2026 Pecking order predictions

[nitrotech]

I think people are riding this "Mercedes unstoppable" wave a bit too early. Ferrari has shown some strong signs of competitiveness these last couple of days. Unless Mercedes is somehow hiding more than half a second of pace, then it's not going to be a whitewash at least.

Nobody is riding the "Mercedes unstoppable" wave just yet because remember Mclaren does use the same engine. Now in terms of them being the "favorites" I can see why people would jump ship on that. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just playful banter.

I am skeptical of McLaren's performance this year. Last year, they went from being almost a second a lap ahead of Red Bull in race trim, to a few tenths down at the beginning of second half, which remained till end of season. Which allowed Max to rake up a lot of wins. There were some rumors of their tyre trickery having been closed out by FIA. If that's true, they wouldn't have an overwhelming performance advantage this year like they had in the first half of last year. Also, it's very clear that they aren't showing full pace in this preseason tests. But they wouldn't be hiding anymore than what Mercedes is hiding, if at all. So far, it's hard to say, who is the favorite.

[bananapeel23]

Ferrari already looked the most consistent in test 1 and really fast on long runs, while also having that launch advantage built into the engine. Now with a blown diffuser and presumably also a large upgrade package in Australia, I feel like they may be better than they are being given credit for. I reckon Ferrari has the best package. The question is if the engine can keep up.

I tentatively have Ferrari as the favourite, with Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren just behind them, then Haas or Alpine as top of the midfield.

[Luscion]

I think Mercedes are leading the pack, theres been so much talk about their engine and how much power it actually has, with both max and charles saying their hiding a lot then today Briatore said Alpine were running the PU conservatively and that Mercedes have followed the rules. After them, its Ferrari then Red Bull then Mclaren for me

[AR3-GP]

It seems like Red Bull and Mclaren were hurt by their fight in the championship last year. Ferrari basically cancelled the SF25 in April so they spent a lot of time on the 2026 car and it shows in every area. More details, more clever solutions, they reached the weight limit, and so on.

[f1isgood]

Red Bull is somewhat understandable but McLarens last upgrade was Spa. They even emphasized they want to keep winning in the future and wont develop the 2025 car in addition to not being able to find more gains.

I still think McLaren will be the team to beat come Melbourne. Ferrari is very impressive but might lose out because of Mercedes engine advantage. Mercedes engine advantage should help for McLaren rather significantly.

[AR3-GP]

Red Bull is somewhat understandable but McLarens last upgrade was Spa. They even emphasized they want to keep winning in the future and wont develop the 2025 car in addition to not being able to find more gains.

Right but Mclaren had the smallest windtunnel allocation. Mclaren is the only team who has the same car from the first Bahrain test right now and it will be like that in Melbourne.

[Roland Ehnström]

Start of season:

Mercedes
McLaren
Ferrari
Red Bull
Haas
Alpine
Williams
Audi
VCARB
Aston Martin
Cadillac

End of season:

Mercedes
McLaren
Ferrari
Aston Martin
Williams
Red Bull
Audi
Haas
Alpine
Cadillac
VCARB

[f1isgood]

Red Bull is somewhat understandable but McLarens last upgrade was Spa. They even emphasized they want to keep winning in the future and wont develop the 2025 car in addition to not being able to find more gains.

Right but Mclaren had the smallest windtunnel allocation. Mclaren is the only team who has the same car from the first Bahrain test right now and it will be like that in Melbourne.

While true, they are definitely showing a lot more detail on their car than Red Bull at least to my untrained eyes. Maybe I am wrong here.

While you are right about the wind tunnel you also have to account for where the teams start as well. McLarens Technical team had just produced two fantastic well rounded cars as opposed to Red Bull who were sorting out their correlation issues even late into last season. Red Bull were struggling to figure out what went wrong with the RB20 while McLaren have always gotten in reality what they've expected from the wind tunnel as they themselves say every time. That should make it much easier to optimize for, when you target a regulation change especially.

To me if McLaren aren't at the top it would be mostly down to having set lower targets really which is unlikely. They'll be there at the front, worst case fighting another team but normally winning.

