(Motorsport-Total.com) – Liam Lawson gave a remarkable response in Zandvoort to his failed Red Bull chapter of 2025. The New Zealander was only 0.115 seconds behind Max Verstappen in qualifying. At the same time, Yuki Tsunoda immediately beat Arvid Lindblad in the race at Racing Bulls. For Verstappen, such close team duels are no coincidence – but partly a result of the new Formula 1 cars.
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“Especially in qualifying, it is much easier nowadays to find the limit,” Verstappen explained after qualifying. One reason is that the drivers are running with less battery in several places and can therefore more easily “bring together” the car and the lap. “I think you could see that quite well this weekend compared to the previous cars.”
Verstappen explicitly does not relativize Lawson’s performance. “He did a very solid job this weekend,” said the four-time world champion. At the same time, he has been observing the phenomenon throughout the season: “Everyone is always within one or two tenths.”
“If you have a very bad qualifying, it’s three tenths. The gaps are always super small.” This is where it gets interesting: Are the drivers actually closer together in 2026 – or are the cars simply less suitable to show big differences between the drivers?
Stella disagrees: “These cars are difficult to drive”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella at least disagrees with part of this thesis. For him, the 2026 cars are by no means easier to drive. “Our two drivers describe these cars as difficult to drive,” says Stella. And there are several reasons for this.
The new cars have less downforce, smaller tires, and significantly less mechanical grip. Added to this is the complex energy use of the new power units. For example, a driver can experience a different deployment characteristic on the straight than expected and thereby lose his braking point. Or he goes on the throttle earlier and loses electrical support later. “There are several aspects that make driving these cars more difficult,” explains Stella.
However, Stella also admits that the teams have now better adapted to the complicated energy use. The real challenge of the chassis remains. “It is very difficult for the drivers to predict what will happen when braking or whether the car will suddenly break out when accelerating out.”
Compared to the previous generation, there was “much more aerodynamic load and much more tire grip” – and thus a car that was easier to control.
Was Fernando Alonso right after all?
A statement by Fernando Alonso from the winter tests makes the discussion even more exciting. The Aston Martin driver already described in February how driving skill shifts in certain corners due to the new regulations.
As an example, Alonso named the famous turn twelve in Bahrain. Previously, the downforce level was chosen so that the drivers could just barely take the corner at full throttle. “Driving skill was the decisive factor for the lap time,” Alonso said before the season.
In 2026, the situation looks different. Because energy is needed on the straights, the cars go significantly slower through the corner. Alonso spoke of about 200 instead of 260 km/h. His provocative conclusion: “At this speed, anyone can control the car – even our cook.”
Thus, not every corner under the new regulations still rewards maximum vehicle control. When a former courage corner is suddenly taken at significantly lower speed, the proportion of lap time that a driver can influence through courage, precision, and vehicle control inevitably decreases. A similar effect was observed at Spa-Francorchamps in Pouhon.
Lawson data supports Verstappen – but not only
The direct comparison between Lawson 2025 and 2026 initially provides ammunition for Verstappen’s thesis. In the first two races of 2025, Lawson was on average 1.49 seconds behind Verstappen in qualifying in the Red Bull. In race pace, the gap was even 1.86 seconds per lap.
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In Zandvoort 2026, however, it was only 0.115 seconds in qualifying. A direct race pace comparison is not possible due to Verstappen’s crash, but an indirect comparison via the sprint race is.
Lawson was on average 0.90 seconds per lap behind winner Lando Norris in the main race, Verstappen was 0.44 seconds per lap behind sprint winner Russell in the Saturday sprint. Lawson was 1.98 seconds per lap behind the lead even in the sprint but was stuck in traffic there. However, to conclude from this that the new car makes the driver less important would be too simple.
Because Lawson had a decisive disadvantage in 2025: He drove Melbourne and Shanghai for the first time the previous year. He knew Zandvoort very well – he even made his Formula 1 debut there in 2023 as a replacement for the injured Daniel Ricciardo. In addition, he now has significantly more Grand Prix experience and insights from a whole season at Racing Bulls.
The comparison is therefore not clean enough to measure the influence of the regulations in isolation. Lawson is simply a much better prepared Formula 1 driver in 2026 than at the beginning of 2025.
Why the pattern remains noticeable
It becomes more interesting when you don’t just look at Lawson. Tsunoda also stepped into the car for the first time in Zandvoort and was immediately very close to Arvid Lindblad. Isack Hadjar qualified third directly in his first Red Bull outing of the season in Melbourne.
Lindblad scored points in his debut in Australia as a rookie. Lewis Hamilton appears significantly stronger at Ferrari in 2026 than in many phases of recent years. And Kimi Antonelli leads the world championship after being clearly behind George Russell for large parts of 2025 as a rookie.
That does not automatically mean that the new regulations erase driver differences. Experience plays a role in each of these examples. Antonelli is a different driver today than a year ago, Lawson has learned massively since 2025, and Hamilton has adapted to Ferrari.
But the accumulation is noticeable: Several drivers who previously had difficulties or stepped into new cars for the first time seem to get closer to their teammates faster in 2026. And at the same time, there are counterexamples.
Fernando Alonso is still significantly stronger than Lance Stroll on average at Aston Martin, while Pierre Gasly at Alpine still clearly leaves his teammate Franco Colapinto behind in most cases.
Could Sergio Perez be the solution?
The Red Bull data from Sergio Perez also provides an interesting historical comparison. His average qualifying gap to Verstappen was around 0.603 seconds in 2021, 0.392 in 2022, 0.621 in 2023, and 0.659 seconds in 2024. Ironically, in 2022, the first year of the ground-effect regulations, Perez was closest to Verstappen.
Because there is an interesting parallel: In 2022, Formula 1 was also at the beginning of a new regulation cycle. The cars had not yet been developed and exploited over years as they were in 2024 or 2021.
Maybe we will see a similar effect in 2026. Maybe the current cars are even less specialized, so drivers can adapt more easily. And maybe the vehicles will diverge more strongly in the coming years, causing the gaps between teammates to grow again. Time will tell.
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