With Formula 1 gearing up for a raft of technical rule changes in 2026, fans can be forgiven for assuming the teams and drivers can at least take some comfort in the knowledge that this season is a year of stable regulations.
But F1 is an ever-changing environment and it would be wrong to think that just because there are no major revisions to the car rules that things are going to be exactly the same as before.
There are in fact some notable changes that have been made for this season – both to the technical and sporting regulations.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the six key rule changes coming into force this year.
Formula 1 will not be giving out a point for the fastest lap in 2025, after it had come back into play in 2019.
The change is triggered by the way the Racing Bulls’ Daniel Ricciardo grabbed the fastest lap in the Singapore Grand Prix last year as an F1 farewell gift – taking the point away from the championship contender Lando Norris even though he would not get it himself as he finished outside the top 10.
Since the time it had been implemented, there was a feel that there was some added spectacle in seeing who could get the bonus point, however, it was too regularly a let-down as it often went to any driver who had a nice buffer behind them in the closing stages and could pit for fresh tyres late on.
Formula 1 cars have been getting heavier and heavier in recent seasons – not helped in part by bigger powerunits, the need for batteries and ever-tougher safety requirements like the halo.
A lifting of the minimum weight from 798kg to 800kg is taking place this year, but this is a rule that has actually been designed to help some drivers.
The minimum weight combines both the car and the driver, so it means heavier racers have always had a slight disadvantage.
To help level things up, a minimum driver weight allowance was set at 80kg (with teams needing to add ballast for anyone underneath that).
For 2025, that minimum driver weight is being increased to 82kg – which is why an extra 2kg has been added on to the overall car mass.
Following the problems that drivers suffered in the heat and humidity of Qatar in 2023, the FIA is introducing a new cooling system for this season.
When conditions are deemed too hot by the FIA – the threshold for this will be forecast temperatures in excess of 30.5°C – the governing body will declare there is a Heat Hazard.
Teams will then have to fit a special system, which is in effect a battery-powered cooling vest that pumps a coolant around the driver’s body.
The regulations state that: “The cooling medium within the driver’s equipment may only be air, water, or an aqueous solution of sodium chloride, potassium chloride or propylene glycol.”
Furthermore, teams will be allowed to open up an aperture at the front of the car to increase airflow to a heat exchanger that is used as part of the driver cooling system.
To prevent teams from being at a competitive disadvantage from fitting the cooling system, the minimum weight of the cars will be increased by 5kg to allow for any extra devices and batteries.
As well as a hole to cool the components of the cooling system, another scoop can also be fitted to the upper surface of the nose to help feed air to the driver.
McLaren caused a stir last year when its flexible rear wing was designed in such a way that, as it bent back at high speed, it helped open up the slot gap to reduce drag and boost straightline speed.
This concept became known as ‘mini-DRS’ – because it achieved something similar but not quite as good as the official Drag Reduction System.
Although McLaren agreed to make modifications towards the end of the year after consultation with the FIA, it did not stop some tweaks being made to F1’s technical regulations for 2025 to prevent anyone trying to do something similar.
For this season, the slot gap width is being reduced from a 10-15mm minimum allowance to 9.4-13mm – with the upper boundary still remaining at 85mm when DRS is open.
The regulations state: “Except in the event of a DRS failure or the transitioning from one position into the other the DRS bodywork can have only two positions, such that the DRS bodywork position must be the same before and after each state of deployment. The transition time between the two positions must be less than 400ms.”
But it is not just with the rear wings where the regulations will be different. There has been a tightening up in terms of what teams can do with flexi front wings for this year too.
Starting from the Spanish GP, the FIA is clamping down on how much flex tolerance is allowed in the front wings for the standard load tests it conducts in the garage.
Amid concerns that some teams could go to extremes with aero elasticity this year, from Barcelona the new requirements laid down by the FIA will demand a one-third increase in stiffness.
It is not clear yet who this change will hurt or benefit the most.
Last year, McLaren and Mercedes led the way in flexi wing designs, as main rivals Ferrari and Red Bull lobbied the FIA for some clarification over whether the two squads were pushing the limits of the regulations too much.
The FIA did conduct some extra analysis of the cars, but in the end, felt that nobody was doing anything untoward. That green light from the FIA opened the door for Ferrari to begin running its own flexi wing concept towards the end of the season, with Red Bull now set to pursue its own ideas aggressively for 2025.
With the 2026 regulations set to take precedence next year, fears of there being an all-out testing war with old cars emerged in the F1 community, however, an agreement was reached to put some limitations down on what teams could do from 2025.
For the first time ever, the allowance for Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) – which are challengers that are between two and four years old – is being restricted.
Teams are now only allowed a maximum of 20 days of TPC running over the entire season – with drivers competing in the championship limited to only 1000 kms between them over a maximum of four days.
In terms of young driver running, there has been a change in the free practice requirements too.
Up until last year, teams had to field a rookie (who had competed in fewer than two grands prix) in two practice sessions over the course of the year. For 2025, this is doubling to four outings.
The chaos of last year’s Brazilian GP, where Saturday qualifying was a wash-out and there was a risk of not getting in a shootout for pole position at all, exposed a glaring hole in the rule book that had been staring at us for a while.
It was how the grid should be formed if circumstances mean that qualifying cannot be run – especially amid the current complications caused by the sprint race weekend format.
Up until last season, this circumstance was covered on the basis of stewards having the right to decide how best the grid should be decided, which was normally on the positions from the most recent practice session.
But Brazil last year potentially threw a spanner in the works because, on a sprint weekend, it wasn’t clear what the most recent session was.
There had been an FP1 on Friday morning, but also a sprint qualifying session that afternoon – and the results of the two were vastly different.
The FIA had been aware of the potential headache of this glaring omission in the rule book for a while, which is why – even prior to Brazil – a change has been agreed for 2025 to covers things off.
The new article in the sporting regulations states that from 2025, if there are exceptional circumstances where no qualifying session can take place then the grid will be decided based upon the drivers’ championship classification.
There has been another small tweak to the rulebook based on another event from last season’s Brazilian GP – after Alex Albon’s car was pulled from the race shortly beforehand, but his grid position was not closed up for the start.
For 2025, the final grid will be drawn up one hour before the start of the grand prix – it had previously been two hours before – and cars withdrawn up to 75 minutes before the start will not be included so others will shuffle forwards.
The Premier League Gameweek 27 arrived in midweek with FA cup games to be played…
Afghanistan will face Australia in this all-important encounter on the 28th Feb in Lahore, Pakistan.…
Sindhu joins as brand ambassador Ace Indian shuttler PV Sindhu has been revealed as the…
In this article, we take a look at five domestic players who can make a…
Marylebone Cricket Club, the owner of Lord’s Cricket Ground, has announced a partnership with the…
FIFA is once again teaming up with Coca-Cola, which has agreed to become an Official…