is to make quite a significant [further] reduction in wheelbase [in 2026].”

Symonds highlighted an approach which could reduce the 2026 cars’ size, linking this to the 2026 engines and aero package.

“The fuel carry for the race will be less, so that also helps by taking some volume of the fuel tank away,” he says. “The amount of hybridisation is increasing – the power of the internal combustion engine is going down and the power of the electrical machines is going up, so immediately you are using less fuel.

“Most significant though is the drag reduction, because that’s where the majority of the power is going i.e. dragging cars through the air.

“There will be a reasonable reduction in fuel consumed during the race – my estimate for the moment be 20 per cent, maybe even 25 per cent, less than when we are using at the moment.”

The former Williams, Renault and Benetton tech chief highlighted F1’s push to start reusing materials in a bid to become more eco-friendly and sustainable – rather than focusing on bringing in more sustainable materials which cars are built from in the first place.

“Cars are built the way they are, because that’s the best way to do it.” he says. “There are certain materials where we really do need to think a lot about recycling, because of difficulty of getting them and the conditions around those, like nickels and cobalts.

“In the batteries we think there’s a lurking concern there. It’s all very well, people saying, ‘When batteries come out of a road vehicle they can be second purposed,’ but that only goes up to a point.

“We believe that it’s really important that recycling is an important part of the whole electrical system for the next generation of cars, so we’ll be doing quite a lot of work in that area.”

Symonds also revealed the new technology the FIA is investigating implementing in cars to prevent accidents, whilst emphasising the difficulty of reducing car size whilst maintaining their safety.

“One of the areas we are looking at is car to car communication,” he says. “A car know will if there’s a car in front of it travelling slowly.

“Secondary safety is about absorbing energy which needs length and distance to deform in, so it is quite a tricky thing.”

As F1 cars have become heavier in recent years, fans have complained that the spectacle has been lost some what from grand prix racing – today’s heavy machines appear glued to the road, far from the twitchy V10 animals of the ’90s and ’00s. Symonds stresses this is a priority for the technical team.

“We’d like the weight to come down but we’re way away from [achieving] that yet. However, we absolutely must make sure it doesn’t grow.”