F1 Materials and Construction: What 2026 Cars Are Made Of

The materials used to build a Formula 1 car are subject to detailed regulation in Article 15 of the 2026 technical rules. The regulations divide the car into two distinct zones: the power unit perimeter, which covers components in and around the engine, gearbox, and associated drivetrain hardware, and everything outside that perimeter, which covers the survival cell, bodywork, suspension, and aerodynamic structures. Different rules apply to each zone, reflecting the different performance priorities and safety requirements that govern them.

The materials article exists for several reasons simultaneously. It prevents the use of exotic or hazardous substances that would pose unacceptable risks in an accident. It limits the use of materials so advanced that only the largest teams could access them, maintaining competitive equity. And it ensures that the structural properties of safety-critical components are within the range that the FIA’s homologation tests are designed to evaluate, preventing teams from using materials whose behavior under crash loads is not fully understood.

The Power Unit Perimeter: Materials Inside the Engine

The power unit perimeter encompasses the components that make up the engine, gearbox, and associated hardware. Within this zone, the regulations allow a broader range of advanced materials than are permitted outside it, reflecting the fact that power unit components are not part of the primary safety structure and that high-performance materials are needed to manage the extreme temperatures and loads that internal combustion engines and high-speed drivetrain components generate.

Permitted and Restricted Materials Inside the PU

Within the power unit perimeter, manufacturers can use titanium alloys, various aluminum alloys, steel alloys, and specialist composite materials for components such as connecting rods, pistons, cylinder heads, and turbocharger wheels. The use of beryllium is prohibited throughout the entire car, both inside and outside the power unit perimeter, for health and safety reasons. Beryllium and its alloys are extremely toxic in dust or particle form, and the risk of generating beryllium particles in machining or in a crash would create unacceptable hazards for personnel working on the cars.

The turbocharger and its high-speed rotating components are subject to material specifications that ensure burst containment. If a turbocharger rotor fails at speed, the fragments must be contained by the surrounding housing rather than being ejected through the bodywork at high velocity. The material specifications for these components are part of the power unit homologation process managed by the FIA in conjunction with the power unit manufacturers.

Ceramic matrix composites and other advanced high-temperature materials are used in exhaust systems and combustion-adjacent components where the thermal environment would degrade conventional materials. The specific materials permitted in these applications are registered with the FIA as part of the power unit’s technical specification submission, and any changes to the registered materials require approval before they can be used in competition.

Gearbox and Drivetrain Materials

The gearbox casing is typically manufactured from cast or machined aluminum alloy, providing adequate strength and stiffness for the structural role it plays in the rear of the car while keeping weight manageable. Internal gear and shaft components use specialist steel alloys with surface treatments that maximize wear resistance and fatigue life at the contact stresses generated by the gear mesh loads in high-performance racing transmissions.

The carbon fibre driveshaft plunging joints and constant velocity joints that transmit power from the gearbox output to the rear wheel hubs must be designed to handle the combined torque from the ICE and the MGU-K without failure across the race distance. The 2026 torque levels, with the MGU-K’s 350-kilowatt electrical output added to the ICE’s mechanical power at the point of the rear axle, are higher than in the previous era, placing greater demands on these components than the driveshaft specifications from the 2022 to 2025 period had to accommodate.

Outside the PU Perimeter: Survival Cell and Bodywork

Outside the power unit perimeter, the regulations are more restrictive in their materials permissions. The survival cell, suspension, and aerodynamic bodywork must be constructed from materials that meet the FIA’s structural performance requirements and that behave predictably under the crash loads the homologation tests are designed to verify. Exotic materials whose properties at high strain rates or under impact loads are not fully characterized are not permitted, as the FIA cannot verify compliance with the safety standards without understanding the material’s fundamental behavior.

Carbon Fibre Composite: The Primary Structural Material

Carbon fibre reinforced polymer composite is the dominant structural material for all primary structures outside the power unit perimeter. The survival cell, the roll structures, the front and rear impact structures, the suspension wishbones, and the aerodynamic bodywork panels are all manufactured from carbon fibre composite laminates. The material offers an excellent combination of specific stiffness, specific strength, and the ability to be formed into complex three-dimensional shapes that conventional metals cannot match.

The regulations specify prescribed laminate lay-ups for certain safety-critical structural regions. Prescribed laminates define the minimum thickness, the fiber orientation sequence, and the resin system required for a specific component. Teams cannot substitute a thinner or differently specified laminate in these regions, even if their analysis suggests the alternative would meet the structural requirements, because the prescribed laminate provides the FIA with a known, verified starting point for the homologation test calculations.

Outside the prescribed laminate regions, teams have freedom to optimize their composite designs using proprietary fiber orientations, resin systems, and manufacturing processes. The detailed composite engineering of a Formula 1 survival cell, with its varying wall thickness, integrated reinforcements at attachment points, and carefully tuned stiffness distribution, represents some of the most advanced structural composite work anywhere in engineering practice. The regulations set the performance floor through the test requirements; the teams set the performance ceiling through their design expertise.

Banned Materials in Structural Components

Several materials are explicitly prohibited for use in structural components outside the power unit perimeter. Beryllium and its alloys, prohibited throughout the car as noted above, have historically been used in aerospace structural applications for their exceptional stiffness-to-weight ratio, but their toxicity makes their use in motorsport components that may be machined, ground, or involved in crashes unacceptable. The prohibition is absolute and applies to all alloy compositions containing beryllium in structural roles.

