Formula 1 arrives at Silverstone this weekend expecting its biggest crowd of the year — and with its in-form champion warning that the 2026 cars may not be built for the place. Max Verstappen previewed the British Grand Prix on the simulator after Austria and did not enjoy it.
"Silverstone, I love the track, but I did a few laps on the simulator and I just started laughing," Verstappen said. "It felt like a different track, to be honest."
The problem is energy. The 2026 power units lean far harder on battery deployment, and Silverstone's flat-out layout leaves the cars almost nowhere to recharge. "You barely have battery around the lap. It's just constantly flat," Verstappen explained, contrasting it with the Red Bull Ring's heavy braking zones. "There, you have long straights but then a fast corner, so you can't really charge the batteries, and then the next straight you don't have a lot to spend. It's going to be a tough one." He went further on the driving feel: "I think this is less natural, but it goes hand-in-hand with the energy management. Because half of the time you cannot use the gears that are natural."
He is not a lone voice. Lando Norris has been blunt about the new generation all season. "We've come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1 and the nicest to drive to probably the worst," Norris said earlier in the year. "It sucks, but you have to live with it."
George Russell, fresh from winning in Austria, takes the opposite view — and has little patience for the complaints. "Everyone's very quick to criticise things. You need to give it a shot," he said. Russell pointed to the contradiction at the heart of the grumbling: "When we've had the best cars and the least tyre degradation and when we've been happiest, everyone moans the racing's rubbish. Now drivers aren't perfectly happy, and everyone said it was an amazing race." He also stressed that the energy picture swings from circuit to circuit, so Silverstone's extreme will not define the formula.
The numbers explain why this track is the flashpoint. As the F1 preview channel Mr Pulse noted, Silverstone runs at full throttle for roughly 68.6 percent of the lap — among the highest of the season — with only about 12 percent spent braking. That leaves few moments to harvest energy, forcing drivers to clip, or back off early, through the fast corners rather than down the straights. Mr Pulse's read: teams with the cleverest energy management, Mercedes chief among them, could be the ones who thrive while rivals scramble.
There is a longer arc here too. The FIA already trimmed recoverable energy in qualifying earlier this season to kill extreme tactics, and F1 has agreed engine changes for 2027 and 2028 partly in response to exactly these complaints. Silverstone, with its long flat-out sweeps and a sprint format that hands the teams a single practice session, is where the current formula's limits get exposed in front of the sport's loudest home crowd. Verstappen, for one, is bracing for it. As he put it: "It's going to feel very different compared to what we are used to around Silverstone."
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula.one](https://newsformula.one/article/verstappens-silverstone-warning-reignites-f1s-2026-engine-row). Visit for full coverage.*