The Formula 1 world is abuzz with the prospect of a return to V8 engines and refuelling, a move that has sparked both excitement and skepticism. The FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, has proposed a return to these technologies, citing cost-cutting and competition-leveling as the primary goals. But is this just another cycle of reversals, or is there a deeper story at play?
The Cycle of Reversals
Formula 1 has a history of solving its problems by swinging back to the technologies it banned last time. Refuelling was banned in 1984, reintroduced in 1994, and then banned again in 2010 due to safety and cost concerns. Similarly, turbocharged engines were banned in 1989, only to return in 2014 in hybrid form. This pattern of ban, reintroduce, ban, reconsider is not just a coincidence.
The common thread is not engineering, but an institutional pattern. Formula 1 tends to discover, roughly once a generation, that whatever it banned last time is the thing it now misses. This is a more uncomfortable story for the FIA than saying, 'we're modernizing the regulations.' It suggests that the modernizing has already happened twice before, in the opposite direction, and didn't stick.
The New Variable
To be fair to Ben Sulayem's proposal, there is a genuinely new variable in this version of the cycle: the emphasis on manufacturer influence. The current 2026 rules were shaped heavily around what manufacturers needed to justify joining or staying, most visibly Audi and Honda. The FIA's single-seater director, Nikolas Tombazis, has made it clear that Formula 1 cannot be hostage to automotive companies over whether they choose to remain in the sport.
The proposal to introduce an independent engine supplier is a direct response to manufacturers using their regulatory leverage to slow down a fix the FIA would like to make sooner. A cheaper, simpler, FIA-controlled engine, available to any team regardless of manufacturer politics, is as much an attempt to stop that leverage recurring as it is a cost-control measure.
The Cycle Continues
Whether the 2031 V8 plan is right on its technical merits is almost beside the point. The more pressing question for anyone trying to plan a team, a power unit program, or a season around it is whether Formula 1's rulebook can be trusted to stay still. Teams have just spent years and hundreds of millions developing for the 2026 hybrid regulations, a formula that is itself only 12 years old, replacing a formula that had itself replaced turbos, which had themselves been banned once already.
If the FIA reverses course again within five years, it won't be the first time; it will be the fourth or fifth reversal in a set of decisions that keep circling back on themselves roughly once every 15 to 20 years. That instability is arguably the dominant storyline of the 2026 season already, from the qualifying and closing-speed concerns raised in the opening rounds to the ADUO catch-up mechanism introduced to manage the current power unit gap.
The V8 and refuelling proposals aren't a break from that pattern. They're the clearest evidence yet that it's still running. This cycle of reversals is not just a technical issue, but a governance one. The FIA needs to find a way to break this pattern and provide stability for the future of Formula 1.
