What F1 2026 has actually done to Spa's best corners

These past two circuits, Silverstone and Spa, are completely iconic and so there's been a fair bit of working through gritted teeth as energy-starved Formula 1 has overlapped with the sort of long, fast track layouts that most expose its weaknesses.

Pre-Silverstone there was a lot of driver chat about how bad the cars were in the simulators, and then the reality - they later claimed - was not quite as bad as they feared.

I wasn't sure myself if this wasn't just a bit of the F1 PR machine at work, telling Lewis Hamilton et al to back off a bit with the criticism and put on a brave face. Others, like Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri, continued to maintain it was a bit rubbish and that Spa would be "painful" (Max) and "sad" (Piastri).

Get more trackside analysis and paddock insight in The Race Members' Club - and listen to a sample episode of our exclusive Members' Club F1 weekend podcast In-Car Insights from Spa below for more from Ben, Edd and Val on their Belgian GP practice learnings

And then Gabi Bortoleto basically told us all to shut the f*** up: "I don't think it lost the magic of the sport. We are still driving f***ing quick through Copse. It's 280km/h [174mph], so I'm still lifting to do that corner. It's not that easy flat that you are like, oh, you are not using up the grip we have."

This quote was on my mind at Spa as I ventured trackside for my first up close and personal experience of F1 2026. Having been a consistent and vociferous critic of its battery-dominated car performance profile, I wanted to know if the In Real Life experience would defeat what I've seen - and hated - of the cars on TV and watching onboards.

My conclusion after spending two sessions wandering one of the very best F1 circuits ever made, is that… I'm conflicted.

They do look properly quick through Eau Rouge. I saw Verstappen hit 316km/h (196mph) here in FP1, and Kimi Antonelli was topping out at 327km/h (203mph) in FP2! - and they have this very cool skittish look to them as they change direction up the hill. If this was your only snapshot, you would leave Spa thinking this is easily the best F1 you've ever seen.

But then you walk around Raidillon and up the hill to the Kemmel Straight and you're met with the underwhelming bit: rear lights flashing, the dimmer switch engine note winding down, drivers decelerating a car running on less than full power - and then doing the weird thing Valtteri Bottas mentioned to me of needing to downshift to lower gears than you'd ideally want in order to help recharge the battery.

Through Les Combes they're disappointing things to watch. They've arrived doing nearly 20km/h (12mph) less than they were the last time I was here - and that was in 2019! The following left-right sequence is fine, but doesn't look as on-the-limit as it used to.

Everything just feels a bit contained by the MGU-K being deliberately under powered for sector two. The drivers are able to alter their lines almost at will and don't ever seem properly limited by the grip level.

"We're obviously out of energy already, pretty much just past Eau Rouge," confirmed Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson. "And then we have to charge through the whole middle part of the lap so we just have no power from turn five [Les Combes] to turn eight [the right-hand hairpin]."

That said, if you stand on the outside of the no-name left-hander before Pouhon, the cars are only briefly fully off-throttle through here as the track grips up for FP2. They are about 10km/h (6mph) down on last year but you can't tell that from the outside. Watching them here, up close to the barrier, is genuinely impressive and exhilarating.

These cars change direction so well and it's the same story at Pouhon - a fearsome corner that we thought might be ruined by this formula.

I'm almost certain it doesn't feel as challenging to the drivers as it once did, because again they're not using full power when they arrive, but Antonelli on his quickest lap was entering not far off the speed Lando Norris was doing in last year's ground-effect McLaren. To the watching eye, to the spectator, they look incredibly fast as they turn in here - with only a partial lift off the throttle and maybe a snatched lower gear for battery recharging. Again, the direction change and sense of speed is really truly impressive.

"We have no power from turn nine to turn 10 (between no-name and Pouhon) and we have no power from 11 to turn 12 (between Pouhon and the right/left where Pierre Gasly crashed in FP2) just to make sure we get as much battery as we can," added Lawson.

"And then we obviously run it down again towards Blanchimont and then we're out of energy again. It's a very different Spa to previous years, this one feels for me the worst so far even compared to Silverstone.

"It's just not the same Spa to any other year that I've driven here, even in junior categories and stuff like that, it's a track that you can attack and this year it's very hard to do that."

So that disconnect remains - between how F1 looks from the outside and how it feels from the inside; and between those parts of a circuit where the car performance is being sacrificed to battery harvesting and those other parts where all that power is being fully unleashed (as it is when the cars approach Eau Rouge).

As Hamilton said after Friday practice: "It's still amazing to drive, through corners and everything, it's good. It's just the straights where the engine dies."

And so I'm left with a strange feeling ultimately: isolated moments of genuine exhilaration and joy, interspersed with snapshots of frustration and disappointment.

This is F1 2026 in a nutshell I suppose: divisive, imperfect, annoying, but at the same time still incredible and capable of taking your breath away.

And it's safe to say Spa is not completely ruined for F1, but it certainly is different.