F1 teams force FIA to make U-turn on safety change for Australian GP

Formula 1 teams were thrown a curveball on Saturday morning when the FIA announced that one of the straight line mode zones on the Albert Track had been canned.

However, the unexpected change created massive pushback from drivers and teams and within a couple of hours of the announcement, it had been reversed.

"Following the feedback received in the last hour from Teams and Drivers, and additional analysis contributed by Teams, the decision to remove Straight Mode zone #4 for Albert Park is rescinded," said an FIA spokesperson.

"For the avoidance of doubt, this amendment is effective immediately, and Straight Mode activation Zone 4 will be in used in FP3. Further evaluation will take place during and after FP3."

The whole saga had left teams frustrated at a time when the sport is already in a difficult situation with new rules that have obvious shortcomings and concerns about a farcical race on Sunday.

The straight line zones are designed to, in effect, save energy around the lap, with drivers able to use their active aero to reduce front and rear drag. In this new era of F1, they are absolutely crucial in enabling drivers to have enough energy to deploy across the lap. For Melbourne, the FIA included the sweeping esses from Turns 8 to 9 as a “straight” on the basis that the section is usually flat out.

However, on Friday, drivers found that without downforce, it was on a knife-edge, especially when running with other cars.

Drivers expressed their opinions in Friday night’s driver briefing not just on that area of the track, but also on the overall concept of the 2026 rules, with some using very colourful language.

The FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis took on board the comments about the esses section, and his team in Europe ran some simulations overnight.

On that basis, he decided to remove straight line mode status from that area of the track, telling the teams at 0945, just over two hours before FP3. They were not involved in any consultation with the FIA.

The implications were huge, and much of the data gathered on Friday suddenly had little or no relevance.

Teams had adjusted their aero settings to deal with that area of the track being tackled with low downforce, for example, by deciding the front wing level and how much it moved. Parameters such as ride heights were also impacted because with downforce added in that section, the cars will touch the ground more, creating more plank wear and the risk of a penalty.

However, the key thing is that the higher drag through that section would use more energy, creating issues across the overall lap.

One technical director told Crash.net that cars would be forced to run through that section at a slower, constant speed, and that it “won’t look pretty.”

“We had a meeting yesterday with the drivers, and some expressed a concern that the downforce in that area was a bit too low,” said Tombazis, before the U-turn. “Especially if they were fighting for position with other cars, and they felt they could risk losing control of the car in such conditions.

“And as of course, safety is number one for us. We decided, following some analysis, to err on the side of caution and to remove the fourth straight mode zone for here.”

Tombazis explained there was a reason why the issue had not been anticipated.

“We are, for the first time, gaining detailed knowledge of the magnitude of downforce reduction some teams are experiencing on the straight mode activation,” he said. “So this is new information for us, and for some of the cars that is quite a big downforce reduction, more than we had perhaps envisaged.

“And the other thing to say is that this effect is not the same for all cars, but we couldn't just act on a few cars and say, ‘Well, you need to change your setup and not on others,’ because we wouldn't have a robust enough criteria criterion at short notice to do that.

“So that's why we felt it had to be an action for all cars, not for some cars, of course, in the long run, you know, following the first two races, when we analyse a bit more data, we can find also other ways to act on such an eventuality in the future. But we don't think that was a realistic scenario for here.”

Tombazis admitted that the change would create a challenge for the teams.

“Of course, that is reasonably significant as a change, because teams have to adjust the setups of the cars and have been running Friday in one condition, and they now need to make adjustments,” he said.

“So I'm sure there will be some who are not happy about that, but we feel that obviously trying to put safety first. We think that's most responsible course of action for this weekend, and as we are learning and so on.

“And I think it's important to note that this was instigated from listening to the drivers who express some of them expressed that concern yesterday in the drivers meeting Friday night.”

Expanding on the impact, he said: "It is worse for energy recovery, of course, because they will arrive at the braking zone at a lower speed, and hence recover less energy.

“On the other hand, on balancing factors, we felt that we needed to be on the side of caution, as I say, going forward in the future, we believe that we've learned, so hopefully we will avoid such a surprise in future races.

“But we feel that we could take more desirable decisions in the future based on how strong the straight mode zones can be. So what I mean is, this is a rather draconian solution here at the time we have, and the comments we've received, but we feel there will be better ways to act on this matter going forward.

FIA believed straight line selection was the "safe choice"

Asked if the original choice to include the esses section as a straight zone was an aggressive choice, Tombazis stressed that it was based on the data that the FIA had from teams.

"We have three parameters that are relevant,” he said. “One is the overall downforce of the cars following many months of development. The second is what percentage of that downforce gets lost on straight mode.

“And the third parameter is what balance shift, so how much more is the front downforce reduction compared to the rear downforce?

“So we had assumptions for all of these three parameters for I think about seven of the 11 teams. So for a big proportion, the downforce they had on the front wheels following those three parameters was less than we had anticipated.

“And made what looked like a safe choice transpire to be unsafe. As I said, in the future, we think we can also have solutions which would de-power the straight mode a bit so, you know, force them to not go quite as extreme, but we felt it would be unrealistic to introduce something like that ad hoc on Saturday morning.”