Why F1 drivers are being beaten by their own power units

Formula 1’s latest qualifying battleground is increasingly being shaped by software behavior as much as by driver execution. Across the reports, McLaren suspects Oscar Piastri’s deficit to team-mate Lando Norris at Spa-Francorchamps had “nothing to do with his driving” and instead came down to how the power unit behaved over the lap. That is a striking claim, because it suggests the stopwatch can now be influenced by code as much as by the person behind the wheel.

The crucial detail is where the time disappeared. Piastri qualified two tenths behind Norris, but the sources say virtually all of that gap was created on the straight between Stavelot and the Bus Stop Chicane. That is the part of the lap where the car is in the derating phase, when available energy is running down and the power delivery strategy becomes a major factor in how much performance the driver can actually access. In other words, the deficit was not simply a story of corner speed, braking, or a cleaner lap. It was shaped by the way the power unit and its algorithms managed delivery at a critical point on the circuit.

That helps explain why this is bigger than one McLaren comparison. The Race describes 2026 as a year in which F1 drivers have effectively become “hostages” to the AI underpinning the new power units, with results being influenced by whether the computers are behaving or misbehaving. Even allowing for the fact that this is a broad framing rather than a specific race report, it captures the core issue highlighted by the Spa case: a driver can do much of the job correctly and still lose time if the software-controlled energy deployment does not match what is happening on track.

For McLaren, the implication is that an apparent pace gap should not automatically be read as a pure driver deficit. If Piastri’s shortfall was driven largely by power-unit algorithms and derating behavior, then the comparison with Norris becomes more complicated than a simple one-lap verdict on individual speed. That matters in qualifying, where small differences can be magnified by energy management, and where the timing sheet can hide the extent to which a lap is being shaped by systems rather than talent alone.