[Emag]

Red Bull is somewhat understandable but McLarens last upgrade was Spa. They even emphasized they want to keep winning in the future and wont develop the 2025 car in addition to not being able to find more gains.

Right but Mclaren had the smallest windtunnel allocation. Mclaren is the only team who has the same car from the first Bahrain test right now and it will be like that in Melbourne.

While true, they are definitely showing a lot more detail on their car than Red Bull at least to my untrained eyes. Maybe I am wrong here.

While you are right about the wind tunnel you also have to account for where the teams start as well. McLarens Technical team had just produced two fantastic well rounded cars as opposed to Red Bull who were sorting out their correlation issues even late into last season. Red Bull were struggling to figure out what went wrong with the RB20 while McLaren have always gotten in reality what they've expected from the wind tunnel as they themselves say every time. That should make it much easier to optimize for, when you target a regulation change especially.

To me if McLaren aren't at the top it would be mostly down to having set lower targets really which is unlikely. They'll be there at the front, worst case fighting another team but normally winning.

McLaren's car is one of the more "vanilla" cars out there. They looked more refined because they literally said they were going to bring the race 1 package earlier than others, but in terms of clever details / interpretations there's almost nothing in the McLaren. At least nothing we can see.

If McLaren aren't at the top it's firstly because they get the least amount of wind tunnel hours and secondly because this new team they got don't really have a proven track record of being great innovators (with the exception of Rob Marshall). The aero team is really good in utilizing their resources and infrastructure to the fullest, and I am certain they will make good use of it during in-season development too, but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

[AR3-GP]

but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

Maybe that's why the others didn't win the championships.

[Badger]

Right but Mclaren had the smallest windtunnel allocation. Mclaren is the only team who has the same car from the first Bahrain test right now and it will be like that in Melbourne.

While true, they are definitely showing a lot more detail on their car than Red Bull at least to my untrained eyes. Maybe I am wrong here.

While you are right about the wind tunnel you also have to account for where the teams start as well. McLarens Technical team had just produced two fantastic well rounded cars as opposed to Red Bull who were sorting out their correlation issues even late into last season. Red Bull were struggling to figure out what went wrong with the RB20 while McLaren have always gotten in reality what they've expected from the wind tunnel as they themselves say every time. That should make it much easier to optimize for, when you target a regulation change especially.

To me if McLaren aren't at the top it would be mostly down to having set lower targets really which is unlikely. They'll be there at the front, worst case fighting another team but normally winning.

McLaren's car is one of the more "vanilla" cars out there. They looked more refined because they literally said they were going to bring the race 1 package earlier than others, but in terms of clever details / interpretations there's almost nothing in the McLaren. At least nothing we can see.

If McLaren aren't at the top it's firstly because they get the least amount of wind tunnel hours and secondly because this new team they got don't really have a proven track record of being great innovators (with the exception of Rob Marshall). The aero team is really good in utilizing their resources and infrastructure to the fullest, and I am certain they will make good use of it during in-season development too, but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

I think that initial impression of the McLaren being basic was wrong, the more the details emerged.

Btw, does your telemetry site have a function where you can compare lap times from different sessions? Like last week's test to this week.

[Emag]

While true, they are definitely showing a lot more detail on their car than Red Bull at least to my untrained eyes. Maybe I am wrong here.

While you are right about the wind tunnel you also have to account for where the teams start as well. McLarens Technical team had just produced two fantastic well rounded cars as opposed to Red Bull who were sorting out their correlation issues even late into last season. Red Bull were struggling to figure out what went wrong with the RB20 while McLaren have always gotten in reality what they've expected from the wind tunnel as they themselves say every time. That should make it much easier to optimize for, when you target a regulation change especially.

To me if McLaren aren't at the top it would be mostly down to having set lower targets really which is unlikely. They'll be there at the front, worst case fighting another team but normally winning.

McLaren's car is one of the more "vanilla" cars out there. They looked more refined because they literally said they were going to bring the race 1 package earlier than others, but in terms of clever details / interpretations there's almost nothing in the McLaren. At least nothing we can see.

