FIA to remove key Australia F1 straight mode zone amid driver concerns
· Yahoo Sports
F1's governing body the FIA has decided to take away the straight mode zone between Turns 8 and 9 at Melbourne's Albert Park amid concerns from certain drivers over the low-downforce settings unsettling the cars through the curved section.
For 2026 F1 has introduced active aerodynamics, with cars lowering both their front and rear wings on predetermined straights. That measure is aimed to help alleviate the drastic energy harvesting requirements of the new power units, which rely much more heavily on optimal battery usage.
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Albert Park's opening weekend featured five of those zones, including the snaking section following Turn 8, which leads into the high-speed Turn 9-10 combination.
Some drivers commented in Friday night's drivers' briefing that their car's downforce when straight mode is activated is so low that they risk losing control through the curved approach to Turn 9, especially in traffic.
After analysing data overnight, the FIA decided unilaterally to remove the zone altogether ahead of Saturday's running, starting with third free practice.
"On most of the circuits these [zones] are fairly straight forward, they are in genuine straight areas of the circuit," the FIA's single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis explained to the media in Melbourne.
"On three or four circuits in the year, one of which is Melbourne unfortunately, they also include some zones which are fairly curved, as happens on the fourth straight mode zone here in Melbourne between corners 8 and 9. So, we had a meeting yesterday with the drivers and some expressed a concern that the downforce in that area was a bit too low, especially if they were fighting for position with other cars and they felt they could risk losing control of the car in such conditions.
"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 here for Melbourne, starting from FP3 and of course for qualifying in the race."
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton, FerrariThe reason this situation has come up now is that the 11 different car designs all lose different amounts of downforce and drag once the wings are opened, and the FIA has only learned now - after Friday's two free practice sessions - that some cars were marginal on downforce through Melbourne's fourth straight mode zone. Motorsport.com understands Audi was one of the teams affected. But as the FIA agreed the matter was a safety issue, it decided to effectively change the race track overnight unilaterally rather than leaving the onus on the individual teams themselves.
"We are for the first time gaining detailed knowledge of the magnitude of downforce reduction, some teams are experiencing on the straight mode activation, 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," Tombazis said.
"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 set-up' and not another's, because we wouldn't have a robust enough criterion and it's short notice to do that, so that's why we felt it had to be an action for all cars and not for some cars."
Teams were only informed on Saturday morning, roughly two and a half hours before FP3, that the governing body had effectively changed the racetrack. The long flat-out section between Turn 8 and 9 is crucial for energy harvesting, so it will force engineering teams to rethink their energy strategy and general car setup at very short notice.
When asked if he was expecting any pushback from disgruntled teams, Tombazis acknowledged his phone had been "vibrating" in his pocket throughout the impromptu press conference, and admitted the change did penalise teams who had done their homework correctly.
"Some teams may argue it penalises those who have taken that factor into account, and that is true," he said. "But, as I say, we acted on this on the basis of safety, so we couldn't go and say: 'Well, your car, you're losing too much and you need to make a change, and your car is OK'. We didn't feel we had a good enough criterion to do that."
Tombazis said the same issue would present itself at three other circuits on the 2026 calendar, but with more time to prepare the FIA could come up with a more robust plan to regulate the minimum downforce levels when the straight mode is activated. It could also decide to make the straight modes shorter to reduce the downforce and speed difference between the two modes.
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