“The more you push, the slower you go” – Japan’s odd F1 qualifying explained

March 28, 2026

If qualifying is supposed to be the ultimate test of driver skill and all-out car performance, then F1’s Saturday afternoons are far removed from that axiom.

The 2026 power unit compromises which have yielded some action-packed racing so far have also destroyed the essence of qualifying – at least for now, as F1 has a couple of weeks to figure itself out before May’s Miami Grand Prix amid talks between the FIA, F1 and the teams.

It has been well established by now that today’s cars are too energy starved to go flat out over an entire lap on circuits where battery harvesting is difficult to do, simply because there aren’t enough heavy braking zones to do so.

That means this charging has to be done elsewhere, and the most lap-time efficient way has been to start coasting through medium to high speed corners, so there is more juice to squeeze out of the battery on the following straights.

This is where qualifying is such an oxymoron. As drivers gradually push the limit more and more from FP1 down to Q3 and lap times come down, they effectively spend a bigger percentage of the lap mashing the throttle pedal.

But that energy has to come from somewhere, so the more drivers use the throttle, the more they are effectively punished by losing time on the straights as the power unit responds by charging earlier.

“I was a bit disappointed in qualifying, as the more you pushed, the slower you went,” said Williams’ Carlos Sainz, always good value for explaining technical concepts concisely. “That’s what happened to me in Q2. I think I had a bit less slipstream on my lap and I was in clean air, I went quicker in every corner, slower in every straight, and I went one tenth slower.

Carlos Sainz said the current power unit regulations are “not good enough for F1”, a near unanimous view among the drivers.

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“And that’s simply because I spent more time at full throttle, because I went faster in the corners, and pushed harder. Super clipping came into the deployment a bit, and a bit of lift and coast also in that qualifying lap. Overall, not good enough I think for F1.”

Coming into the Suzuka weekend, the FIA made an energy adjustment by lowering the maximum energy limit in qualifying from 9MJ to 8MJ. It was a move which went some way towards helping the situation and prevented an even starker top speed loss than was on display on Saturday afternoon, which Lando Norris said “hurt your soul”.

But it’s clearly nowhere near enough to bring driver skill back into the equation, reckoned Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.

“High-speed corners now became the charging station for the car. So you go slower, you charge the battery in the high-speed, and then you have the full power on the straight. So driver skill is not really needed anymore,” he said.

That sentiment is strengthened by the fact that the power unit’s software is machine learning on the go, tweaking its deployment algorithms based on the data it was fed from previous laps beyond the driver’s direct control.

That naturally disadvantages drivers who miss mileage because of crashes or technical issues, like McLaren’s Norris in Japan, as it gives the software less time to be fed the right parameters. It also means that things like minor driving errors can throw the system out of kilter, like Charles Leclerc’s snap in China. The Ferrari driver had another moment on his final Q3 run through Spoon, which cost him top speed, with a similar thing happening to team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

“I was up on Charles and then lost 2.5 tenths just down the back straight, not just through deployment, I had a snap of oversteer and then it just changed the whole algorithm,” he explained.

“There’ll be a lot of chefs in the kitchen. It doesn’t usually end up with a good result.” – Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Clive Rose / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Ahead of further talks between the series’s stakeholders and the teams, the drivers also voiced their opinion in a Friday meeting with the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis and Tim Malyon.

“Listening to Tim and Nikolas yesterday, they seem to be pushing and have a plan in mind,” Sainz said. “I’m a bit worried that the teams will push back. Some teams will be against changing it too much, because they have other interests, but I think we’ve made it very clear from the drivers that it needs to get better, and hopefully the FIA listens more to the drivers than the teams.”

It would stand to reason that teams who may object to sweeping changes include Mercedes, which has made a brilliant start to 2026 with cars and power units that are the class of the field, but even Toto Wolff and his drivers have made public comments agreeing qualifying has to be addressed. And making qualifying-only improvements would not necessarily take away the team’s much more crucial advantage on Sunday.

It comes back to the desire for these regulations to be as close to a marketable 50-50 split as possible, in terms of electric energy versus combustion power. But the reality is that the real split is already closer to 55-45 to begin with, so some feel there’s no harm in going further.

“Honestly, I don’t mind being one or two seconds slower overall and top speeds going five to 10 km down if the deployment and the energy is more consistent and allows it to push more,” Sainz added. “I think, honestly, 350kW on top of the ICE is almost too much in some areas and for some circuits it will be too much.

“And also from a safety standpoint, in the wet, I’m not sure this 350 is actually needed. If you’re going to have this deployment and then lose the speed, I think it’s better to almost have a flatter, more conservative deployment, but something that allows the driver to drive a bit more normally.”

Kimi Antonelli wrestled his way to a second consecutive pole in 2026.

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

The million-dollar question is if the teams will come together to agree on meaningful fixes for Miami and beyond. Hamilton is not too confident. “I’m not expecting much from it, but I hope they make some big changes,” he said.

When pressed by Motorsport.com to explain why he felt so pessimistic, the seven-time world champion replied: “It’s just [that] there’ll be a lot of chefs in the kitchen. It doesn’t usually end up with a good result.”