2026 Pre-Season Testing

[Badger]

The Race - Mercedes claims Red Bull a second faster on straights

“They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else,” he said.

“I mean, I'm speaking a second per lap, over consecutive laps.”

Wolff said that “at the moment” Mercedes was unable to deploy its battery power in the same way that Red Bull could – especially over multiple laps.

And in a season where having more energy deployment on tap could be significant in terms of deciding results, it has left Wolff feeling that Red Bull is now “very much” the benchmark.

“On a single lap we have seen it before - but now we have seen it on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straight line deployment,” said Wolff.

“I would say that, as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always with the caveat of that, they've set the benchmark.”

Red Bull’s pace and reliability with its brand new power unit earned the praise of rivals in the Barcelona test – and it seems to have shone even more in Bahrain.

And for Wolff, it has served as a reality check that the fight for the championship is going to be more open than many suspected just a few days ago.

Speaking about Red Bull’s potential, he added: “I was hoping that they were worse than they are, because they've done a very good job.

“The car, their powerunit, are the benchmark at the moment, I would say. And then obviously you have Max in the car. That combination is strong.”

[FNTC]

Toto is in full damage control mode. Fia must be pressuring them hard.

[pantherxxx]

Some fans are funny. If Toto says Mercedes is fastest, it means Mercedes is fastest. If Toto says Red Bull is fastest, it means Mercedes is fastest. Whatever happens Mercedes have the best car, because they nailed the 14' regs.

[FittingMechanics]

Toto is very clearly trying to make the point that their engine is weaker, for obvious reasons.

Toto also knows you can deploy all your energy on the straight or in other parts of the circuit. Verstappen is using more on the straight which means he is sacrificing energy at other parts of circuit.

Everyone is forced to use 8.5MJ total.

[CrazyCarperF1]

Looking at how much the cars move around, the street circuits are going to be a complete lottery, there could be plenty of accidents.

[Badger]

Toto is very clearly trying to make the point that their engine is weaker, for obvious reasons.

Toto also knows you can deploy all your energy on the straight or in other parts of the circuit. Verstappen is using more on the straight which means he is sacrificing energy at other parts of circuit.

Everyone is forced to use 8.5MJ total.

You can't harvest more than 8,5MJ but I don't think there is anything suggesting you need to harvest that much. You could harvest 7MJ if you wanted. A "better ERS" would just be one that harvests more efficiently and thus can deploy more.

[dren]

You're not forced to use that total. You can use up to that.

[pantherxxx]

Toto is very clearly trying to make the point that their engine is weaker, for obvious reasons.

Toto also knows you can deploy all your energy on the straight or in other parts of the circuit. Verstappen is using more on the straight which means he is sacrificing energy at other parts of circuit.

Everyone is forced to use 8.5MJ total.

That's the maximum that can be theoretically used. But it does make a huge difference how do you recover that energy, minimalizing lap time loss during recovery, that's where we will see the huge difference in performance.

[Artur Craft]

My 2 cents from the final hour which I watched:

Cars look dead slow on all kind of corners but some of them look nice, especially Williams which is to me the most good looking car in their history. RB and Alpine looks nice too. Finally, I have a feeling this new reg will be a farce racing-wise with all it´s gimmicks

[Tommy Cookers]

A "better ERS" would just be one that harvests more efficiently and thus can deploy more.

or it could be an ERS that has a better ICE

'harvesting' is 'harvesting' a crop that has been planted by the ICE

[Badger]

A "better ERS" would just be one that harvests more efficiently and thus can deploy more.

or it could be an ERS that has a better ICE

'harvesting' is 'harvesting' a crop that has been planted by the ICE

Yes the ICE output has a direct effect on harvesting, but there are also other "non HP" related factors that will determine how much you can harvest and thus how good your ERS is. See this for example.https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/the- ... trackside/

[AR3-GP]

If Red Bull have found a clever trick with harvesting, it could be worth more than Merc's compression ratio trick. While it's easy to think Toto is delivering his usual bs, he was actually very specific about what he thinks RB's advantage is. The latest article from the race suggest that RB do have a very advanced system integration (PU, gearbox, driver) that might be allowing them to harvest more than others.

[FittingMechanics]

It was predictable that Mercedes (engines) would sandbag heavily here. In order to reduce the risk of FIA clipping their wings. We all expected it.

What Toto is doing is just an extension of that.

[AR3-GP]

It was predictable that Mercedes (engines) would sandbag heavily here. In order to reduce the risk of FIA clipping their wings. We all expected it.

What Toto is doing is just an extension of that.

That's what you hope, for obvious reason, but this is something that was being pointed out as early as Barcelona. A lot of people were saying the RB power unit was "strong". We didn't know if it's just PR. I think that Mercedes has identified a technical deficit in one area to RBPT and how their drivers are able to operate their PU. This has apparently been believed since Barcelona, but in Bahrain they got more confirmation. Mercedes might have a couple cv more peak power, but more effective harvesting can mitigate and even overcome such a disadvantage.

[FittingMechanics]

It was predictable that Mercedes (engines) would sandbag heavily here. In order to reduce the risk of FIA clipping their wings. We all expected it.

What Toto is doing is just an extension of that.

That's what you hope, for obvious reason, but this is something that was being pointed out as early as Barcelona. A lot of people were saying the RB power unit was "strong". We didn't know if it's just PR. I think that Mercedes has identified a technical deficit in one area to RBPT and how their drivers are able to operate their PU. This has apparently been believed since Barcelona, but in Bahrain they got more confirmation. Mercedes might have a couple cv more peak power, but more effective harvesting can mitigate and even overcome such a disadvantage.

I think it was very predictable that Mercedes would sandbag. I predicted it on this forum (as many others).

Now we get Toto sandbagging with his comments and everyone from Red Bull camps starts to believe him? Sure, be my guest, maybe FIA doesn't need to make compression ratio change.

If you compare Max lap with Norris you can see Norris just deployed on back straight (and probably in S2) while Verstappen deployed in S1.