Is 2026 F1 Too Easy? Alonso's 'No Talent' Barb Splits Opinion
Formula 1

Is 2026 F1 Too Easy? Alonso's 'No Talent' Barb Splits Opinion

8 July 2026 2 min readBy F1 News Desk (AI-assisted)

Fernando Alonso says 2026 F1 overtaking needs 'no driver talent'. Max Verstappen and Damon Hill agree, but ESPN argues the skill has moved, not vanished.

Key Takeaways

  • 1.This is not racing," he said, branding the 2026 cars "Formula E on steroids" and grumbling that "you are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight." Even outside the cockpit, the disquiet lands.
  • 2."F1 is a harbinger of the shape of things to come." There is a rebuttal.
  • 3."You don't need to outbrake anyone, you don't need to overtake on the outside, you don't need to take any risk," Alonso said.

Fernando Alonso has poked at a nerve that never fully heals in Formula 1: whether the 2026 cars still separate the great drivers from the rest. After the British Grand Prix, the double champion said overtaking has been reduced to a switch.

"You don't need to outbrake anyone, you don't need to overtake on the outside, you don't need to take any risk," Alonso said. "You just press one button, and you overtake if you have a better power unit than the car in front."

His proof came from the weekend's Sprint. "I saw replays of the Sprint, people overtaking in the middle of the straights with more battery," he said. "So there is not any driver input or driver talent needed to overtake a car in front of you." He also underlined how heavily the racing now hinges on energy management: burn deployment in the wrong place at Spa, he warned, and "it is finito for the rest of the lap."

Verstappen has been making the same case for months, reaching for a games console to explain it. "It's playing Mario Kart. This is not racing," he said, branding the 2026 cars "Formula E on steroids" and grumbling that "you are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight."

Even outside the cockpit, the disquiet lands. Damon Hill, champion in 1996, connected Alonso's gripe to a wider fear about machines taking over. "This is my concern. We are on the verge of an AI takeover for humanity," Hill wrote. "F1 is a harbinger of the shape of things to come."

There is a rebuttal. ESPN's analysts rejected the notion the racing has simply been dumbed down, saying the required talents have moved rather than disappeared. "Race craft is now as much about energy deployment and timing as it is pure braking skill," they wrote. "That doesn't necessarily make the racing better or worse, but it undeniably makes it different." They also took aim at the "real racing" rhetoric — asking who gets to decide what counts as the genuine article.

So the divide holds. For Alonso and Verstappen, boost buttons and deployment charts have blunted the art of racing wheel to wheel. For the other camp, wringing performance out of a hybrid at full tilt is a skill in itself — just a modern one. The rules aren't changing, which means neither is the argument.