Why F1’s agreed 60/40 engine split could still unravel

A change to F1’s power units in 2027 has been agreed, but there are considerable hurdles to clear before this agreement becomes a reality.

A statement from the FIA on Friday revealed how “unanimous” commitment from F1’s stakeholders has resulted in agreement to revise the power unit regulations for 2027, reducing electrical deployment power by circa 50kW alongside a 50kW increase in internal combustion engine power.

FIA and teams still face major hurdles over 2027 F1 engine changes

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After weeks of filibustering about the success of the new regulations in the face of widespread criticism from drivers, and condemnation from fans and media, Friday’s announcement can only be seen as a tacit acknowledgement of the massive misstep that the 50/50 power split represented.

The fact is that warnings about the constraints created by the new formula, brought on by simple physics, have circulated since as far back as 2023, predominantly by Max Verstappen and then-Red Bull boss Christian Horner, but were largely ignored.

There was a sense that, somehow, it would be ‘all right on the night’ and that the finished product would turn out fine; perhaps an example of how Formula 1 as a sport can occasionally fall victim to its own arrogance, given that this self-belief, by-and-large, does actually usually work out.

But the problems were evident from the get-go, the drivers grimacing every time they got out of their cars with rictus smiles painted on pallid faces, as the reality hit of just how damaged the formula had become with these new power units that are as ingenious in their engineering mastery as they are awful in their sporting effect.

Almost immediately, despite the protestations of Stefano Domenicali and several of the team bosses, it became evident that major change would be needed, and fast, if F1 wasn’t to haemorrhage fans and interest through this long, long stretch to the next regulation cycle.

Rather than embracing and celebrating the new rules, the topic immediately switched to ‘What’s next? For the love of God, what’s next?’; hardly a ringing endorsement of the much-vaunted power unit regulations that had been several years in the making.

Put simply, the proposed changes for 2027 are a shift from a (colloquial) split of internal combustion power against electrical from 50/50 to a 60/40 split, placing more emphasis back on a more powerful internal combustion engine, while reducing the dependency on electrical harvesting and deployment to generate outright laptime.

But, despite the pomp and circumstance of the FIA’s press release, it’s not yet a done deal; there are several layers of bureaucracy to get through, and there are several considerations to be taken into account to get these changes across the line.

The first of these is the governance structure itself. The meeting on Friday, which agreed on these changes, was essentially attended by the members of the F1 Commission, although it wasn’t a formal F1C gathering.

To turn the sentiment of the meeting from a “we agree on this idea” moment to hard-and-fast regulatory binding, the proposals will now be explored and refined by the relevant technical groups, ie. the Technical Advisory Committee [TAC], before being sent up the chain to the Power Unit Advisory Committee [PUAC]. Once voted through by the PUAC, the refinements can go before the World Motor Sport Council for ratification.

It’s worth noting that what exactly is being voted on isn’t yet fully fleshed out and, while there may be a broad understanding that change is needed, competitive elements complicate the picture that the TAC is working through.

After all, some teams and power unit manufacturers may be quite satisfied with the way the new regulation cycle has kicked off, and these vested interests may be completely at odds with what their drivers are saying. There may have been success in forcing through changes for Miami, but these were primarily safety-focused and thus could be made unilaterally by the FIA, if agreement couldn’t be reached in a more collaborative spirit. The changes for 2027 aren’t likely to be arguable on the same safety grounds.

The FIA has aligned itself with the interests of the drivers, which is perhaps unsurprising given that President Mohammed Ben Sulayem appeared to sense the writing on the wall in the final months before these V6s arrived, in his attempts to sound out a possible last-minute switch to V8s or V10s.

These were unsuccessful; it was simply too late in the day to get the committed power unit manufacturers to give up all the costly research and development that had gone into these new engines.

But, as Ben Sulayem has since said, a return to a more simple engine formula is something of utmost importance and, even if it can’t happen before the end of the current regulation cycle, it will happen in 2031, once the current Concorde Agreement has expired – even if that means annoying a few manufacturers, who helped shape the current regulations on the grounds of road relevancy at a time when combustion engines have become less important to their strategies.

Being beholden to the manufacturers is something that single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis addressed before Miami, saying that, while it’s desirable to have big automotive names involved in F1, their involvement can’t come at the expense of sporting spectacle and competitiveness.

“In terms of where we want to be in the future, we do need to protect the sport from the world macro-economic situation,” he reasoned.

“We cannot be hostage to automotive companies deciding to be part of our sport or not.

“We want them to be part of our sport, absolutely, that’s why we’ve worked so hard to secure new ones to participate.

“But we can also not be in a position where, if they decide they don’t want to be, we’re suddenly left vulnerable.”

With the drivers finding an ally in the FIA, aligned on one side of the debate against the interests of FOM and the teams, an axis in which commercial vagaries can colour and cloud critical thinking, the intriguing aspect of Friday’s announcement wasn’t so much the technical content, but the confidence with which the changes were announced, at an early point in which they are far from a done deal.

This could be interpreted as political pressure: being seen to be pushing a significant regulation change to move away from the electrification direction is the populist choice; should it not work out from here, the teams and PUMs putting up obstacles will have nowhere to hide from the backlash of public sentiment.

