Energy Harvesting
VerifiedHow a car recovers energy into its battery under braking, feeding the electrical power it deploys elsewhere on the lap.
Every time a Formula 1 car brakes, its Motor Generator Unit-Kinetic (MGU-K) can recover some of that energy and store it in the battery instead of losing it all as heat, a process usually shorthanded as regen.
The 2026 power unit draws close to half its total output from electrical power, up sharply from earlier hybrid eras. That makes harvesting enough energy over a lap, especially under the heavier braking zones, central to how much a driver can deploy later for attack or defence.
A car that harvests well can spend more freely when it counts. One that struggles to recover energy, on a lap with fewer or gentler braking zones, has less in the bank and has to manage deployment more carefully.