Formula 1 quietly swapped out the most complicated part of its engine this season. For over a decade, the sport’s turbo-hybrid power units leaned on a device called the MGU-H to keep everything running efficiently behind the scenes. For 2026, that device is gone entirely, and the electric motor drivers actually feel through the throttle has been given nearly three times as much muscle. It is the biggest change to how an F1 car makes power since the hybrid era began in 2014, and it is already reshaping how races are driven and won.
What the old power units actually did
Since 2014, every F1 power unit has combined a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 with two electric motor-generator units. The MGU-K sat on the crankshaft, recovering braking energy and feeding it back in as a power boost, similar in principle to the hybrid system in a road-going performance car. The MGU-H, by contrast, was bolted to the turbocharger itself, harvesting energy from exhaust gas spin and using it either to charge the battery or to spin the turbo up instantly and kill lag. It was brilliant engineering, and it was also the reason a competitive F1 engine cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and why no mainstream manufacturer ever put anything like it in a production car.
That mismatch between motorsport innovation and road relevance is exactly what the sport’s engine manufacturers pushed the FIA to fix, and it is a big part of why F1 rewrote its 2026 regulations around a simpler, more road-relevant hybrid formula.
The MGU-H is gone, and the MGU-K carries far more load
For 2026, the MGU-H has been deleted from the power unit entirely. Engineers no longer have to manage the extreme temperatures and rotational speeds that came with harvesting energy directly off the turbo, and manufacturers get a system that maps far more closely onto the hybrid tech they already sell to customers.
To make up for losing that source of recovered energy, the MGU-K has been massively upgraded. It now delivers up to 350kW to the rear wheels, nearly three times the roughly 120kW the previous-generation MGU-K produced. Where the outgoing power units ran on an energy split of around 80 percent combustion engine and 20 percent electric motor, the target for 2026 is a much closer 50/50 split between the turbocharged V6 and the electric side. In practice, teams and engineers who have worked through the new rules note the combustion engine still supplies the majority of output across a full lap, since the electric motor’s contribution depends heavily on how much energy the car has managed to recover and deploy.
The V6 itself has not disappeared. It is still a 1.6-litre turbocharged unit, broadly similar in architecture to the outgoing engine, just tuned to work alongside a far more powerful electric partner. For a broader look at why manufacturers still build around a small turbocharged engine rather than a bigger naturally aspirated one, our explainer on turbocharged versus naturally aspirated engines covers the trade-offs in detail.
New fuel, same tank size
The other half of the 2026 package is the fuel itself. Every car on the grid now runs on advanced sustainable fuel, produced from sources such as non-food biomass, municipal waste and carbon capture rather than crude oil, replacing the roughly 10 percent bio-component blend used previously. It is part of F1’s stated push toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, and it is a deliberate signal to the road car industry that high-performance combustion engines can keep running on fuel that is not drilled out of the ground.
Sustainable fuel of this kind tends to be slightly less energy-dense than the fossil fuel it replaces, which is one reason engineers expected this generation of power unit to produce marginally less peak output than its predecessor. F1 has offset that with lighter cars and reduced aerodynamic drag rather than asking the engine to do all the work alone.
Losing DRS, gaining a manual override
Because the electric motor now plays such a large role in outright speed, the FIA used it to solve a problem DRS was originally built for: helping a chasing car close a straight-line speed gap enough to actually attempt a pass. The 2026 rules do away with the traditional drag-reduction system and instead give drivers a manual override, sometimes referred to as an overtake boost. When a car is within one second of the car ahead at a defined activation point, the trailing driver earns extra deployable energy, an additional 0.5 megajoules to spend from the start of the following lap, on top of whatever energy management and boost strategy their team is already running.
It moves the overtaking tool from a simple flap on the rear wing to something that lives inside the energy strategy itself, which is also why this year’s shift to active aerodynamics and the new power unit rules were always designed to work together rather than in isolation. Less drag from the active wings, more electric punch from the motor, and a smarter way to hand a boost to whoever is actually trying to overtake.
Why the sport took the risk
Rewriting the power unit rulebook this deeply, mid-decade, was not a small decision. It is also why five manufacturers are supplying power units for 2026, one more than the previous generation, since a simpler, more road-relevant hybrid system lowers the barrier for a manufacturer to justify the investment. Removing the MGU-H cuts a huge amount of complexity and cost out of engine development, while tripling MGU-K output keeps the electric motor central to how a modern F1 car actually goes fast, rather than a hidden efficiency trick buried in the exhaust system.
The trade-off is that energy management has become an even bigger part of a driver’s job. Running out of deployable electric power at the wrong moment on a long straight can cost more time than a slightly worse combustion engine ever could, and teams that master the new deployment strategy have a genuine performance lever their rivals do not.
What to watch for the rest of the season
Keep an eye on which teams talk openly about energy deployment in post-race debriefs, and which drivers seem to run out of electric boost late in a stint. That is the new power unit rulebook showing up in real time, and it is a far better window into competitive advantage this year than horsepower figures alone ever were.