F1 drivers weigh in on the recent decision to increase the driver weight by two kilos for 2025 season, which increases the car weight as well.
The recent F1 Commission meet increased the driver weight by two kilos which has increased the overall car weight to 800 kilos for the 2025 season. The idea to increase driver weight is due to extreme measures being taken to cut on it.
This has led to health issues especially for the taller drivers who have to do extra work to maintain their weight. Even though there is an overall car weight increase, the move has been welcomed by the F1 drivers, citing the health check.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has no trouble in the weight increase of the car, but he hopes that F1 doesn’t keep on adding weight for different reasons. The current generation cars are heavy especially when compared to the ones few years ago, which weighed about 600 kilos.
“Obviously, two kilos is not a big change,” said Sainz. “The problem is when you start adding two kilos on top of another two, another two, another two, which I think is where the trend has been in Formula 1 over the last 10 years to keep adding two kilos here, three there, five there, and then the cars have become 800 kilos heavy.
“In the past, they were around 600. Work is going on, I guess, for ‘26. At the same time, I think this weight has made the cars also safer because there’s a lot of impact structure and a lot of work being done on the driver safety, which I’m never going to deny that I want that safety to be as high as possible.
“But anything that we can do to bring the weight back down, I think every driver here will appreciate it. We hope that the FIA and the teams are taking that into consideration when deciding future rules, not only the ‘26 ones. Regarding the health factor on driver weight, me personally, no [I haven’t had much of an issue].
“But I did have to be careful with the amount of muscle you put on and the food that you take. But I’ve always been on the limit of that weight. But I can imagine being a Nico, an Esteban, or Russell. I wouldn’t be very happy if I was 180 something centimetres. So yeah, I understand it’s been done probably for the heavier drivers because they were, or the taller drivers, because they were always struggling a bit more than medium size like me.”
Visa Cash App RB’s Daniel Ricciardo concurred with Sainz on the topic. “Yeah, on that as well, it’s definitely, they can’t help being tall,” he said. “So it is unfair if they have to kind of dehydrate themselves just to make the weight, so to speak.
“But even us, if we’re not, even reaching that weight it is nice that we have the freedom to yeah be the athletes that we need to be and it’s not like ‘oh, we have to watch out, we can’t do too much strength training or…’ So, having a little bit of freedom now around our training and uh that’s I think that’s a big benefit for a lot of us.”
Here’s note from FIA on F1 Commission decision
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