AUGUST 13, 2024
FIA Publishes 2026 “Mule Cars” Regulations
With completely different cars being mooted for 2026, as the FIA and Formula 1 are seriiusly overhauling the Technical Regulations, it has become clear Pirelli will need to do a lot of testing with cars that will be as close as possible to the future performance of the Grand Prix cars.
That’s why, at Pirelli’s request, and with the Federation and the Commercial Rights Holder full support, teams are starting to built cars adapted to mimic the performance of the 2026-spec cars, the so called Mule Cars. With virtually all the teams violunteering to build their own Mule Cars – as there are a lot of advantages in gaining knowledge of how the 2026 tyres will operate – a lottery was organized during the Spanisg Grand Prix weekend, with Aston Martin being drawn as the first team to start this on-track development program.
The testing will start soon, alongside the development of the 2025 tyres: the work for 2026 behind the scenes has already begun, but the on-track tests will start in September in the period between the Azerbaijan and Singapore Grand Prix, As happened in the past, when Pirelli was preparing to face the revolution of the 2017 tyres, which were larger and heavier, as well as that of the 2022 tyres, which included a different size, also on this occasion the single-seaters will be able to be modified to help the Milanese company during the development of the new 2026 tyres.
With a view to 2026, the Federation has inserted a specific paragraph in the latest draft of the regulation so that testing can begin as early as September. In fact, to modify the cars, in order to try to adapt to the 2026 rules, which will include loads 30% lower than the current ones, as well as smaller and lighter cars, the approval of the governing body was needed, which is very restrictive regarding what the teams can do with recent single-seaters, so that no one can in any way benefit from it.
For testing ahead of 2026, teams can use chassis built to the technical regulations of any of the four seasons prior to the current one, i.e. from 2020 to 2023. This also includes the cars before the start of ground effect, which, in some respects, should come closer to what the future rules will be. In fact, with the next technical cycle the surface will once again have less importance, given that it will be almost completely flat, so as not to force teams to use extremely rigid setups to keep the cars as close to the asphalt as possible. However, Pirelli has already made it clear that it will be very difficult to recreate lighter cars with the aerodynamic characteristics that the 2026 cars will have.
However, nothing prevents the mule cars from changing in the coming months with some solutions to make the data collected more reliable. Until the end of the year, the Italian company will have 10 days to test the 2026 tires, while in 2025 they will increase to a total of 40 days.