In the aftermath of Oliver Bearman's crash, Carlos Sainz fears that the sport is putting spectacle before safety.

Among the various concerns raised before an F1 2026 wheel had turned in anger was closing speeds, whereby a fast car closes on a car slowing in a bid to harvest energy. Following the Barcelona shakedown a number of drivers spoke out.

"I got close to a couple of cars, and I made one overtake, which was a pretty big speed difference," said Oscar Piastri, "but I think that person was just being nice and letting me pass.

"I think the speed differences will be maybe a little bit bigger than what we had with DRS," he added, "but I don't think there's going to be any dangerous scenarios of cars doing wildly different speeds.

"With such a big difference in power, when you don't have the battery deploying at full power, it's 350 kilowatts, it's a lot of horsepower difference, so we kind of need some indication," admitted the Australian. "So we've worked pretty closely with the FIA across all the teams in trying to make it as safe and as obvious as possible when things are happening that we might not expect."

At the season opener, the world looked on in horror as Franco Colapinto somehow avoided Liam Lawson as he struggled to get off the grid, however today we finally got to see just how dangerous these speed differentials can be.

"We, as the GPDA, we've warned the FIA these accidents are going to happen a lot with this set of regulations, and we need to change something soon if we don't want them to happen," said Carlos Sainz.

"It was 50G I heard, which is higher than my crash in Russia in 2015, I was 46G. Just imagine what kind of crash you could have in Vegas, Baku, etc. I hope it serves as an example and the FIA and FOM listen to the drivers and not so much to the teams and people that said the racing was OK, because the racing is not OK."

Despite the fears over closing speeds, almost all the criticism from the drivers over the 2026 rules has related to energy harvesting in terms of how it affects the racing, leading to artificial overtakes which the sport, with the help of the media, insists has improved the spectacle.

Ahead of this weekend's race the FIA announced a tweak to the rules, but this only applied to qualifying, and, again, was aimed at the spectacle not safety.

"Being honest with you, I'm excited to see what FOM and the FIA come up with for the new regulations," said Sainz of a meeting planned over the break at which the various concerns will be raised. "I am hopeful that we'll come up with something a bit better for Miami, given the fact that the accident with Ollie that we saw today, we've been warning them about this happening.

"These kind of closing speeds and these kind of accidents were always going to happen, and I'm not very happy with what we've had up until now. Hopefully we come up with a better solution that doesn't create these massive closing speeds and a safer way of going racing."

Asked if today's crash, will aid the drivers' cause, the Spaniard said: "Yeah, that's why I was so surprised when they said, 'No, we will sort out qualifying and leave the racing alone, because it's exciting'. As drivers, we've been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, it's also racing, and we've been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen.

"Here we were lucky there was an escape road," he added. "Now imagine going to Baku or going to Singapore or going to Vegas and having this kind of closing speeds and crashes next to the walls."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by RP, 13 hours ago

"I'm glad Carlos is "excited to see what FIA and FOM come up with...". With the 50-50 power split and based on their previous ideas of what's exciting, it isn't very likely. Perhaps it's my imagination that the artificial action is in the first few laps and then the drivers start mimicking battery regen strategies and the "drs" trains develop. I suppose for excitement the FIA and FOM think watching the little battery icon adds to the show. The salary cap and freedom to do what you want under the cap would let the designers design cars instead of vido games with wheels. No batteries needed. When the cap was initiated one reason was to give smaller builders a better chance. The bigger guys, Ferrari, Mercedes et al still generally lead the field. Let the designers design and the drivers drive. If someone comes up with the blown difuser so be it. That was still racing then."

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2. Posted by Max Noble, 14 hours ago

"@Stitch431 - It is the sizing and usage cycle of the battery setup in the cars which is causing the problem. Not the battery system itself. Over a lifetime the battery can be cheerfully more eco-friendly than fossil fuels. I’d be curious to see the cradle-to-grave life cycle the teams are proposing for their battery systems…
"

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3. Posted by Stitch431, 29/03/2026 22:33

"Actually, the best move is to phase out those batteries—everyone knows by now they aren’t truly eco-friendly. Since these cars already run on sustainable fuel, switching to it entirely would solve two problems at once. "

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We warned them, says Sainz

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