Oscar Piastri said it plainly at Spa: qualifying grids being decided by computers misbehaving is a pretty crap way of going racing. The FIA’s response? Essentially, yes, we know, but banning the algorithms would make things worse. Buckle up.
The Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
At Spa-Francorchamps, Piastri lost a significant chunk of straight-line time compared to team-mate Lando Norris, despite McLaren running virtually identical power unit settings on both cars. Team principal Andrea Stella eventually pointed the finger at the power unit’s self-learning elements: algorithms that adapt their energy deployment strategy lap by lap, responding to wind shifts, grip changes, and driver inputs in ways the driver cannot fully predict or override.
This is not science fiction AI. It is forward-thinking software that quietly reoptimises deployment mid-lap, sometimes surprising the person actually sitting in the car. The regulations state drivers must compete alone and unaided, yet here we are.
“It sucks. I can’t really say it any other way than that. When you’ve got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it’s a pretty crap way of going racing.” – Oscar Piastri
So Why Not Just Ban Them?
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis has a ready answer, and it is not entirely without merit. Give drivers a simple button to deploy electrical power whenever they like, he argues, and they will drain the battery on corner exits every single time. Straight-line clipping, already one of the most criticised aspects of the 2026 cars, would get dramatically worse.
There is also the battery management angle. Strict rules on the state-of-charge delta exist precisely to stop teams building enormous batteries and piling on yet more weight. The regulations, Tombazis says, are a careful balancing act, and human beings simply cannot juggle all the variables in real time.
“I don’t think humans can rationally control all of these parameters.” – Nikolas Tombazis, FIA
Will the 2028 Rebalancing Fix It?
Piastri is sceptical. He believes this problem is baked into the DNA of the current regulations, and that even the gradual shift towards a 60-40 combustion-to-electrical split from 2028 will not resolve it. Tombazis disagrees, arguing the rebalancing will give drivers meaningfully more control, if not complete control. As the FIA noted when acknowledging the 2026 rules were already known to be flawed before the cars hit the track, admitting the problem exists is apparently much easier than solving it quickly.
“It is complicated, no doubt, and it’s more complicated than we would like, absolutely, 100 percent.” – Nikolas Tombazis, FIA
The Uncomfortable Truth
Tombazis is right that a simple on-off button is not the answer. But the FIA wrote these regulations, signed them off, and pushed them through. Drivers are now publicly comparing their own cars to malfunctioning computers, and the governing body’s position is that this is an unfortunate consequence of the core architecture. For a sport that insists it is heading in the right direction in 2026, that is a difficult line to sell.
If the best the FIA can offer is it will be a step better in 2028, drivers and fans deserve to know what constitutes an acceptable step. Right now, nobody has a convincing answer to that.
