Lucas Di Grassi explains how to drive an F1 car with fixed energy after Charles Leclerc’s race struggles: “Funny to see top-level drivers having to adapt”

Lucas Di Grassi is back again to explain yet another racing concept for his fans, and this time he has come forward to explain what kept Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc concerned during the F1 Japanese Grand Prix. Charles was struggling with energy management during the recent F1 race, and this caught the attention of Di Grassi. He explained how to manage energy during a race but added that he wants Formula One to be only about performance and nothing else.

Lucas Di Grassi shares explainer on driving techniques for a new F1 car

Lucas Di Grassi shared a video of Charles Leclerc’s radio message during an F1 race and captioned it on Instagram: “Energy constraint is a NEW variable.”
Reacting to it, the Lola Yamaha ABT driver said, “So what Charles is saying here is correct and it's actually funny to see that these top level drivers, they are having to adapt their technique with this new 2026 rules.” He went on to explain the physics and the driving techniques required to drive a car that has a fixed amount of energy.”

He said, “When energy is actually a resource you have to manage, not like it used to be last year that you can go just flat out and come up with the best technique or performance according to basically pushing the car to the limit without thinking about the energy. When last year, when you have a no limit of energy and you have a very high downforce car, you tend to do the corners in a parabolic shape to maximise the amount of downforce and to maximise the tyre vector capacity given the way you have to approach a corner. So let's say 180 degree corner, you have to do it in a parabolic shape because then you can carry more speed in, you have lower minimum speed because your maximum radius gets reduced but you can accelerate earlier and therefore having more speed all through the straights.”

“Now that you have an energy constraint limitation in 2026, what happens is if you do that, you will require more energy to accelerate the car from a lower speed to a higher speed. So the optimum technique is actually not achieving such a high parabolic type of corner but instead maximising your radius and your minimum speed, so the car has higher kinetic energy and requires less energy to accelerate on the next straight. Therefore, the battery can accelerate the car for longer together with the combustion engine, and then the clipping and the super clipping happen later, so you actually gain time. But it's very interesting that these top level drivers have to adapt to what they have to do, and it's very, very interesting to see that these things are being discussed live on the radio,” he added.

Still making it clear that he doesn’t agree with the new F1 rules, he said, “Formula 1 should be about maximum performance but it is definitely a tricky and difficult technique to balance these two worlds. How you maximise some corners for pure performance and try to maximise the downforce and at the same time you have this constraint of energy that you have to regulate and balance it out.”

Racing fans react to energy management in new F1 cars

Racing fans seem to be divided over the new F1 regulations. A fan reacted to Lucas Di Grassi’s video, “F1 is no longer about racing. RIP.” Another said, “F1 is dead.” One more added, “F1 trying to become FE... Who would have thought.”

But a fan asked, “Isn’t controlling every single element and variable what it takes to be a good driver?” Another added, “But this happens to Ferrari mostly in medium-speed and high-speed corners; in slow-speed corners, thanks to the small turbo, they can have a slight advantage on acceleration out of those corners.”

Formula E is currently on a month-long break and will return with Round 7 in Berlin. The Berlin double-header is scheduled from 1-3 May.

Also read: Lucas Di Grassi highlights power of learning from mistakes: “Error-correcting is the algorithm of evolution”

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