Engines face fresh wave of criticism after Mexico: We have never seen anything worse in this sport

Overtaking has always been difficult in Mexico. The high altitude and problems with overheating power units and brakes force engineers into tough compromises when setting up their cars. That was also true this year, but the FIA added to the debate with regulations that made overtaking even harder.

The FIA is trying to soften criticism of the new power units by introducing various restrictions that prevent teams from configuring their engines as they see fit. The flawed concept of super-clipping prompted the FIA to try to flatten the speed curve at the end of long straights. Instead of slowing down and changing down through the gears, the cars accelerate much less, with their speed stabilising at around 320 kilometres per hour at the end of long straights.

As a result, the cars do not slow down at the end of straights and do not look quite so bizarre. The problem, however, is that this solution has made overtaking completely impossible at circuits such as Mexico. “You can’t overtake here,” sighed Lewis Hamilton after Sunday’s race.

“I think it’s something the FIA need to [address]. It’s just quite bad, I’m sure these guys would agree. We have this clip at the end of the straight where you can’t go past a certain speed, so everyone just follows,” the seven-time champion continued.

“It’s the silliest thing when you are behind and you have a little bit more power in the slipstream. You should be able to go past that to have a chance to overtake. The engine can go faster, it’s just they have these silly clips. It’s the worst engine profile setting that I think they’ve probably ever had in this sport and it doesn’t provide great racing. So today you probably didn’t see much overtaking, unfortunately, because of that,” a disappointed Hamilton added.

The high altitude and cooling problems make overtaking difficult enough in Mexico as it is. Over the weekend, the cars looked as though they were hitting the rev limiter and could no longer accelerate. Combined with the need to cool the engines and brakes, the result was sheer frustration.

“Obviously the starts were fun, but it’s a very hard track to follow [other cars at] with the thin air and low downforce. I gave it everything to try and get close to Max,” Hamilton continued.

“I don’t know if they need to change the last corner because it’s so quick. I don’t know, there could be a change to the track, maybe, to enable us to have a little bit better racing. But everyone having this [clipping] this year just diminishes any opportunity of that,” Lewis added.

The FIA seemingly needs to go back to the drawing board and find a better compromise between super-clipping, yo-yo racing and energy deployment. Better still, perhaps, would be to scrap these engines and start entirely from scratch.