Rui Marques, Formula 1 race director, has confirmed that an adjusted start procedure will be used during the opening race in Australia. During the recent test weeks, there were already problems with practice starts: the new powertrain made pulling away unnecessarily complex. In Melbourne, this should be resolved: thanks to a new light signal, drivers can better prepare for the start lights going out.
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The pre-season test weeks in Barcelona and Bahrain led to concerns about the start procedure. The core of the problem is the absence of the MGU-H, the energy recovery system that has been scrapped starting from 2026. This component was linked to the turbo and converted waste energy into electricity. Additionally, it was used to bring the turbo up to speed at the start, preventing turbo lag when accelerating. Without the MGU-H, drivers must now manually get the turbo up to speed by giving throttle for longer and at higher revs. Footage from Bahrain showed how drivers sometimes had to keep the engine at high revs for as long as ten seconds before they could depart.
New start signal
This primarily creates a disadvantage for drivers starting at the back who have limited time to prepare for the start. In Bahrain, experiments were therefore already conducted with a blue light signal indicating when the last car had taken its starting position. Race control let this blue light flash for five seconds before the regular start procedure began. This method will be applied again this coming weekend in Australia.
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“For a safe and orderly conduct of the race, the start lights will flash blue for five seconds as soon as all cars have returned to their starting positions after the formation lap,” Marques explained on Thursday. “The information panel on the start gantry will display the message ‘Pre-Start’, after which the usual light sequence begins.”
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