The energy problem: why 2026's hybrids turn Monza into a different sport

Monza is supposed to be the fastest place on the calendar. Long straights, minimal braking, cars at full throttle for roughly three-quarters of every lap. For decades that meant one thing: top speed. This year it means something stranger — and several drivers expect the 2026 cars to be slower here than they were at the Hungaroring, as The Race's preview on why the Italian GP will feel weird puts it.

That is not a typo. It is a direct consequence of what changed under the floor this season, and Monza is the circuit that exposes it most brutally. To understand why, you have to understand how much the hybrid system has grown — and how differently Formula 1 now uses it compared with the endurance cars sharing the same basic technology.

What actually changed in the power unit

The headline number is the MGU-K, the electric motor-generator on the crankshaft. In the 2014-to-2025 era it was capped at 120 kW (about 160 horsepower). For 2026 that figure nearly triples to 350 kW (around 470 horsepower). The MGU-H, which recovered energy from the exhaust, has been dropped entirely.

The second change is less visible but more important: the energy store behind it is far larger. Under the old rules the battery could hold only about four megajoules per lap — enough for a burst of roughly thirty seconds at full deployment. You timed that burst to one straight or one corner exit, and then you were done until the next lap. The 2026 store is big enough that electric power can be sustained across a whole lap and managed lap by lap.

That is the qualitative jump. Electric output used to be a fixed, short-lived boost. Now it is a variable you spend, save and ration — which means it has become strategy rather than just hardware. And on a circuit where there are long straights but almost no chance to recover energy, that strategy runs out of road very quickly.

Why Monza is the stress test

Monza's layout is the worst possible case for an energy-starved car. You have two long straights back to back with barely any corner in between to harvest energy into the battery. The result is that the cars arrive at the second straight already empty.

McLaren's Oscar Piastri put it plainly: in the team's simulator running, they were actually quicker down the front straight at Hungary than at Monza. 'It doesn't make a whole lot of sense,' he said, 'but it's more that we just don't have the energy to spend.' The old fear was a 30-to-40 km/h collapse partway down the straight; with the tweaks FIA has made for this weekend — capping deployment and setting a 5 MJ harvesting limit (against 9 MJ on out-laps) — the speed now flat-lines rather than cratering. Top speeds are well below the historic 350–360 km/h peaks, but they hold.

The FIA has also leaned on what is called 'auto-K,' part of the in-season regulation tweaks: teams program exactly where along a straight the battery kicks in, so the driver can sit flat on the throttle out of Parabolica while deployment happens in a predetermined zone. It removes a manual task from the driver but adds a new layer of setup to get right — and it means cars about to start a lap can be moving at very different speeds to those on a flying lap, which rookie Arvid Lindblad flags as a genuine safety concern given how large the delta gets. The Race's day-one analysis walks through each of these tweaks in detail.

Teams have leaned into the quirk too: Ferrari arrive with their second ADUO power-unit spec, low-downforce aero and a Schumacher-tribute livery for the weekend.

The drivers' view has moved through the season

It is worth tracking how the paddock's reaction has shifted, because it tells you how much the cars have changed in people's hands.

At the Bahrain opener in March, the response was blunt. Charles Leclerc called the inconsistent gaps 'like the mushroom in Mario Kart.' Max Verstappen was more direct: 'It's playing Mario Kart. This is not racing… For me, it's just a joke.' The complaint was consistent — boost on, you leap ahead; boost off, you fall back, and the gaps never settle.

By mid-season the tone had softened into adaptation. Drivers were learning to anticipate the surge, to manage throttle earlier, to treat state of charge as something to plan around rather than react to. Some started pushing back on the criticism itself, arguing that once you are used to it the 'Mario Kart' comparison stops fitting — that it is a skill, not a glitch.

Monza resets that conversation. This is the circuit where the adaptation has to work hardest, and even the drivers who have made peace with the new cars are bracing for chaos. Leclerc expects 'yo-yo racing' to return in force and says Monza is the one track where he would happily compromise qualifying to set up the race. Verstappen is blunter: 'It's going to be really painful… The cars are simply inefficient for Monza.' Aston Martin's Mike Krack predicts an all-time overtaking record, 'like MotoGP,' while Lindblad — after what he called 'the most confusing sim session of the year' — warns it will be 'really bad yo-yo racing': gain a car on one straight, lose three over the next few laps.

That spread is the story. The same regulation that produced fury in March is now something drivers actively manage — and Monza is where management meets its limit.

How WEC uses the same idea very differently

It is tempting to assume every hybrid race car is doing the same job, but the World Endurance Championship's Hypercars use the technology almost as a mirror image of F1.

The numbers make the scale clear. A Le Mans Hypercar is capped at about 500 kW (671 bhp) of total system output, petrol engine included — while F1's electric motor alone puts out 350 kW. The LMDh variant, which uses standardised parts to cut cost, runs a fixed 190 kW MGU-K on the rear axle, less than half the power of F1's unit.

But the difference is not really about size; it is about intent. In WEC the hybrid exists to make the car consistent — to fill in the gaps in the petrol engine's torque curve and deliver smooth, repeatable performance over a race that can last twenty-four hours. It is an always-on efficiency tool. And crucially, the Balance of Performance system actively neutralises any advantage it might create: officials can vary each team's energy allowance and add ballast so that no powertrain philosophy gets an inherent edge. The hybrid is there to be managed out of the equation, not to be a weapon.

F1 does the opposite. There is no BoP flattening the field; the 350 kW motor is a genuine performance asset that each driver must spend deliberately, and its effect on overtaking is left fully exposed. That is precisely why it produces the yo-yo racing WEC was designed to avoid. One series uses hybridisation to make racing more even; the other has handed drivers a strategic throttle they have to manage in real time — and the timing is apt, because the WEC's return to a European finale brings its own round back to Monza this season.

What this means for the weekend

This is analysis rather than prediction: if the energy model holds, expect qualifying to be dominated by slipstreaming — cars hunting for tow to save battery — and a race that opens with a burst of overtaking before settling as drivers ration what little they can recover. The teams with the best straight-line efficiency gain the most from an empty-battery field, which is exactly why Mercedes chose Monza to hand Antonelli his engine penalty and let him climb back through the pack.

The bigger picture is that 2026 has turned the power unit into a race strategy again, for the first time since the early days of hybrid F1. Whether that reads as exciting or as 'Mario Kart' depends on how well the drivers can hide the management — and Monza is the one weekend where they cannot.