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F1 Miami Grand Prix: 2026 rule tweaks prompt significant FP1 change
F1’s governing body the FIA has announced a change to the sole practice session at the Miami Grand Prix.
The only practice session at the Miami Grand Prix has been extended to 90 minutes in response to tweaks made to Formula 1’s 2026 rules.
F1’s governing body announced the change to the Miami Grand Prix schedule on Friday, following consultation with all stakeholders.
Friday’s FP1 session will now last 90 minutes, rather than the usual 60 minutes, having been extended by half an hour.
With Miami playing host to the second sprint race of the season, there would have only been an hour of running before the competitive sessions got underway.
This extension will provide teams with more time to adjust to the raft of rule tweaks made to the 2026 engine regulations.
These were confirmed on Monday following several key meetings to improve the much-maligned rules.
FP1 in Miami will now move forward by 30 minutes and run from 12:00 to 13:30 local time (17:30-18:30 BST).
“I think in Miami, like we have seen before from the simulations, to a certain extent we will be able to predict through simulations the behaviour of the power unit once we apply the new regulations,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in response to a question from Crash.net about the challenge of limited running in Miami.
“At the same time, offline simulation or even running these regulations at the simulator doesn’t mean that you can cover all the possible scenarios. So you have to definitely be quite forward-thinking in terms of considering everything that can happen and make sure that the way in which you exploit the power unit is the most optimal.
“But I’m quite confident that to a certain extent we can achieve this with the current simulation and I can also confirm that in terms of working together with HPP and even in terms of developing the simulation tools together with HPP, we have made a significant step forward compared to where we were in Australia.
“So I think as a team we are now much more prepared and while at the start of the season a deficit might have existed for the natural consequence of being a customer team when the programming was so pushed also from a power unit point of view and that was okay and that was something that we were ready to accept and we processed very constructively together with HPP.
“But now later in the season, I think we have filled this gap and we should have all the tools that are required to extract the most out of the power unit.”
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F1’s governing body the FIA has announced a change to the sole practice session at the Miami Grand Prix.
The only practice session at the Miami Grand Prix has been extended to 90 minutes in response to tweaks made to Formula 1’s 2026 rules.
F1’s governing body announced the change to the Miami Grand Prix schedule on Friday, following consultation with all stakeholders.
Friday’s FP1 session will now last 90 minutes, rather than the usual 60 minutes, having been extended by half an hour.
With Miami playing host to the second sprint race of the season, there would have only been an hour of running before the competitive sessions got underway.
This extension will provide teams with more time to adjust to the raft of rule tweaks made to the 2026 engine regulations.
These were confirmed on Monday following several key meetings to improve the much-maligned rules.
FP1 in Miami will now move forward by 30 minutes and run from 12:00 to 13:30 local time (17:30-18:30 BST).
“I think in Miami, like we have seen before from the simulations, to a certain extent we will be able to predict through simulations the behaviour of the power unit once we apply the new regulations,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in response to a question from Crash.net about the challenge of limited running in Miami.
“At the same time, offline simulation or even running these regulations at the simulator doesn’t mean that you can cover all the possible scenarios. So you have to definitely be quite forward-thinking in terms of considering everything that can happen and make sure that the way in which you exploit the power unit is the most optimal.
“But I’m quite confident that to a certain extent we can achieve this with the current simulation and I can also confirm that in terms of working together with HPP and even in terms of developing the simulation tools together with HPP, we have made a significant step forward compared to where we were in Australia.
“So I think as a team we are now much more prepared and while at the start of the season a deficit might have existed for the natural consequence of being a customer team when the programming was so pushed also from a power unit point of view and that was okay and that was something that we were ready to accept and we processed very constructively together with HPP.
“But now later in the season, I think we have filled this gap and we should have all the tools that are required to extract the most out of the power unit.”
The only practice session at the Miami Grand Prix has been extended to 90 minutes in response to tweaks made to Formula 1’s 2026 rules.
F1’s governing body announced the change to the Miami Grand Prix schedule on Friday, following consultation with all stakeholders.
Friday’s FP1 session will now last 90 minutes, rather than the usual 60 minutes, having been extended by half an hour.
With Miami playing host to the second sprint race of the season, there would have only been an hour of running before the competitive sessions got underway.
This extension will provide teams with more time to adjust to the raft of rule tweaks made to the 2026 engine regulations.
These were confirmed on Monday following several key meetings to improve the much-maligned rules.
FP1 in Miami will now move forward by 30 minutes and run from 12:00 to 13:30 local time (17:30-18:30 BST).
“I think in Miami, like we have seen before from the simulations, to a certain extent we will be able to predict through simulations the behaviour of the power unit once we apply the new regulations,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in response to a question from Crash.net about the challenge of limited running in Miami.
“At the same time, offline simulation or even running these regulations at the simulator doesn’t mean that you can cover all the possible scenarios. So you have to definitely be quite forward-thinking in terms of considering everything that can happen and make sure that the way in which you exploit the power unit is the most optimal.
“But I’m quite confident that to a certain extent we can achieve this with the current simulation and I can also confirm that in terms of working together with HPP and even in terms of developing the simulation tools together with HPP, we have made a significant step forward compared to where we were in Australia.
“So I think as a team we are now much more prepared and while at the start of the season a deficit might have existed for the natural consequence of being a customer team when the programming was so pushed also from a power unit point of view and that was okay and that was something that we were ready to accept and we processed very constructively together with HPP.
“But now later in the season, I think we have filled this gap and we should have all the tools that are required to extract the most out of the power unit.”
[analyse_source url=”http://crash.net/f1/news/1093316/1/f1-miami-grand-prix-2026-rule-tweaks-prompt-significant-fp1-change”]