Lewis Hamilton has strongly criticized the increasing influence of software and energy management within Formula 1. According to the seven-time world champion, drivers in the current era are not always rewarded for pure speed, as technical systems play an increasingly significant role in a car’s performance. He recalls the premier class from two decades ago and advocates for a return to basics.
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In a conversation with scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson on the StarTalk podcast, the Ferrari driver explained that the complexity of the current regulations is not only difficult for fans to understand but also for the drivers themselves. “It’s very hard for fans to fully grasp, but also for us drivers,” said Hamilton. “The ultimate goal is to always push an F1 car to the limit; the faster you go through a corner, the more you can improve your time.”
Hard driving punished
“At the moment, with the current regulations, battery capacity is limited,” he explained. “That means you have to recharge the battery as soon as you run out of power, and you use a lot of energy once the battery is recharged.” According to Hamilton, this means that an aggressive driving style is no longer rewarded. “This year we said goodbye to the MGU-H because it made the system too complex. That means if you take a risk and go faster through a corner, you get punished because you don’t have enough battery left.”
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The Ferrari driver recalled a specific example during the Miami GP. “I lost three tenths of a second purely because the software didn’t work properly,” he said. “I only realized that when I got back to my engineers. I said, ‘Sorry, I’m too slow,’ and they said, ‘You’re not too slow, the software didn’t work.’ That’s really frustrating because that problem didn’t exist before. We really need to limit the amount of software.”
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