Lando Norris has put into words what many inside Formula 1 have spent the early part of 2026 trying not to say out loud — the new qualifying format is broken enough to be painful to watch.
Asked about the characteristic 2026 sight of cars dropping off the throttle at the end of long straights as their batteries ran out, Norris did not spare the regulations.
"It hurts your soul to see such a stark speed tail-off on straights. It looks worst of all on the onboard cameras when they're working, with the painfully unmissable sound of the engine note falling away," the McLaren driver said.
The comment crystallised a view that The Race's paddock team describe as a paddock-wide consensus. In their recent analysis, the outlet argued that while the divisive yo-yo racing style has its defenders, the 2026 qualifying format has almost none — lift-and-coast, super-clipping energy harvesting and opaque deployment algorithms have combined to kill the single-lap push sessions that defined a generation of Saturdays.
Charlotte Leclerc, speaking on the same panel, lamented that the era of drivers absolutely on the edge for a single Q3 lap is effectively gone in the current spec. Pundits close to The Race went further, suggesting fans might actually prefer slower cars driven at their limit over faster ones driven tentatively.
"Some fans might not like slower cars, but you can argue drivers pushing slower cars to their limit is better than faster cars being driven conservatively," the outlet's analysts argued.
That is already the direction of travel on paper. Part of the rule-tweak package now being fast-tracked by the FIA ahead of Miami centres on reducing the amount of recoverable energy per lap — a change that would, in effect, slow the cars slightly but allow drivers to deploy more freely when they do push. ICE-side power is unlikely to be unlocked for 2026 itself, with the idea of lifting fuel-flow limits quietly parked until 2027.
Norris's framing matters because McLaren are the closest challengers to a Mercedes team that is already converting the 2026 rules into wins. When a works-team driver whose car has the best chance of beating the reigning dominant force says qualifying has become painful, the political cover for defending the status quo disappears.
The rule-tweak package still has to clear the World Motor Sport Council. But after Suzuka — a track where the 130R section became shorthand for everything wrong with 2026 qualifying — the question is no longer whether the format needs changing. It is only whether the FIA can land the first fix by Miami.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/norris-q3-hurts-your-soul-2026-qualifying-dead-speed-dropoff). Visit for full coverage.*
