Six months of drivers complaining about the 2026 regulations have produced a fairly settled narrative: the cars are heavy, the energy management is absurd, and Formula 1 has traded racing for arithmetic. Mika Hakkinen has just cut across all of it.
The two-time world champion, talking to his old McLaren team-mate David Coulthard on the Up to Speed podcast, was asked whether he would fancy the technical demands of the current machinery. Coulthard admitted he was not sure he would. Hakkinen took the opposite view, and not by a small margin.
"Well, it's crazy. I feel these cars must be better cars than what we had," Hakkinen said. "They must be better. They must be much more stable under the braking. The torque of the engine must be much more linear coming out of the corners, downshift, the upshifts, the braking performance, everything must be better."
What impressed him most was not the lap time but the development loop. "I found it fascinating that the technology has gone so much forward that you can develop the car in simulators. Whatever adjustments you do in gearboxes or whatever balance of the car, you can implement that to the real world in a real car."
He had one reservation, and it is the same one the current grid keeps raising.
"I think the power of the engine is also massive. I think we had probably 800, 900 horsepower. Now they have definitely minimum 1,000. I think the only thing I would not like is the weight of the car," Hakkinen said. "We had 6, 700 kilos, the weight of the racing car. Now they are still 800, 900 kilos. So I think that would be the negative thing when you're in a corner and you like to play with the steering a little bit and to balance the car."
"To drive, they are not a lot of fun, to be honest," Verstappen said. "I would say the right word is management. It's not very Formula 1-like. It feels a bit more like Formula E on steroids. But the rules are the same for everyone, so you have to deal with that."
He was blunter about what it does to a driver's job. "As a pure driver, I enjoy driving flat out and at the moment, you cannot drive like that. There's a lot going on. A lot of what you do as a driver, in terms of inputs, has a massive effect on the energy side of things. For me, that's just not Formula 1."
Lando Norris — who has since won in Hungary and sits fifth in the championship — did not join him. "A lot of fun. I really enjoyed it," Norris said of the MCL40 in Bahrain, before adding a line aimed squarely at his rival: "If he wants to retire, he can retire. Formula 1 changes all the time. Sometimes it's a bit better to drive, sometimes it's not as good to drive."
Lewis Hamilton's objection was different again. He is less bothered by how the car feels than by whether anyone watching can follow what is happening.
"None of the fans are going to understand it, I don't think. It's so complex. It's ridiculously complex," Hamilton said. "I sat in a meeting the other day and they're taking us through it and it's like you need a degree to fully understand it all."
His practical example is the one that has dogged the season. "If you look at Barcelona, for example, we're doing 600 metres lift and coast on a qualifying lap. That's not what racing is about."
Fernando Alonso landed somewhere between the two camps, arguing the problem is not the technology but how tightly it is policed. "It's very limited by the FIA, so when you derate and you cut the energy, it has to be done at a certain rate of derating," Alonso said. "There are a couple of things that are really probably over-regulated. So in terms of freedom or how to use that energy in a clever way, it's going to be minimal differences because there is not much you can do, unfortunately."
The split is not really about whether the cars are good. Hakkinen is judging them as engineering — braking stability, linear torque delivery, simulator correlation — and by that measure the 1998 and 1999 McLarens do not compare. Verstappen is judging them as a driving experience, and finds the energy management has eaten the part of the job he cares about. Hamilton is judging them as a broadcast product. Alonso is judging the rulebook rather than the car.
They can all be right at once, which is roughly what the first eleven rounds have shown. Overtaking numbers are up on 2025 at almost every circuit, and Verstappen and Hamilton have produced front-running scraps in both Miami and Hungary. Hakkinen, notably, has not driven one. His verdict comes with the caveat built in — "must be better" is a deduction, not a lap time.
He would still like to find out. "Otherwise, I think it would be exciting to try them."
Formula 1 returns at Zandvoort on 23 August.
---
*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/hakkinen-2026-cars-must-be-better-than-the-ones-i-won-titles-in). Visit for full coverage.*