Max Verstappen has become the face of the anti-electrification movement in Formula 1 as the most vocal critic of the sport’s controversial new cars.
F1’s new hybrid engines feature a 50-50 split between combustion power and electrification, which has shifted a huge amount of focus at the opening two races of 2026 onto energy harvesting and battery power deployment — something unprecedented for the series. F1 cars are now fitted with power boost systems that drivers can utilise around a lap at the push of a button.
The new cars have split opinion. Four-time world champion Verstappen — widely regarded as the sport’s best driver right now — has been the loudest in his criticism from the get-go, and his comments on the cars have repeatedly generated headlines this year. Other drivers share some of his dislike of the new formula, especially over one lap. Still, while some have cooled their criticism since actual racing resumed at the Australian Grand Prix, Verstappen has remained as resolute in his criticism as ever.
His hatred of the new cars has created an odd paradox. After the Chinese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton, the only driver on the grid more accomplished than Verstappen, gave the cars a glowing review, saying they had produced the best racing he could remember in his career.
So what should we make of Verstappen, one of F1’s greatest ever drivers, being so outspoken? Are his criticisms vindicated? Is he just frustrated because Red Bull does not look like a title contender? And should F1 really be worried that the best driver of his generation might simply decide enough is enough and walk away?
Here’s a look at everything Verstappen has said about the new cars so far and what we make of them.
– Japanese Grand Prix 2026: Race start time, how to watch, full F1 schedule
– Max Verstappen slams F1 regulations again; ‘Terrible, political, really a joke’
Verstappen’s first impressions of the cars
The quotes
“Not a lot of fun, to be honest. I would say the right word is management. As a driver, the feeling is not very Formula 1-like. It feels a bit more like Formula E on steroids.
“A lot of what you do as a driver, in terms of inputs, has a massive effect on the energy side of things. For me, that’s just not Formula 1. Maybe it’s better to drive Formula E, right? Because that’s all about energy efficiency and management. That’s what they stand for. Driving-wise, it’s not so fun.”
The context
Verstappen, who had voiced concerns about F1’s new regulations long before they rolled out this year, wasted no time launching a full-on broadside at the new cars at his first media session at Bahrain’s preseason test in February.
By this point, the drivers had experienced them for three days at F1’s private ‘Shakedown’ event in Barcelona and then again at the desert circuit. It was at the latter that the Red Bull driver launched his first scathing attack and gave the first memorable soundbite about the new generation of cars.
Our verdict
It’s hard to disagree with the ‘Formula E on steroids’ label, and it is perhaps the best sweeping assessment you can give F1’s new generation of hybrid engines.
Since its debut in 2014, the all-electric series has been defined by the battery power available to its drivers and the narrative of every race centres around that fact. This has become the same with Formula 1 since the start of the year, too, with TV commentators now having to give lengthy explanations about things like “super clipping,” megajoules and battery harvesting just to give the proper context of qualifying sessions and races.
F1’s cars are still significantly quicker and louder than Formula E, and the series remains more popular by an order of magnitude, so the idea of F1 being a steroid-boosted equivalent feels appropriate.
Real or artificial racing?
The quotes
In preseason, Verstappen said: “The car looks great — honestly, the proportion of the car looks good, I think. That’s not the problem. It’s just everything else that is a bit, for me, anti-racing.”
After the Chinese Grand Prix, he said: “It’s still terrible. I don’t know, if someone likes this, then you really don’t know what racing is about. It’s not fun at all. It’s playing Mario Kart. This is not racing. Look at the racing. You are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight. They boost past you again. For me, it’s just a joke.”
The context
Verstappen’s most cutting criticism — and one which seemed to resonate most with the hardcore haters of the new cars — was that the racing it has produced is simply not real and that anyone enjoying it is clueless about what they’re viewing. It was one hell of a statement and seemingly one which draws a line in the sand between the sport’s hardcore and more casual fanbase.
The back-and-forth spectacles at the front of the first two races have been topsy-turvy duels for victory (something F1 has been sorely lacking in previous eras) largely because of something Charles Leclerc called the “yo-yo effect.” That new phenomenon has given F1 an easy highlight-reel package for each of the events so far, as cars swap positions endlessly in duels for position. Verstappen has not been impressed.
