2026 Pre-Season Testing

[MtthsMlw]

Private shakedown - Barcelona-Catalunya, January 26 - 30

Tyre selection


Teams may run their cars on three days during the test. There will likely be very little to non media coverage.
More information

Official pre-season testing - Bahrain, Feb 11 - 13 & Feb 18 - 20


Daily from 08:00 - 17:00 local.
Full schedule here and here

[Seanspeed]

Looks like Red Bull just want a flat baseline for the whole test. I guess they can do more tire testing in Bahrain, but definitely less information that way since one track is just one track.

[Emag]

All teams would have had some information about the new tires from the post-season tire test in Abu Dhabi last year. I suppose you could say C3 is right in the middle of the compounds and if they believe there's consistency between compounds, knowing one means knowing all of them.

But honestly, Pirelli and consistency are not two words that go together. It's a strange decision to not get at least one of each, if not for running, for establishing some sort of baseline that could be helpful going forward.

[FittingMechanics]

It could also point to Red Bull not planning/aiming/expecting to do very high mileage.

[f1isgood]

Looks like Red Bull just want a flat baseline for the whole test. I guess they can do more tire testing in Bahrain, but definitely less information that way since one track is just one track.

As Badger said in the RB thread C3 is the racing tire around Barcelona and likely to be more representative...

[Emag]

Looks like Red Bull just want a flat baseline for the whole test. I guess they can do more tire testing in Bahrain, but definitely less information that way since one track is just one track.

As Badger said in the RB thread C3 is the racing tire around Barcelona and likely to be more representative...

It's the most representative for Barcelona as a race weekend. But this is not a free practice session for the race weekend, it's (pre) pre season testing. Normally you would test whatever you can, if you can. So not taking any of the harder compounds is a bit strange.

They do have that one set of C4s though, I guess they deemed it enough.

[Badger]

Looks like Red Bull just want a flat baseline for the whole test. I guess they can do more tire testing in Bahrain, but definitely less information that way since one track is just one track.

As Badger said in the RB thread C3 is the racing tire around Barcelona and likely to be more representative...

But this is not a free practice session for the race weekend, it's (pre) pre season testing.

All the more reason to keep external performance variables to a minimum so you can hone in on what the car is doing.

I'm more surprised at those teams (Merc) who chose a lot of hards. That tyre will be a brick on this track in these conditions. It's kind of hard to give feedback on aero if you are on skates.

[Emag]

As Badger said in the RB thread C3 is the racing tire around Barcelona and likely to be more representative...

But this is not a free practice session for the race weekend, it's (pre) pre season testing.

All the more reason to keep external performance variables to a minimum so you can hone in on what the car is doing.

I'm more surprised at those teams (Merc) who chose a lot of hards. That tyre will be a brick on this track in these conditions. It's kind of hard to give feedback on aero if you are on skates.

For pure aero correlation work, the test that teams usually do is the constant speed runs with Aero rakes strapped on the car. That's the "cleanest" data you can get from the track. Once you start pushing, you’re dealing with changing speeds, yaw, load transfer, and driver inputs all at once, which makes the aero data signals much harder to isolate. That kind of running is useful of course, but it’s not where you build your baseline correlation.

For those constant-speed runs, tyre compound is not particularly important, as long as the target speed can be reached and held. 180–220 km/h is easily achievable on Barcelona’s straights regardless of compound, so it won't pose a problem either for RedBull nor Mercedes.

Where tire compound choice really matters is when you're trying to evaluate tire behavior in itself. A discipline in its own with these Pirellis as they have proven to be almost impossible to fully crack. Warm-up, operating window, graining tendencies, and how sensitive each compound is to conditions. That’s still quite hard to simulate with these Pirellis, so track data is very valuable.

Why does Mercedes have so many hards? Beats me, but if I were to guess it would be because last year it seemed like they were struggling with overheating. They did considerably better on races where temps were lower and often they could get more out of harder compounds than others on those conditions (for example, Canada pole). They perhaps want to see if their new car exhibits the same behavior or not. Getting the two extremes of the available compounds could be a deliberate choice to probe this behavior.

In any case, all teams have their own reasons for making these decisions regarding tire allocations. RedBull didn't just wake up today and said "meh, I guess I'll just take the softs". Same goes for Mercedes. It's just interesting how there's seemingly some who have gone to certain extremes. You can speculate about why, but I guess we can't really know for sure.

[Badger]

But this is not a free practice session for the race weekend, it's (pre) pre season testing.

All the more reason to keep external performance variables to a minimum so you can hone in on what the car is doing.

I'm more surprised at those teams (Merc) who chose a lot of hards. That tyre will be a brick on this track in these conditions. It's kind of hard to give feedback on aero if you are on skates.

For pure aero correlation work, the test that teams usually do is the constant speed runs with Aero rakes strapped on the car. That's the "cleanest" data you can get from the track. Once you start pushing, you’re dealing with changing speeds, yaw, load transfer, and driver inputs all at once, which makes the aero data signals much harder to isolate. That kind of running is useful of course, but it’s not where you build your baseline correlation.

