2026 Pre-Season Testing

[rbirules]

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/f1-2 ... -happened/

1 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) 1m18.159s, 107 laps
2 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.537s, 93 laps
3 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +2.030s, 60 laps
4 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +2.541s, 56 laps
5 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +3.142s, 154 laps
6 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +3.354s, 88 laps
7 Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac) +6.492s, 33 laps
8 Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +7.137s, 27 laps
9 Sergio Perez (Cadillac) +7.815s, 11 laps

209 laps for Merc engine ( 3 drivers)
198 laps for Ferrari engine ( 3 drivers)
195 laps for Ford engine( 2 drivers)

Ocon with the most laps by a single driver with 154 laps
Cadillac had issues that stopped them from running a ton, doesnt seem like it was PU related though

Do drivers from the same team drive the same car, or do they each have their own car at the test? For example did the Mercedes PU do 149 laps (93 from George and 56 from Kimi) or did one PU do 93 laps and another did 56 laps? I'm sure getting data from that many laps no matter what is helpful, but I'm just curious if one Mercedes PU did 149 laps, similar to how Ocon's car did 154 laps.

Obviously the RBPT PU did 195 laps across two different cars (teams) and thus was two different PUs.

someone correct me if im wrong but i believe each team only gets to use one car, they just change the numbers on the car for the driver, so its the same PU so for just merc themselves it wouldve done 149 laps

Thank you, that was my assumption as well (assuming nobody comments to the contrary), but wasn't completely sure.

[FrukostScones]

https://x.com/nachez98/status/201580774 ... 2n8am2mMAg

over the top?

[LM10]

That theory was from a rudimentary fan done CFD concept that didn’t have the correct geometry and they would have no way of knowing if their CFD even correlated even if it was the right goemetry. However this nuance take, grounded in engineering reality, makes you a bad guy from the internet hype machine and mods here playing favorites.

Vanja, the fan you’re talking about, predicted the high drag on his CFD model. Later it was confirmed by Toto. What a coincidence, right?

What a shame he left the forum.

Here we go….

Also he was more into self promotion, and positioned himself as an expert despite having no motorsports experience. He didn’t like people pointing out the inaccurcies of analysis. I’m sure when of his mod buddies will come to his rescue here

I think he mentioned numerous times that his model had limitations. It was nice to see the basic ideas behind the concepts and also the possible problems which might come with them.

[Hoffman900]

Thats insanely impressive from all teams - even Audi did better than Honda on their first test back as a manufacturer in 2015. I did expect Mercedes and Ferrari engines to hit the ground running but the stand out has to be RBPT - 195 laps for a new engine manufacturer on their first test has to be the best new engine debut I've ever seen. The times don't really matter but it doesn't seem like they're running too far off the pace at the moment either.

To be fair, all these PU’s have seen thousands of miles on test benches already.

[LM10]

Vanja, the fan you’re talking about, predicted the high drag on his CFD model. Later it was confirmed by Toto. What a coincidence, right?

What a shame he left the forum.

The reason that the W13 was draggy was because since the floor couldn't be run low due to porpoising, they had to use a barn door rear wing on every circuit. If they were able to generate the floor downforce, the rear wing would have been very small and they would have been quick on the straights. The analysis you are referring to was a fairly narrow-minded one that focused on the pressure on the rear tire face, and not the overall picture of the car.

I doubt that the rear wing was the main reason Mercedes was the draggiest car out there. They were draggy on every track with every wing.

[dialtone]

So I wanted to move this topic about the zero-pod concept and why it didn't work as a "concept" because of sidepods we've seen from the RB22. Someone mention something that the concept had a lot of drag because the amount of outwash/front tyre wake that was hitting the rear tyres and other aerodynamic parts.

That got me thinking? Would the concept still fail regardless because of the 18 inch tyre? And is the 18 inch tyre one of the biggest reasons why the ground effect cars failed?

That theory was from a rudimentary fan done CFD concept that didn’t have the correct geometry and they would have no way of knowing if their CFD even correlated even if it was the right goemetry. However this nuance take, grounded in engineering reality, makes you a bad guy from the internet hype machine and mods here playing favorites.

Not saying it isn’t wrong, but I’m quite sure it missed a lot of the nuances of the design and how it worked. The top speed issues seemed to come from the fact the car was porpoising terribly and thus causing drag as the car bottomed out and the air over and under the car varied with the bouncing. So no one can conclusively say it was that. Even the rudimentary fan done CFD showed more exposed floor area made for more downforce (assuming parts gave infinite stiffness which may have been some it), but as Newey stated, and he knew this from Indy Car in the 1980s, it’s better to have a wider operating downforce ride height range than a higher peak downforce that only works at narrow ride heights.

