No one was asking for the radical changes being implemented in Formula 1 for 2026 season. Arguably, the current cars (tracing architecture to 2014 season) and regulations have been delivering an excellent on track show, specially starting with 2020 season when the budget caps were finally implemented for the teams. For example in 2025, F1 had three drivers from two teams fighting for the champion title all the way until the end of the final race of the season.

Most of the criticism of the current technology is lame and superfluous.

1. Cars are "too big".

So what? They still look great.

2. DRS is lame.

So the solution is to replace DRS with another more complicated still DRS-like technology, where drivers still push the button to overtake, only this time to get a power boost instead of opening the rear wing. Big yawn (Indycar had this more than a decade ago). And current DRS is not lame. The overtake is not automatic. For one, the car has to be within 1 second from the car in front to be able to activate it, and we have seen many times that having active DRS still does not guarantee an overtake.

3. 50/50% hybrid power units.

Nobody was asking for this either. The current PU is already hybrid. F1 and manufactures are just surrendering to the "green" politcs of EU.

I honestly believe that 2026 will turn out to be a disaster season for F1 one way or another.

Why can't we repopulate the south pole with polar bears to save them?

Russia has a tiny GDP and spends as much as possible on the military. It's economy is smaller than Italy

Nope, when adjusted for purchasing power paruty, Russian GDP is twice the size of Italy. According to various estimates, Russian military spending is around 7-8 of GDP. In other words, this war could go on for a long time.

Kinzhal is another new Russian missile, although it's not ICBM.

Technologically, Russia is so far behind, it's had to rely on equipment being manufactured by Iran and North Korea (neither of which is "first world").

U.S. Needs To Be Building Tens Of Thousands Of Shahed-136 Clones Right Now. Russia is now building significantly improved versions of Shahed drones now.

One of the most insane things is how after Russia's surprisingly poor military performance in the Georgian war

I really don't understand how posters on the Internet forums are still coming up with this claim. Russians routed Georgian army out of South Osetia in 2-3 days, and then Georgia was left without any military. Georgian soldiers were seen stealing civilian vehicles to escape out of the conflict zone.

The reason the war has taken so long is that with drone warfare,

No, drones became more important after 2023. Up to the summer of 2023, this looked like a positional trench war with lots of artillery duels, to extent that both sides were running out artillery shells and the entire NATA didn't have a sufficient quantity of artillery shells to send to Ukraine.

The real reason this war took so long is that Russia did not suppress Ukrainian air force and air defenses in the first few weeks like USA and allies did with Iraq in the beginning of the first Gulf War. It could have been a game over for Ukraine if Russian air force could bomb with impunity the front lines and say fly over Kiev.

Without air superiority, the war turned into a slow grim trench meat grinder, and drones made it even worse.

They have nukes left over from the Soviet days that may or may not still work.

Soviet nukes should be the least concern. Post-Soviet Russia is also armed with new families of moden recently manufactured ICBMs such as Topol, Yars, Bulava, etc.

As if USA did not have presidents with obvious signs of progressing dementia in the past. Biden, FDR, Reagan, and probably others.

Ukraine has already inflicted almost 1.2 million casualties to the Russian army in the war.

There is no basis for such claim besides Ukraine's own propaganda machine. Both countries treat their own casualty numbers as a state secret. Independent sources claim much lower casualty numbers.

That is half of the Russian casualties during their war of aggression in Afghanistan.

Where are you finding these crazy "facts" about the war in Afghanistan? Soviet (not Russian) casualties in Afghanistan were about 15,000 killed over the entire decade-long war. From the Soviet perspective, their losses in Afghanistan was only an unpleasant blip for a country that already had many other problems and struggles. It always amused me reading about the claims of various Western politicians from back then how their aid to afghan resistance was what really broke up USSR.

They were fed up with being satellite states without any right to self-determination, kept poor and servile while the Russian elite flourished.

That's not entirely correct. In late USSR, almost all satellites were welfare queens, and usually were just as well off economically as the Russian Soviet federation. The only exceptions were Belarus, which was a net donor into the central budget and Ukraine which just broke even.

For that matter, I have heard that there are healthy people out there who would like to volunteer for a one way trip.

Many top level business execs in USA do a lot of their business at the golf courses. I remember that in my old uni an introductory golf couse was basically a semi-required elective for MBA students. I have known a PhD student who obtained a valuable stock trading data set by simply spending a lot of time building relationships with finance people, including playing golf with them.

This is actually bad news for F1 fans. I don't see myself getting a subscription to Apple streaming service only for F1.