What a difference a week makes. This past weekend, Formula 1 went back to Bahrain, the site of this year’s preseason test, for round four of the 2025 season. Last week’s race in Japan sent many to sleep, but that was definitely not the case on Sunday. The overtaking was frenetic, the sparks didn’t set anything on fire, and the title fight just got that little bit more complicated. It was a heck of a race.
V10s? Not any time soon
Before the racing got underway, the sport got some clarity on future powertrain rules. An ambitious new ruleset goes into effect next year, with an all-new small-capacity turbocharged V6 engine working together with an electric motor that powers the rear wheels. Just under half the total power comes from the hybrid system, much more than the two hybrid systems on current F1 cars, and developing them is no easy task. Nor is it cheap.
F1 is also moving to supposedly carbon-neutral synthetic fuels next year, and that has prompted some to wonder—increasingly loudly—if instead of the expensive hybrids lasting for four years, maybe they could be replaced with a cheaper non-hybrid engine instead, like a naturally aspirated V10.
McLaren’s Norris and Ferrari’s Hamilton at speed.
Credit:
Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
This would placate Red Bull. Next year, that team will field an engine of its own design and manufacture (albeit with Ford providing the hybrid stuff), and it’s been increasingly noisy about looking for alternatives to the small-capacity V6—problems with that program, perhaps? It would also start to decouple F1 from the automakers.
But naturally aspirated V10s don’t mean much to the tens of millions of fans that have flocked to the sport since the start of the decade—they’ve only ever known the muted drone of turbocharged V6s.
V10s mean even less to OEMs like Audi, Honda, Cadillac, and Ford, which committed to the 2026 rule set specifically because the powertrains are hybridized. So we’re going to stick with the original plan and can expect hybrids to continue into the 2031 ruleset, too, albeit probably a much smaller, lighter, cheaper, and less powerful electrified system than we’ll see next year.