2026 Pre-Season Testing

[organic]

Any hot takes?

McLaren are in the best shape. They've been quietly confident

[MV8]

Audi stopped. Hulkenberg out. Red Flag.

[FrukostScones]

Audi stopped. Hulkenberg out. Red Flag.

HUL was pumping the throttle but nothing happened. rolled out in 3rd gear (according to the "telemetry" at live timing).

[Jambier]

Aston with a 2hours minimum time to fix the car.

I fear they will start the year as the slowest team

[bananapeel23]

Any hot takes?

McLaren are in the best shape. They've been quietly confident

Ferrari are looking quite a lot better than expected as well. Both drivers seem much happier than last year. The car also appears to be reliable and fairly competitive. I'm assuming that Ferrari will also bring at the very least a new front wing before Australia, given that the current one lacks a diveplane and strakes. They probably won't be winning in Australia or anything, but I think the doomsday scenarios people were making up about the PU being anemic and unreliable and the car being terrible are clearly overstated.

If they bring a full new package and the PU ends up being no more than ~15 HP behind the Mercedes, I could see Ferrari winning races early on.

[Emag]

Toto literally commenting on the laptimes/standings set this morning with zero other insights. Kind of icky honestly. Just say it's too early yet to make any evaluations but our competitors look good.

George set 5 laps in 5 completely different deployment maps in the morning. Hard to believe the runs in the morning were representative.

[FNTC]

Toto is doing pure PR work. They might be running detuned engines themselves to sandbag. Pretty obvious politician speak.

[CjC]

The Ford does look very impressive at this early stage. Even if it’s not ‘the best’ come Australia Red Bull has done an incredible job

[f1isgood]

Toto saying they have only small horsepower advantage and saying Red Bull has best engine. Peak trolling.

[f1isgood]

Any hot takes?

McLaren easy favorites. Mercedes will be second fiddle. Ferrari will be somewhere between these two depending on track.

[McFAN]

Toto is obviously obfuscating but redbull do seem to be running very nicely

[gearboxtrouble]

I think both things are true. RBPT have done a truly phenomenal job with the engine and Toto is attempting to minimize the Mercedes engine advantage to limit any potential nerf in deployment or fuel flow coming their way.

[Emag]

I think we are going to have a lot of different deployment strategies by different teams this season. It's crazy how different they're deploying power in this lap and how close the laptime is in the end.

[DGP123]

They shipped a boatload of Merc staff over to that RB engine years ago. It was always going to be good.

Looks pretty samey at the front tbh, and likely a three way between Macca, Merc & RB. Aston nowhere is the big disappointment really. Ferrari likely feeding off the crumbs again just behind the front three teams.

[ali623]

Early days but looks rather similar to 2025 so far in terms of pecking order at the front…