2026 F1 engines, every failure costs double: "In the worst case, they kill development"

Today at 11:26 AM

It is easier to make a high-performing engine reliable than the other way around, but the introduction of the budget cap for power units could change this paradigm. According to industry insiders, less reliable engines risk also becoming less performant, as excessive failures will prevent development. When drafting the regulations, the FIA aimed for a better compromise between costs and reliability, but new manufacturers will still face a disadvantage.

Too Many Failures, No Development
Since 2021, teams have been subject to financial regulations. Initially, engines were excluded from the budget cap, but the mechanism still highlighted the importance of limiting incidents to avoid spare parts expenses draining resources from car development. Starting in 2023, the same principle applies to power units, making reliability even more critical ahead of 2026.

Analyzing the average number of engines used per season by manufacturers in recent years reveals how breakdowns and unscheduled replacements impact development capabilities. Ben Hodgkinson, technical director of the newly formed Red Bull Powertrains, discussed this in an interview with *Racecar Engineering*, revealing an alarming scenario: "If you take the worst-case scenario, it would completely kill development for the following year because all your money would go into building power units to get on track."

In 2024 alone, the most troubled engine manufacturers were Honda and Renault, with an average of five engines per car. However, in 2026, the debut of a new generation of power units will increase the risk of failures compared to the proven current units, especially for new manufacturers. Despite the additional development opportunities outlined in the regulations, power unit updates will not follow an annual cadence. Nonetheless, development will remain crucial. Components such as the combustion chamber and pre-chamber, pistons, connecting rods, valves, and turbochargers will be upgradable in 2027 and 2029, while batteries and electric motors can be modified in 2028 and 2030.

An Additional Challenge
The new regulations aim to contain costs while achieving a better balance with reliability. For instance, the compression ratio—a geometric parameter indicative of the pistons’ ability to compress air in the cylinders to achieve higher pressures and power—will change. High compression ratios, however, increase the risk of detonation, where the air-fuel mixture ignites spontaneously, leading to uncontrolled combustion that generates high pressures and temperatures potentially destructive to the engine.

For 2026, the maximum compression ratio has been reduced from 18 to 16 to prevent new manufacturers from breaking too many engines during development while chasing current impressive performance levels. However, preventing detonation will become more complex. Manufacturers will no longer be allowed to use internal cylinder pressure sensors to directly detect abnormal combustion and adjust engine operating parameters. Article C5.15.11 of the new regulations states: "For each cylinder, only one knock sensor is permitted, and it must be an accelerometer." Monitoring will thus be conducted indirectly by measuring engine vibrations, posing a greater risk of failures unless an impeccable correlation with the previous pressure sensors is achieved.

Red Bull Powertrains' technical director Hodgkinson believes this represents a significant advantage for long-standing manufacturers: "We continue to develop engines with internal cylinder pressure sensors, which we will remove when it comes to racing because engine development relies on those sensors. Now, however, we need to establish a strong correlation between pressure sensors and knock sensors. Long-standing manufacturers already have correlations between these two data sets for every engine, every track, and every driver from the past 10 years."

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