The FIA has officially confirmed that a ban has been placed to prevent any of the Formula 1 teams from working on their 2026 cars during the entirety of next year.
During the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend, the F1 Commission decided that no work should be carried out on the next generation of cars before the start of 2025.
The sporting regulations for next season have now been updated, prohibiting teams from conducting any wind tunnel or CFD work on the ’26 cars until 1 January 2025.
While the next two seasons will see the technical rules remain stable, 2026 will manifest an extensive overhaul to the regulations on both the chassis and engine sides.
But to ensure that no team can gain an early advantage, the FIA has ratified restrictions that will only mandate work on the new-spec cars one year before their introduction.
“In order to prevent testing which aims to develop for the 2026 season, from 1/12/2023 until 1/1/2025 inclusive, RWTT [restricted wind tunnel testing] may only be carried out using a scale model that substantially complies with the 2023, 2024 or 2025 F1 technical regulations,” the 2024 F1 sporting regulations now read.
“With the exception of dyno testing aimed to develop brake system components with minimal air ducting and provided such tests do not concurrently test (or in any way provide incidental data or knowledge on) the performance or endurance of parts or systems classified as bodywork, no wind tunnel testing may be carried out using car geometry partially or wholly compliant with and/or substantially derived from drafts and/or published versions of the 2026 F1 Technical Regulations or FIA proposed 2026 bodywork geometries and concepts.”
Meanwhile, similar wording has also been applied to forbid work being undertaken on computational fluid dynamics simulations related to parts intended for the 2026 cars.
Elsewhere, the required notification period for a standing restart has been reduced from two minutes to one, with the pitlane opening time also cut from 50 minutes to 40.
The teams will also only be permitted to work on their cars in the fast lane on a pitlane start “for a period ending 90 seconds after the commencement of the formation lap”.
Following a qualifying or Sprint Shootout session, the FIA will now select “specific” cars to scrutineer for legality checks rather than “at least three”, which was listed previously.
After the Commission approved its removal, the Alternative Tyre Allocation, a qualifying trial that ran at two rounds in 2023, has been withdrawn from the sporting regulations.
While the meeting decided that 13 sets of tyres per driver on each race weekend would remain, the FIA has increased the allocated days for Pirelli to test tyres from 35 to 40.
Regarding the FIA’s quest to reduce spray in wet weather conditions, four days of testing have been granted to continue the experiment after an evaluation at Silverstone in July.
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