“I wouldn’t be too vocal supporting the comeback of a V10 engine if I liked what I saw from 2026,” said Carlos Sainz during the pre-Bahrain Grand Prix press conference.
As he did so, a palpable wrinkle of disdain passed across the bridge of his nose. Warming to his theme, he continued.
“But as I don’t really like what I see from 2026 in terms of what the car is going to do, the engine’s going to do, the way everything is going to work, I would say yes – I would like a V10 engine, with a few tweaks, to make it back sooner rather than later.
“At the same time, it's not fair to not give those regulations a bit of a chance, if everyone believes they’re so good. But everyone seems to believe they’re not so good anymore – that’s why everyone’s talking about it [V10s] again. So a bit of a strange one, no?”
It seems most peculiar to speak about a set of technical regulations which were pretty much agreed upon four years ago as if they were an abstract thought experiment. But here we are.
The power unit format is at the heart of the 2026 technical package and the fundamentals of that were settled while Jean Todt was still FIA president. At the time, Honda was heading for the exit, the list of putative new power unit suppliers was a short one, and there was no guarantee of the existing ones hanging on for much longer.