The Dutchman feels the importance of out-braking your rival has now been replaced by who deploys more battery at a certain place. Coming from the sport’s most thoroughbred racer, a man who competes at the Nurburgring in his spare time and had to be told by Red Bull management to stop racing online long into the night before grand prix Sundays, a statement on the authenticity of racing coming from him carries significant weight.
Our verdict
Verstappen is entitled to his opinion, of course, but this statement felt quite flippant and smacked a little of gatekeeping. After all, who really has the right to say what is and isn’t “real” racing? That’s an incredibly subjective topic, especially at a time when Formula 1 has welcomed an entirely new fanbase into the sport in this decade.
Plenty of those won’t have watched Ayrton Senna, or Michael Schumacher, or maybe even Sebastian Vettel in their prime, but still enjoy the sport as it is today. To suggest people don’t understand racing just because you don’t like something feels a little wrong, even for one of the best to ever do it.
What Verstappen might have said — or meant — is that the new cars have changed the fundamentals about the way drivers will race each other going forward. That is undeniable. Overtaking under the old formula was largely still about outbraking your rival, even with the artificial overtaking aid DRS fitted to the car for a speed differential down the straights. Many critics have pointed out that the battery boosts mean outbraking your rival is much less important now, with both Russell and Leclerc talking about the new strategic approach needed for when to deploy the boost around the lap. Different is not better or worse by default, but it is different.
Is the new F1 really competitive?
The quotes
“It’s just Kimi [Antonelli] or George [Russell] that is winning, right? It’s not really back and forth. They’re miles ahead of the field. It’s just that Ferrari sometimes has these good starts that they push themselves in front, and then it takes a few laps to sort it all out. Like I said, this has nothing to do with racing.”
The context
Much of the praise about the new cars has come thanks to on-track battles produced by the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers out in front. George Russell and Charles Leclerc had a great fight for victory in Australia, while Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton went wheel-to-wheel in both the sprint and grand prix in China. The fighting has been back and forth and, remarkably, has so far been clean, albeit for a minor brush between the Ferrari drivers in the sprint.
Our verdict
Verstappen is correct that the three races — two grands prix and a sprint — have followed the same pattern, with Ferrari challenging early thanks to their great starts, and then fading as Mercedes’ superior power management and deployment comes into play.
There’s something to be said for the unpredictable nature of the opening stints of races so far in terms of how the new cars are being perceived. The fun spectacles out in front have helped to quieten two of the prevailing narratives that we came into the season with: a) that the cars were dreadful and overtaking would be impossible; and b) that Mercedes would win every race at a canter. Seeing Ferrari in the mix — and with a rejuvenated Lewis Hamilton to boot — has been a feel-good story few were predicting on Jan. 1.
A good judgement of the new cars might come after we have a more normal race. There will be one occasion soon when Ferrari does not get a mega launch into the lead at Turn 1, allowing Mercedes to control the pace out in front. Positions swapping back and forth might be less exciting and feel less formulaic if it is not happening for the lead. Plenty of other things could happen too — the Ferrari drivers might well tangle next time they race, for example, meaning the focus is more on the internal drama rather than a brilliant wheel-to-wheel fight.
Here Verstappen is right — for all the good wheel-to-wheel moments so far, it has felt like window dressing in what is otherwise a slightly lopsided competitive order so far.
0:42
Verstappen: I’d drive a shopping trolley to the limits
Max Verstappen isn’t concerned about how his Red Bull will perform, while Lewis Hamilton says he is “happier” at Ferrari.
The ‘Mario Kart’ training
The quotes
“I found a cheaper solution … I swapped the simulator for my Nintendo Switch. I’m practicing with Mario Kart, actually. Finding the mushrooms is going quite well, the blue shells is a bit more difficult. I’m working on it. The rocket is still not there; it’s coming!”
The context
One of Verstappen’s many one-liners about the new cars.
Our verdict
10/10 zinger. Headline writers loved it. Nothing else to add, other than — how good do you think Max must be at Mario Kart?
Is Verstappen just bitter he’s not competitive?