It’s funny that this is your stance here, but in the engine thread instead Binotto is basically an idiot because you, presumably not a fan with rudimentary modellinh, decided they are all dumb for not doing what your favorite team has done.

I’m no Binotto fan, good that he left Ferrari given what transpired after, but having 2 diametrically opposite stances in 2 threads is some extra level of acrobatics.

[bluechris]

Guys can we please stop chatting for a person that is not here to defend himself? Its not polite really and we have a ton of things to discuss since the game is on from today.
My 2 cents

[Hoffman900]

Binotto is not an idiot, he found an opening and is politicing. He certaintly is aware of this, but politics is the name of the game in the FIA, if it kicks out the legs of Merc, then that is a win for him, even if it’s just bad PR for them.

I backed up with real world examples of how compression ratio changes from measured ambient, to running, with math, and how every engine has a higher compression ratio when running then it does measured at ambient. Literally, every single engine. I’ve built engines, this is a “thing”. I have literally measured this because on dissasembly from an engine that measured with 1mm piston to head clearance cold, you can see withness marks in the piston and head from where they touch… that gap dissapears in the real world. Most race engine builders go with thinner and thinner head gaskets looking for this on the dyno, and back off a scooch. It’s crude, but it works.

The CFD experiment no one had any way of validating it, and literally, people being butthurt about it, entirely proves my point. You all walked right into it.

I have engineering experience and motorsports experience, not F1 but more than most people here, and using that experience to point out shortcomings and bad engineering practice apparently makes me a trouble maker. Do you guys want correct information or how to think correctly, or just conjecture and opinions, with some AI slop sprinkled in?

[Emag]

Guys can we please stop chatting for a person that is not here to defend himself? Its not polite really and we have a ton of things to discuss since the game is on from today.
My 2 cents

I think “not polite” is the minimum description here, especially given the context. I can't believe the same bashing is still going on.

The CFD work that started this whole thing was shared freely, made on his own time, with the explicit intention of being mostly educational rather than authoritative/factual. Every post included clear disclaimers about geometric inaccuracies, and the lack of real-world correlation. I think the framing matters because the intention was clearly for comparison purposes with models that somewhat resembled the real cars.

I think everyone agreed with the counter-claims that F1 aerodynamics is highly coupled and that sidepod behavior, wheel wake, and rear performance depend strongly on upstream geometry and correlation. Nobody seriously disputed that. But dismissing the many hours of work that was shared freely as meaningless, because it isn’t a full, team-grade, correlated model sets a standard that effectively rules out almost all public technical discussion by default. Nobody here should post anything then, because it's just not a 100% representation of the real world.

One can easily make the distinction between “this cannot be used to make definitive claims about real F1 cars” and “this has no value whatsoever.” The first one is true and was already acknowledged when the posts were made. The second one just doesn't follow. Simplified models, when labelled as such, can still illustrate trends, sensitivities, and conceptual differences, and they are quite helpful to understand why certain design philosophies might behave differently, even if the absolute numbers are not representative. That in itself was already more value provided than many here can claim they have given.

Critiquing limitations is fair. Presenting those limitations as a reason to write off hours of work as worthless is where the tone becomes unnecessarily dismissive and condescending. Especially in a forum setting, where the goal is discussion and learning.

[AR3-GP]

[DJ Downforce]

A superb start for RBPT, just as good for Merc and Ferrari.

Early days but the 3 "big guys" seem to be able to run smoothly.

Audi will get things sorted I'm sure. Honda are really missing out..

[djos]

F1 have their highlights video up:

[Emag]

F1 have their highlights video up:

Some pretty nice shots of higher quality available here. The problem is that one has to frame hunt a bit to find good shots without any motion blur.

In any case, when they post something like this at the end of the day, I just don't understand all this secrecy around it. The broadcasting, I understand, since it requires extra resources to set up. But at least timing data from the circuit? People will find out who is struggling and who is not anyway. Just a bad move on making our life harder for no reason. I would assume the fans who are so invested in testing are quite a small portion of the total audience anyway, so it's not like they're "killing suspense" for the upcoming season.

[djos]

F1 have their highlights video up:

Some pretty nice shots of higher quality available here. The problem is that one has to frame hunt a bit to find good shots without any motion blur.

In any case, when they post something like this at the end of the day, I just don't understand all this secrecy around it. The broadcasting, I understand, since it requires extra resources to set up. But at least timing data from the circuit? People will find out who is struggling and who is not anyway. Just a bad move on making our life harder for no reason. I would assume the fans who are so invested in testing are quite a small portion of the total audience anyway, so it's not like they're "killing suspense" for the upcoming season.

100%, it’s a daft decision most likely due to Bahrain having the official first test rights.

[FW17]

They should have had this test in Bahrain, The difference is cost would not have been much, driving the car vs flying the car.