Metal matrix composites and certain advanced intermetallic alloys that were evaluated as potential structural materials in the development of the 2022 regulations are restricted in their application to ensure that their use does not create unacceptable safety risks or competitive advantages that are inaccessible to smaller teams. The materials regulations are updated on a rolling basis as new materials become available and as the FIA assesses their suitability for use within the regulatory framework.

Composite Manufacturing and Quality Standards

The performance of a carbon fibre composite structure depends not only on the materials used but on the manufacturing process that converts fiber and resin into a finished structural component. Temperature, pressure, and cure cycle management during the autoclave curing process determine the fiber volume fraction, void content, and inter-laminar properties of the finished panel. Variation in any of these process parameters can produce components that meet the raw material specification but fall short of the structural performance the design requires.

Manufacturing Process Controls

Teams maintain detailed manufacturing process records for all safety-critical structural components, and the FIA can request access to these records as part of a compliance investigation. The regulations require that teams be able to demonstrate that their manufacturing processes consistently produce components meeting the design intent, and that any departures from the standard process are reviewed and approved before the affected components are used in competition.

Pre-impregnated carbon fibre materials, where the fibers are already saturated with a controlled amount of resin matrix before the manufacturing process begins, are the standard approach for primary structural components. Pre-preg materials provide more consistent fiber volume fractions and more predictable curing behavior than wet lay-up processes, and they are the default choice for components where structural consistency is critical. Some lower-loaded bodywork components may use resin infusion or resin transfer molding processes, which provide cost and cycle time advantages for large, complex panels where the absolute structural performance requirements are lower.

Inspection and Quality Assurance

Non-destructive testing of safety-critical composite components is standard practice at all Formula 1 teams. Ultrasonic inspection, thermographic imaging, and X-ray examination are used to detect voids, delaminations, and fiber misalignments in cured composite parts before they are installed on the car. Components that fail inspection are scrapped rather than reworked, both because rework of structural composites is difficult to do reliably and because the cost of a failure on track of a safety-critical component is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of replacing a suspect part.

The inspection frequency for different component types reflects their role in the car’s safety architecture. Survival cell panels, roll structures, and front impact structures are inspected after every session and replaced at the first sign of impact damage, regardless of how minor the contact appears. Suspension components are inspected after any incident involving wheel contact and replaced according to cycle time limits based on the fatigue analysis that forms part of the component’s design documentation. Aerodynamic bodywork receives less frequent structural inspection because its failure mode in most accident scenarios does not directly threaten the driver’s safety.

Suspension Materials and Wishbone Design

Suspension wishbones in Formula 1 serve both structural and aerodynamic functions. They carry the loads from the wheel hub and upright to the survival cell and gearbox, maintaining the wheel geometry as the suspension moves through its travel range. At the same time, their cross-sectional profile and orientation affect the aerodynamic behavior of the car, with the airflow around the wishbones influencing how clean air reaches the floor, diffuser, and rear wing.

Carbon Fibre Wishbones and Their Load Cases

Carbon fibre composite is the standard material for suspension wishbones due to its high specific stiffness, which minimizes the deflection of the wishbone under lateral and longitudinal wheel loads. Deflection in a wishbone changes the wheel geometry in a way that deviates from the kinematic design intent, affecting handling balance. The regulations specify maximum compliance levels for suspension components to prevent teams from using flexible suspension elements as an unauthorized aerodynamic device, mirroring the intent of the aerodynamic flexibility rules that apply to bodywork.

The wishbone aerofoil sections, which are the aerodynamic cross-section shapes that teams use to improve the aerodynamic performance of their suspension while meeting the structural load requirements, are subject to the same bodywork regulations as other aerodynamic surfaces. The permitted aerofoil dimensions within which a wishbone cross-section must fit are specified to prevent teams from designing wishbones that are primarily aerodynamic devices masquerading as suspension components.

Under the 2026 regulations, the interaction between suspension geometry and the active aerodynamic system is a new consideration. As the car transitions between X-mode and Z-mode, the aerodynamic loads on the suspension change, and the wishbones must be designed to handle the load cases associated with both aerodynamic states without compliance that affects wheel geometry. The range of suspension loads that the 2026 wishbones must accommodate is therefore broader than in previous eras, requiring careful structural analysis across the full aerodynamic operating envelope of the car.

Wheel Material Specification

The magnesium alloy specification for wheel rims is one of the few cases in the regulations where a specific material family is mandated rather than just a performance requirement. Magnesium alloy is lighter than aluminum at equivalent structural performance, making it the optimal material for wheel rims from a pure weight perspective. The regulations specify this material to standardize the wheel’s physical behavior and to ensure that the safety characteristics of the rim, including how it deforms in a collision and how it interacts with the tyre in a puncture scenario, are within the range understood by the FIA and Pirelli.

The manufacturing process for magnesium alloy wheels in Formula 1 uses machining from forged billet material, producing rims whose internal structure and dimensional consistency are tightly controlled. Forged and machined construction avoids the porosity and microstructural variability that can occur in cast components, providing a more reliable fatigue life and reducing the risk of unexpected failure under the high cyclic loading conditions of a race. The finished rims are subjected to dimensional inspection and structural testing before they are approved for race use.

Want more F1Chronicle.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for the best F1 news and analysis on the internet.