The all-new regulations for 2026 have injected a genuine sense of mystery and expectation into the Formula 1 season. The rule revolution has delivered, at least visually, striking cars which have been received well by the greater social media population. In fact, there was hardly a downer amongst the lot of them.
But. The last couple of weeks have brought things more into perspective. The shakedown test in Spain was heavily shrouded, which left us without much information on the performance of the cars. Not so over the last week at the ‘official’ first pre-season test in Bahrain.
Let’s start with the good news. All teams are present, including the tardy Williams, and the cars are noticeably louder than last year. It’s by no means comparable to the screaming V8 or V10, but the noise level is heading in the right direction for those who enjoy a robust roar from a motorsport engine. Reliability, too, has been, for the most part, impressively consistent. A few gremlins here and there have done nothing to detract from the mechanical feat of running these brand-new engines for hundreds of laps. And though all manufacturers have had to build completely new power units, it is especially striking how Ford and Audi have delivered units as reliable as anyone else.
In other news, lap times from Bahrain are decidedly slower. Yes, we knew that this was testing, and teams aren’t pushing their cars just yet. But this isn’t just somewhat off the pace. This is ten seconds a lap off, slower than an F2 car. At the forefront of nearly everything is energy management. As a reminder, the 2026 regulations mean that the power of the internal combustion engine is reduced, while the amount of electrical energy is increased. Because of this, drivers must maximise energy generation, and this does not sit well with Max Verstappen. The four-time champion has said that these cars are not fun to drive and that the over-reliance on management is just not Formula 1: “I just want normal driving…It [management] so heavily impacts the performance on the straights…It is a big step back to how it was,” said Verstappen. This was echoed, to some degree, by Lewis Hamilton too.
It could be worse, though, and it is in the case of Aston Martin. This year, the team has started its partnership with Honda, but it has hardly gone well. As it stands, the car appears significantly off front-running pace. Fernando Alonso, reunited with Honda since his time at McLaren, ended the fourth day of testing 3.9 seconds off. Teammate Lance Stroll was 5.2 seconds behind at the end of his stint on day three. The Canadian didn’t seem to see any light at the end of the tunnel either: “Right now we look like we’re four seconds off the top teams, four and a half seconds,” Stroll said. It’s a shocking outcome for the team whose car has been built under the leadership of the highly vaunted Adrian
Newey. It could be that Aston is taking a bit more time to understand the new regs. At least, that’s what they’ll desperately be hoping for.
Elsewhere, McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari seem to be getting on with their work. All reliable, all running fairly smoothly within a few tenths of each other. Naturally, headline lap times in pre-season testing are infamously unreliable. And the management issue is easily dominating the entirety of the conversation. There is some testing to run yet, and perhaps it will bring with it a jump in laptimes and some much-needed clarity before the start of the 2026 season.
