F1 News
Red Bull and other F1 teams face stricter weight rules
With the new regulations for 2026, the FIA no longer wants to allow teams to make adjustments. For the 2022 regulations, that was the case with the minimum weight. According to Nikolas Tombazis, that should now be a thing of the past.
Ahead of the 2022 F1 season, there was much discussion about the minimum weight of F1 cars. For the umpteenth year in a row, the cars had become heavier again, but the minimum weight was still not met. Reportedly, only Alfa Romeo met the minimum, all other teams were (far) from it. To compensate those teams, the minimum weight was raised prior to the season.
The team that benefited from this included Red Bull Racing. Max Verstappen 's team was well above the minimum and had to lose a lot of weight in 2022 to get close to that limit. This did not hinder the RB18, by the way, as Verstappen and Red Bull Racing became world champions well before the last race of the season.
Why Red Bull can't complain any more soon
New regulations from the FIA are due in 2026, and in them, a big weight reduction is a major theme. Drivers and fans have long complained that the cars are increasingly heavy and unwieldy. The new regulations should change this. The cars should weigh around 40 to 50 kilos less. No more concessions will be made to that by early 2026 either.
''They [the teams] will just have to push harder to reduce the weight if they can't make it. So, what we're putting for 2026 will be a weight limit which afterwards will not change,'' Single-Seaters president at the FIA told Motorsport.com.
By doing so, Tombazis and his team want to avoid teams adding all sorts of points at the start of 2026 that made the car heavier. In 2022, teams did that with various mandatory parts added to the cars. So in 2026, teams can no longer use that excuse.