The quotes
“I love racing, but we can only take so much, right? I think they are willing to listen, FIA and F1, I just hope of course that there is some action. I mean it’s not that I’m the only one saying it, I think a lot are saying it, if it’s drivers, fans, we just want the best for the sport. It’s not like we are critical just to be critical, we are critical for a reason, we want it to be F1, proper F1 on steroids, today that of course was again not the case.
“I would say the same if I would be winning races, because I care about the racing product. It’s not about being upset of where I am, because I’m actually fighting even more now, of course.”
The context
There has become a clear split in the positive and negative comments over the first weeks of the season. The loudest cheerleaders have been the drivers in the most competitive cars, Mercedes and Ferrari, while the world champion trio of Verstappen, Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso — all experiencing nightmarish starts to the new regulation cycle — have been the loudest critics.
Norris has said F1 went from the best cars to the worst in one regulation change and that the new machines are nothing like what he and his rivals dreamt of racing when they were kids go-karting, while Alonso labelled Formula 1 the “battery world championship” after a difficult Chinese Grand Prix weekend. All very memorable quotes, but it is easy to look at the context around those three men’s seasons and suggest they are simply eating a large handful of sour grapes.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who spent a considerable chunk of last year courting the Red Bull driver over a contract, suggested Verstappen’s comments are down to his current competitiveness. Verstappen complained to Red Bull that his car was the worst it’s ever been after sprint qualifying in China, and Wolff alluded to that when the Dutchman’s criticisms were put to him. “Max is really, I think, in a horror show,” Wolff said. “When you look at the onboard that he has in qualifying yesterday, this is just horrendous to drive. You can see that.”
Wolff added: “I’m sure for someone like Max, who is a full-attack guy, it’s difficult to cope and digest. But it’s more, I would say, a car-specific issue that magnifies the problem that it is. Because if you sit in front of a TV or in front of a screen, even Max would say that was interesting racing in the front.”
Our verdict
We believe Verstappen’s criticisms come from a good place. Two things here can be true at the same time: his comments can be sincere, and also magnified because he’s upset about Red Bull’s current position in the competitive order.
It should be pointed out that Verstappen was voicing his concerns about this current set of regulations from the first moment he understood what they were going to be in 2023. Verstappen is a man who lives and breathes racing, as his late-night sim races and forays into sportscar racing have demonstrated time and time again. Verstappen predicted he would not enjoy the cars and that it might severely impact his desire to continue from the beginning, even when he had a contractual offramp to Mercedes — the team everyone assumed for a while would be the dominant force coming into the new regulation cycle.
So he was saying those things while knowing he could, in theory, jump over to the best team in time for the new regulation cycle, or one year into it. He’s not flip-flopped on his views, either, as Norris bizarrely did when he defended the new cars in response to Verstappen’s initial criticism in February, only to immediately backtrack later that same week and say he only said those negative things “to see what the reaction of everyone was.”
Would these cars really make Max walk?
The quotes
“I mean, I don’t want to leave really. I wish I had a bit more fun for sure, but I’m also doing other stuff that is a lot of fun. I get to race the Nordschleife. Hope in the coming years I can do Spa, hopefully Le Mans. So, I’m combining stuff to find other stuff that I find really fun as well. So I have a lot of distractions at the same time. Positive distractions I would call it.
“But at the same time, it’s a bit conflicting because I don’t really enjoy driving the car, but I do enjoy working with all the people in the team and from the engine department as well. Yeah, it’s almost like a bit of a mind … I can’t swear!”
The context
With a nod to his infamous fine for swearing during an FIA press conference at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, Verstappen hinted in China that he is not actively looking for a reason to walk away from the sport, despite previous hints that he could do just that when he stops enjoying himself.
Our verdict
F1 always has to be mindful of when he might walk away. It’s no secret that Verstappen, 27, does not dream of an F1 career stretching into his late thirties or forties.
The question of when he might walk away has been an open one for a while. His contract with Red Bull runs until 2028 which would mean stomaching these new cars for another two seasons after this one, assuming a move to another team did not materialise until then.
Red Bull might turn things around, as they have in the past, so for now we have to take him at his word that it’s seriously weighing on his mind. And given how good Verstappen is, and how popular he is worldwide, F1 has to be worried about the headline item around these new cars being that they were so little fun to drive that they made the best driver of his generation hang up the helmet and call it a day.
