- Norris confesses his McLaren overtook Hamilton at Suzuka without intending it.
- Automated battery systems, not driver instinct, decided the outcome of battle.
- Brundle demands the FIA act before Miami, warning driver must control the car.
Lando Norris has said that his car overtook Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari SF-26 at the Japanese Grand Prix without him wanting it to. The comment raised serious questions about driver control under Formula 1’s 2026 regulations.
The reigning world champion made the admission after Sunday’s race at Suzuka, where the two drivers exchanged positions several times.
Martin Brundle has since called on the FIA to act on this issue before the season resumes in Miami.
The moment that changed the conversation
Lando Norris crossed the line fifth, just ahead of Hamilton. On TV, it looked like a hard-fought battle between two champions. In reality, Norris was not always the one making the decisions.
Speaking to media after the race, the McLaren driver was candid about what had happened between them.
“Honestly, some of the racing, I didn’t even want to overtake Lewis,” Norris said via ESPN. “It’s just my battery deploys, and I don’t want it to deploy, but I can’t control it. So I overtake him, and then I have no battery, so he just flies past.”
The confession reframed the entire afternoon. What looked like wheel-to-wheel racing from the grandstands was, at least in part, a machine doing something its driver had not asked for.
The sequence took place at 130R. Norris had to lift to avoid running into Hamilton through the corner. The car’s automated system read that lift as a moment to harvest energy.
When Norris went back to the throttle, the deployment kicked in again.
“I have to lift, otherwise I’ll drive into him, and then I’m not allowed to go back on throttle,” he said. “If I go on throttle, my battery deploys, and I don’t want it to deploy because it should have cut.”
The battery emptied. By the time they reached the start-finish straight, Norris had nothing left to fight with.
Lando Norris: “This is not racing, this is yo-yoing”
Norris did not stop at describing the mechanics. He said exactly what the experience felt like from inside the car.
“This is not racing, this is yo-yoing,” he said. “When you’re just at the mercy of whatever the power unit delivers, the driver should be in control of it at least, and we’re not.”
The remark pointed directly at Hamilton. The seven-time world champion has spoken warmly about the 2026 rules, suggesting that closer action is what the sport needs. Norris, however, saw it differently from a similar vantage point.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Norris said. “There’s just not enough control for a driver, and that’s why you’re just too much at the mercy of what’s behind you.”
He also drew a line between how the racing looks from the outside and what it feels like from within. “Yes, the racing can look great on TV, but the racing inside the car is certainly not as authentic as it needs to be.”
How the 2026 power units create this problem
The 2026 regulations introduced a radical near 50-50 split between combustion and electrical power. The battery pack now provides roughly half of the car’s total output.
For the most part, energy harvesting is automated and handled by engine maps prepared before the race weekend. Drivers retain direct control only over lift-off regeneration, where lifting the throttle triggers a recharge.
That structure is precisely where Norris’s problem lies. When he lifted at 130R to avoid Hamilton, he triggered regen.
But as soon as he came back on throttle, the system did what the maps told it to do, even when Norris didn’t want the battery to deploy full power.
Fernando Alonso has made a similar observation.
The Aston Martin driver noted that overtaking in 2026 is sometimes “accidental,” because drivers must take evasive action to avoid collisions when deployment kicks in unexpectedly.
He also jokingly remarked that half his team could match his pace through Suzuka’s first sector, given the need to hold back speed to preserve battery for the straights.
Martin Brundle calls for immediate action
Brundle watched all of this from the outside. The former F1 driver and Sky Sports F1 pundit has given the 2026 regulations a fair chance since Melbourne. But Norris’s words at Suzuka troubled him in a way the earlier races had not.
“One thing that really worried me was Lando Norris sang, ‘I didn’t want to overtake Lewis Hamilton, but my battery decided it did, and then I had nothing to defend with,'” Brundle said on Sky F1’s ‘The F1 Show’ podcast.
“Now, there’s a regulation in Formula 1. It’s been around forever. It’s very simple and far-reaching. The driver must drive the car alone and unaided.”
That rule has no grey area. Brundle anchored his argument to it. “The power delivery must be proportional to what the driver is doing with the throttle,” he said. “That’s a fundamental. It has to be linear.”
He stopped short of faulting the regulations outright. There were moments at Suzuka he genuinely enjoyed, including the Ferraris arriving at turn one side by side, hard and clean.
The bones of something good are there, he argued, if the battery behaviour can be tamed.
“It’s in there; it’s available if we can just get it right,” Brundle said. “Get the battery and all the deployment sorted out.”
His broader read on the weekend carried real optimism alongside the concern. The cars can now follow each other more closely than before, and the tyres are lasting longer.
That combination is exactly what the rule-makers were chasing. The question now is whether the FIA will act quickly enough to address the issues plaguing the spectacle.
