The engines are still 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrids, as they have been since 2014, but one of the two electrical motors that recovered energy has been removed.
The total amount of electrical energy has been increased by a factor of three, but the battery is more or less the same size. If the battery is fully depleted, the engine loses 350kw (470bhp), leading to potentially dramatic speed differentials.
Drivers will be backing off towards the end of straights – and being careful about when they apply the throttle – to ensure the most efficient energy usage, even on a qualifying lap.
The cars are also smaller and lighter, have less downforce and have ‘active aerodynamics’ – where both front and rear wings open on the straights to increase speed and the possibility for energy recovery.
Norris said the new car “certainly feels more powerful and quicker” on the straight.
“The biggest challenge at the minute is battery management and knowing how to utilise that in the best way,” he said.
“It’s not simple. You can explain it in quite simple terms. It’s just you have a very powerful battery that doesn’t last very long, so knowing how to use it in the right times, how much energy, how much of that power you use, how you split it up around the lap…
“The biggest challenge is how you can recover the batteries as well as possible, and that’s when it comes down to using the gears, hitting the right revs.
“Obviously, you’ve got some turbo lag now, which we’ve never really had before. All of these little things have crept back in, but I don’t think that changes too much.
“In a perfect world, I probably wouldn’t have [all] that in a race car, but it’s just F1. Sometimes you have these different challenges.”
His team-mate Oscar Piastri said the cars were “not as alien as I think we might have feared” and insisted he “didn’t think F1 had lost its identity at all”.
The Australian added: “There’s going to be some things to get used to but in terms of some of the fears that maybe we had before we got on track, a significant majority of those have been alleviated now.
“There’ll be some differences, but I think fundamentally they’re still the fastest cars in the world.”