Is Friday’s statement thus an attempt to strong-arm cooperation for the greater good? Several sources didn’t deny this possibility.

After all, the image being portrayed is one of unanimous collaboration behind closed doors, which flies in the face of comments of positivity on the current regulations from, for example, Mattia Binotto in the Miami press conference, or Toto Wolff’s declaration after Miami that, “If there’s one single person that complains about the race today, I think they should hide, honestly. I think that was great, great advertising for Formula 1.”

“Whoever talks about changing engine regs in the short-term should question his way of assessing Formula 1 at that stage.

“So spectacular race. Fight for the lead, fight in the midfield. It’s splendid. Can we tweak it and optimise it in the midterm? I think absolutely. We would never be against making the show even better.”

While the tweaks introduced for Miami raised no issues or concerns and resulted in a more positive feeling, Friday’s press release was something of a surprise as to the scale of what was outlined.

Just four races into the cycle, the 50/50 split looks set to be killed off, in favour of a split that Horner called for as far back as the middle of 2023, when he said, “If we shift the distribution of power by 5 or 10 per cent in favour of the combustion engine, the problems could be solved.” This, then, is no mere “tweak”, but rather a fundamental rethink of the energy-starved philosophy that had been created.

With momentum starting to gather to make this change happen, there are other considerations to take into account as the TAC starts its work to figure out how to make the proposed changes a reality, and these considerations are not small stumbling blocks, even with the best and unanimous will in the world for the change.

Achieving a 60/40 split with the hardware as homologated currently is not thought to be possible, with sources indicating that homologation will likely have to be opened in order to achieve the split, requiring regulatory intervention just to allow for this.

Keeping the hardware changes as minimal as possible is thus something that will need to be figured out: a higher fuel flow rate for the increased combustion power means either a bigger fuel tank or a reduction in the race distance, while there are also considerations to be made with relation to battery size and even the longevity of existing componentry, all of which will have been designed and stress-tested on the basis of the original regulations.

A bigger fuel tank, as explained by Alpine’s Steve Nielsen last weekend, means a new chassis, meaning an increased urgency on getting clarity on what’s happening for 2027: any teams that may have planned on carrying on with the same chassis, or creating a new one on the basis of being unhappy with their current iterations, need certainty before investing any further resources.

Added to that is the impact in terms of the budget cap: teams won’t have taken into consideration in their financial planning that large-scale hardware changes may be needed, or that component carry-over may not be possible. This means further regulatory headaches; will a budget cap adjustment be needed in order to make the 60/40 split feasible?

There’s also the issue of the ADUO [Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities] safety net, where, as reported on Friday morning, it has seen an awarding of additional test bench hours to those who are lollygagging at the back.

ADUO is intended merely as a catch-up mechanism and, for those awarded more homologation upgrades (two are awarded to PUMs more than four per cent behind the best) and more test bench hours, the ability to use these opportunities, and the corresponding downward financial adjustments, to prepare for the regulation change offers them more than a mere catch-up.

It’s for these reasons that the FIA press release on Friday shouldn’t yet be taken as gospel: until these proposed changes are written into the regulations, there are non-inconsequential factors that it’s difficult to see every team and PUM voting for at every step of the way.

The concept of the change is one that has been agreed but, as one source said on Friday evening, “the bigger question is how we get there, even if the numbers are fine”.

What is evident is that the complications introduced to Formula 1 by a regulation set that has delivered exactly what was predicted, ie. a lack of delivery, will linger over the sport for some time, with patches of various sizes slapped over the wounds to bring about a more normal feeling.

Assuming the 60/40 split can be achieved, doing so will require opening back up the rulebooks to allow the freedoms necessary to achieve this, all while having an impact on budgets and planning. It’s an embarrassing and hasty climbdown, but at least it’s one that’s happening.

While it’s admirable that pride is being swallowed enough to acknowledge the problems and address them before it’s too late, it all begs the question of why it took until this point to address the shortcomings, given the long-standing warnings and the accuracy of today’s simulators and data mapping. It’s difficult not to point back to the arrogance I mentioned up above.

What isn’t particularly palatable is that there have almost been as many regulatory changes announced as there have been races, and the complications and rigamarole brought on in addressing the whack-a-mole nature of the problems the rules have introduced have had a feel of an overall lack of preparedness.

“We’ve seen a lot of regulation changes in the last few weeks,” Nielsen said of the constant evolution of the rulebook.

“I hope it calms down a bit, but our ability to react will be stretched if we start getting major changes in the next few months for next year.”

With F1 2026 essentially becoming an extemporising test-bed for prototype machines attempting to paper over weak engine regulations as the simulations are now backed up by real-world data, was a soft launch of the regulations needed in order to provide the snag list that the sport is now, collectively and very publicly, addressing?

In a four-year engine freeze, wouldn’t it have been wiser to roll out some mule cars for such a large regulation sweep, using them for track testing of the new power units to rack up the miles behind closed doors throughout 2024 and ’25 in a bid to understand what was actually going to happen, rather than figuring it out during a championship where the goalposts are being moved here and there?

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