The biggest difference maker in Formula 1 this season may not be a supremely talented driver or an all-powerful engine, let alone the spectacular rotating “Macarena” wing.
This could be the year of the algorithm.
The Belgian Grand Prix was more evidence of how code that the drivers don't fully understand is shaping — or distorting — the title fight.
Kimi Antonelli sped to his sixth win of the season and nearly doubled his lead, while his Mercedes teammate
and title rival George Russell was left stuck in a gravel trap after colliding with Lewis Hamilton.
In an angry radio message to Mercedes, Russell demanded to know why he'd had an “unacceptable” loss of electrical power that dropped him back into a fight with Hamilton in the first place.
“The irony of the age; more knowledge than ever before in human history, yet even more mysteries,” 1996 champion Damon Hill commented on X over a video of Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff blaming a software issue affecting all cars with Mercedes engines.
“Got to feel for (Russell). What does he have to do? All a bit weird how his car is different to Kimi’s. They should be identical, performance wise. We will no doubt hear more of this anon,” Hill also posted.
On Saturday, Russell had complained of driving with “one hand behind my back” in qualifying after dropping straight-line speed to Antonelli for no clear reason. The team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin called it “a clear loss that we cannot explain by driving style.”
F1's embrace of electrical power for 2026 means the hardware that makes up the car — the turbocharged engine, the tires, even the battery — only tells half the story.
The rest often isn't fully clear even to the drivers themselves. It's a world of algorithms and deployment maps which can suddenly slow a car down for what can seem, to the driver in the cockpit, like no reason at all.
Except for the optional boost button for overtaking, most of the time, algorithms release the power in a way that isn’t directly related to the driver’s use of the gas pedal. So-called “deployment maps” set out how much energy to release based on where the car is on the track.
Without the battery, the car runs at barely half power on its engine alone, a feeling Max Verstappen likened to driving a Formula 3 car.
That's how Russell fell back so sharply into the chasing pack containing Hamilton on Sunday, and seems to be why Antonelli briefly lost — then regained — the lead to Max Verstappen just before.
Mercedes isn't the only team affected by unexpected power use this season, just the one with the biggest impact on the title fight. Within teams, some drivers, like Russell, seem to be affected more than others.
McLaren's Oscar Piastri has become a prominent critic of how computerized decision-making is affecting the results.
His season began with a power-deployment puzzle when Piastri couldn't even start his home race in Australia. On what should have been a routine, fairly gentle run to the grid, a sudden spike of power sent him spinning into the barriers.
For now, Russell just has to hope he gets on better with the boost at this week's Hungarian Grand Prix.
“Knocked down, we get back up. No matter how many times,” he posted on social media Monday. “So many tough moments this year but I will not stop fighting.”
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