For those constant-speed runs, tyre compound is not particularly important, as long as the target speed can be reached and held. 180–220 km/h is easily achievable on Barcelona’s straights regardless of compound, so it won't pose a problem either for RedBull nor Mercedes.

Where tire compound choice really matters is when you're trying to evaluate tire behavior in itself. A discipline in its own with these Pirellis as they have proven to be almost impossible to fully crack. Warm-up, operating window, graining tendencies, and how sensitive each compound is to conditions. That’s still quite hard to simulate with these Pirellis, so track data is very valuable.

Why does Mercedes have so many hards? Beats me, but if I were to guess it would be because last year it seemed like they were struggling with overheating. They did considerably better on races where temps were lower and often they could get more out of harder compounds than others on those conditions (for example, Canada pole). They perhaps want to see if their new car exhibits the same behavior or not. Getting the two extremes of the available compounds could be a deliberate choice to probe this behavior.

In any case, all teams have their own reasons for making these decisions regarding tire allocations. RedBull didn't just wake up today and said "meh, I guess I'll just take the softs". Same goes for Mercedes. It's just interesting how there's seemingly some who have gone to certain extremes. You can speculate about why, but I guess we can't really know for sure.

Pure aero correlation work? I'm talking about eliminating an external performance variable that changes how fast the car drives and how it feels to drive it. Seems like a wise choice to me to focus solely on car set-up, PU settings, and any potential development parts that you have. It's a bigger priority to understand your brand new chassis and PU than it is to understand the nuances of the tyre compounds, you will have time for that in Bahrain.

[Guacamole]

As Badger said in the RB thread C3 is the racing tire around Barcelona and likely to be more representative...

But this is not a free practice session for the race weekend, it's (pre) pre season testing.

All the more reason to keep external performance variables to a minimum so you can hone in on what the car is doing.

I'm more surprised at those teams (Merc) who chose a lot of hards. That tyre will be a brick on this track in these conditions. It's kind of hard to give feedback on aero if you are on skates.

I think the tyre temp and pressure regulations do not apply in test, so perhaps they will do some trickery there to get temps under control? I'm just guessing here, I'm sure there would be a lot of downsides to metrics gathered as well.

[Emag]

Pure aero correlation work? I'm talking about eliminating an external performance variable that changes how fast the car drives and how it feels to drive it. Seems like a wise choice to me to focus solely on car set-up, PU settings, and any potential development parts that you have. It's a bigger priority to understand your brand new chassis and PU than it is to understand the nuances of the tyre compounds, you will have time for that in Bahrain.

That was my point in the end though, it’s just a matter of priorities. Mercedes and Red Bull are approaching this test differently. Mercedes probably doesn’t feel the need to spend too much time on evaluating the PU here, partly because they’ve been in this game for much longer and also because they have three cars this week to gather data from, whereas Red Bull only has themselves and VCARB to validate. It’s also not about one approach being better than the other, because your point about there being more time in Bahrain goes both ways. It all depends on what they're more eager to learn right now before Bahrain, since each team is tackling different problems at different stages of the tests.

[Badger]

Pure aero correlation work? I'm talking about eliminating an external performance variable that changes how fast the car drives and how it feels to drive it. Seems like a wise choice to me to focus solely on car set-up, PU settings, and any potential development parts that you have. It's a bigger priority to understand your brand new chassis and PU than it is to understand the nuances of the tyre compounds, you will have time for that in Bahrain.

That was my point in the end though, it’s just a matter of priorities. Mercedes and Red Bull are approaching this test differently. Mercedes probably doesn’t feel the need to spend too much time on evaluating the PU here, partly because they’ve been in this game for much longer and also because they have three cars this week to gather data from, whereas Red Bull only has themselves and VCARB to validate. It’s also not about one approach being better than the other, because your point about there being more time in Bahrain goes both ways. It all depends on what they're more eager to learn right now before Bahrain, since each team is tackling different problems at different stages of the tests.

Yes, and I like RBR's priority. Understanding the chassis and PU is time critical in terms of upgrades and changes, tyre compounds won't change.

[gearboxtrouble]

There will probably be some pictures released by the teams and some taken by fans from outside the track but will there be any sort of timing released or nothing beyond what the teams say?

[FittingMechanics]

I'd love to have asked you guys what should the run plan be before the tires were announced. I bet the answers would be different to what you are now saying.

[Emag]

I'd love to have asked you guys what should the run plan be before the tires were announced. I bet the answers would be different to what you are now saying.

For me personally I would just expect every team to get a little bit of everything, with more emphasis being put on the softer compounds. So both Mercedes and RedBull are anomalies in my own expectations. Doesn't make their decisions right or wrong, I am not pretending to be an expert who knows better than the teams who have decided their run plan. Was just making a point about the peculiarities, because of course, when you go to such extremes it's pretty clear you do so with specific goals in mind.

There will probably be some pictures released by the teams and some taken by fans from outside the track but will there be any sort of timing released or nothing beyond what the teams say?

Unlikely, unless someone shares images of the leaderboards inside the paddock at the end of the days.