Fernando Alonso has reignited one of the sport's touchiest arguments: do the 2026 cars still reward driver talent? Speaking after the British Grand Prix, the two-time champion argued the new formula has turned overtaking into a button press.
"You don't need to outbrake anyone, you don't need to overtake on the outside, you don't need to take any risk," Alonso said. "You just press one button, and you overtake if you have a better power unit than the car in front."
He pointed to the Silverstone Sprint as evidence. "I saw replays of the Sprint, people overtaking in the middle of the straights with more battery," he said. "So there is not any driver input or driver talent needed to overtake a car in front of you." Alonso also flagged how much of a lap is now spent nursing energy: deploy through the wrong sector at Spa, he warned, and "it is finito for the rest of the lap."
He is not alone. Max Verstappen has spent the season needling the same regulations, comparing the racing to a video game. "It's playing Mario Kart. This is not racing," Verstappen said earlier in the year, describing the 2026 machinery as "Formula E on steroids" and complaining that "you are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight."
The unease reaches beyond the grid. Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, tied Alonso's complaint to a broader anxiety about automation. "This is my concern. We are on the verge of an AI takeover for humanity," Hill wrote. "F1 is a harbinger of the shape of things to come."
Not everyone accepts the framing. Analysts at ESPN pushed back on the idea the racing has simply gotten easier, arguing the skill set has shifted rather than shrunk. "Race craft is now as much about energy deployment and timing as it is pure braking skill," the outlet noted. "That doesn't necessarily make the racing better or worse, but it undeniably makes it different." The same piece questioned the gatekeeping in the "real racing" language from Alonso and Verstappen — who, exactly, gets to define authentic competition.
That is the crux of the row. To Alonso and Verstappen, deployment maps and boost buttons have diluted the craft of wheel-to-wheel combat. To their critics, managing a hybrid power unit flat out is its own discipline — just not the one the sport's veterans grew up with. With the 2026 rules locked in and no quick fix on the table, the argument is set to run all the way to the flag.
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*Originally published on [Newsformula.one](https://newsformula.one/article/alonsos-no-talent-needed-jab-reopens-f1s-2026-car-row). Visit for full coverage.*