Overtaking in Formula 1 has become valueless thanks to engine changes introduced for the 2026 season, according to motorsport great Mark Skaife.
The weekend’s Australian Grand Prix was the first race run to Formula 1’s sweeping new chassis and engine rules, boasting smaller and lighter cars and a more heavily hybridised engine.
Electrical power now makes up almost half the engine’s total output, but drivers couldn’t complete a lap of Albert Park without running down their batteries.
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Drivers were required to lift and coast in qualifying to keep the battery topped up, and they lost considerable speed down the long back straight and into the previously ferocious turn 9-10 chicane when they ran out of electrical energy.
Mark Skaife, the five-time Supercars champion and one of the hosts of MotorRacing 360 debuting on Wednesday on Fox Sports, said the new rules fundamentally undermined the challenge and appeal of qualifying.
“Drivers fundamentally want to drive the car as hard as they possibly can and want to be in control of their own destiny,” he told Fox Sports and Kayo. “That’s just essential to getting the best from yourself for enjoying driving the cars.
“They’ve made these comparisons that it’s like Mario Kart or like Formula E on steroids — all that sort of stuff.
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“When you watch those [qualifying] laps, there are areas of the racetrack where clearly you’re not driving the car at 100 per cent, and the car, in terms of the demand on the driver at that point, is far for maximised.
“Drivers want to maximise themselves at every single corner, for every single braking area — laps that you couldn’t be 1 metre deeper under brakes without going off the road.
“What they’re all complaining about was this uneasy feeling of not having to optimise the performance everywhere.
“When you’re actually sacrificing some areas of the racetrack when the super clipping and the harvesting is going on to then optimise your performance in another part of the track, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the drivers are up in arms about that as a concept in terms of what you want to have as a feeling of race driving, to be 100 per cent committed everywhere and drive the wheels off the cars.
“That’s fundamentally why those blokes are there and that’s why we love car racing.”
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The opening stages of the race produced plenty of highlight-worthy action, with Charles Leclerc rocketing into the lead at the first turn and then engaging in a long duel with pole-getter George Russell for top spot until a virtual safety car broke them up.
Formula 1 boasted of 120 overtakes for the race, up from 45 last season.
Many drivers, however, described the racing as artificial, with passes largely dictated by how much battery charge they had available to attack and defend.
Skaife agreed that the overtakes lacked significance, and he said the boosted metric wasn’t a sign that the new regulations had improved the sport.
“You want authenticity in terms of how overtaking is performed,” he says. “If you think about Supercars racing and you watched those races on the weekend — Brodie Kostecki coming through the field or Cam Waters or any of the guys — they were constructing the overtake. They were working on the back of another car to find the right time to dive down the inside and be able to make what I would call a genuine overtaking manoeuvre.
“In Formula 1 the DRS used to cop so much flack because it basically created an overtaking scenario that was only in a straight line — the car from behind had such a powerful reduction in drag that it basically just drove straight past the next car.
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“It wasn’t real, it wasn’t authentic. You didn’t actually get in the slipstream and work your butt off to get right behind the car in front and dive down the inside of the corner; you just drive straight past them.
“But what we saw on the weekend was even worse than that.
“Anyone that says 2026 overtaking is better — that’s just delusional.
“You’re driving by someone when you’ve got a massive power advantage over the other car at that time. That’s not overtaking.
“The genuineness, the authenticity of that — it has got to be rectified.”
MotorRacing 360premieres on Fox Sports and Kayo on Wednesday 11 March at 7:30pm (AEDT).
Skaife will join hosts Jess Yates and Paul Murray, along with Supercars champions Garth Tander and James Courtney and sport journalist James Phelps, each week to break down the week’s biggest motorsport stories.
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