If McLaren aren't at the top it's firstly because they get the least amount of wind tunnel hours and secondly because this new team they got don't really have a proven track record of being great innovators (with the exception of Rob Marshall). The aero team is really good in utilizing their resources and infrastructure to the fullest, and I am certain they will make good use of it during in-season development too, but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

I think that initial impression of the McLaren being basic was wrong, the more the details emerged.

Btw, does your telemetry site have a function where you can compare lap times from different sessions? Like last week's test to this week.

Yes you can, which laps in particular did you want to check?

As for McLaren, the initial impression was that they had nothing going on at all
The higher quality shots just revealed some finer detail which we have seen some other teams exhibit too.

[Badger]

McLaren's car is one of the more "vanilla" cars out there. They looked more refined because they literally said they were going to bring the race 1 package earlier than others, but in terms of clever details / interpretations there's almost nothing in the McLaren. At least nothing we can see.

If McLaren aren't at the top it's firstly because they get the least amount of wind tunnel hours and secondly because this new team they got don't really have a proven track record of being great innovators (with the exception of Rob Marshall). The aero team is really good in utilizing their resources and infrastructure to the fullest, and I am certain they will make good use of it during in-season development too, but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

I think that initial impression of the McLaren being basic was wrong, the more the details emerged.

Btw, does your telemetry site have a function where you can compare lap times from different sessions? Like last week's test to this week.

Yes you can, which laps in particular did you want to check?

How do you do that?

[AR3-GP]

I think that initial impression of the McLaren being basic was wrong, the more the details emerged.

Btw, does your telemetry site have a function where you can compare lap times from different sessions? Like last week's test to this week.

Yes you can, which laps in particular did you want to check?

How do you do that?

Each lap that you click is added to an analysis queue. So just go into the individual sessions and choose laps. They will all end up in one queue that you can "analyze".

[f1isgood]

Right but Mclaren had the smallest windtunnel allocation. Mclaren is the only team who has the same car from the first Bahrain test right now and it will be like that in Melbourne.

While true, they are definitely showing a lot more detail on their car than Red Bull at least to my untrained eyes. Maybe I am wrong here.

While you are right about the wind tunnel you also have to account for where the teams start as well. McLarens Technical team had just produced two fantastic well rounded cars as opposed to Red Bull who were sorting out their correlation issues even late into last season. Red Bull were struggling to figure out what went wrong with the RB20 while McLaren have always gotten in reality what they've expected from the wind tunnel as they themselves say every time. That should make it much easier to optimize for, when you target a regulation change especially.

To me if McLaren aren't at the top it would be mostly down to having set lower targets really which is unlikely. They'll be there at the front, worst case fighting another team but normally winning.

McLaren's car is one of the more "vanilla" cars out there. They looked more refined because they literally said they were going to bring the race 1 package earlier than others, but in terms of clever details / interpretations there's almost nothing in the McLaren. At least nothing we can see.

If McLaren aren't at the top it's firstly because they get the least amount of wind tunnel hours and secondly because this new team they got don't really have a proven track record of being great innovators (with the exception of Rob Marshall). The aero team is really good in utilizing their resources and infrastructure to the fullest, and I am certain they will make good use of it during in-season development too, but I honestly don't remember the last time McLaren introduced an aerodynamic feature that was copied by the others.

I think using wind tunnel hours is not a good reason especially when everything works perfectly. That's my only point against the less wind tunnel time allocation.

Will you be Red Bull facing correlation issues with 15% more tunnel time or be McLaren whose tunnel works always and is state-of-the-art with 15% less tunnel time? Moreover this ignores that Red Bull did develop all the way till Monza on the tunnel and Mexico using CFD. McLaren stopped by Spa by their own admission.

McLarens rear tire cooling was something no one could copy. Likewise as Wache said last year their suspension on the front was extremely aggressive and performance enhacing and of course you can't copy that.

The reality is that McLaren excels in things others simply cannot copy. Which only talks to the strength of the current technical team. For this simple reason they should be there.