2026 Scuderia Ferrari HP F1 Team

[Sbrillo88]

Either Ferrari built the most dominant car of all time, or Autoracer's reporting is wrong. I know which I find to be more likely. Stay tuned to find out!

Yea, that would be Brawn 2009 levels.

I’m sure it’s the latter. I’m not boarding on that damn hypetrain.

I hope not. I'm a Ferrari fan but I would like to see a f1 season with at least 3 teams compete for the championships until the end. I know is impossible but never say never.

[ScuderiaLeo]

The FIA has removed curfew for the Australian GP, primarily because Ferrari and VCARB couldn't route flights from Italy to Australia (tension in the Middle East.) Adam Cooper said they had to get the team to the UK first. They have arrived now but I'd guess they're a couple days behind schedule compared to the others?

[Juzh]

Yes, the fuel tanks are just 70kg now. Which means that 50kg is literally like 3/4 of a full tank! That idea that Leclerc's running at the end of the test was done with the same kind of fuel load he'd have in the 2nd stint of a race is laughable.

Ferrari has either built one of the most dominant cars in F1 history or it's just a ridiculous, absurd claim from F1 press that loves to make stuff up in competition for attention.

Actually we don't know the capacity of the fuel tanks and it could be different within teams. 70kg estimations comes from the reduction of fuel flow (from 100 to 70 kg/hr equivalent) but with new rules you have not a prescribed capacity and you could increase capacity to do more superclipping for instance.

Whether it's 67kg or 75kg or whatever, it's not really relevant to what I'm saying. 70kg rough estimate is good enough to make the point. Nobody is otherwise going to still run like 90-100kg of fuel, not to mention the valuable extra space that takes up on top of the extra weight.

It's more like 85 kg. It's been discussed in the 2026 engine thread.

[nico5]

Don't mean to be rude, but this hardly proves anything. Because what matters is balance of overall deployment or performance across all straights, not peak acceleration like it might have been with V8s or even V6s when you knew they were on identical deployment maps.
For instance, comparing McLaren's laps from D2 vs D3, Piastri on D2 was faster on the straights but had massive clipping in T12 where he lost 3 tenths. In the end, "straightline" performance was similar across the two laps.

Higher acceleration peaks are correlated with higher performance runs whether that is due to less mass or more power. These peaks occur at T8 and T10 which is the logical. When the cars drive far below the peak in these corners, it means the lap is not going to be a higher performance run no matter what way the deployment is arranged. As I've shown, McL peak acceleration is lower on D3, and you also indicate that he uses the deployment in a different way. That's the point. The configuration of the McL on D3 is "lesser" than its configuration on D2. Mclaren have chosen to drive that way to limit their performance.

That is just not true. Especially this year where there is not necessarily an overwhelming advantage in running full electric power early on in the acceleration phase. If straightline performance is even across the laps, that tells me ICE is running at similar capacity across the two laps and deployment differences account for peak acceleration differences.
You cannot look at this graphs and tell me we're comparing apples with apples.
And if you still wanna do that and look at the acceleration peaks, there's quite a few corners where Lando's lap is higher. For instance, one of his two peaks is T14-15, where he's a lot higher than Piastri. Once again, deployment maps.

[nico5]

Anyways, on the same note, I'm pretty confident that Leclerc is full of s**t when he says RB is ahead of Ferrari.
This is his best and a later lap from the first stint of his race sim vs a Max stint done at the same time, so Ferrari has at least as much fuel as RB and is massively faster in all 120-200kph range corners.

[AR3-GP]

That is just not true. Especially this year where there is not necessarily an overwhelming advantage in running full electric power early on in the acceleration phase.

None of the principles from the previous generation have changed.

If straightline performance is even across the laps, that tells me ICE is running at similar capacity across the two laps and deployment differences account for peak acceleration differences.
You cannot look at this graphs and tell me we're comparing apples with apples.
And if you still wanna do that and look at the acceleration peaks, there's quite a few corners where Lando's lap is higher. For instance, one of his two peaks is T14-15, where he's a lot higher than Piastri. Once again, deployment maps.

The image that you are showing is too noisy to draw any conclusions. What you're saying about Norris at T14 is a processing artifact. Look at the rest of his lines. I've used a moving average calculation to generate a smoothed and most importantly a physical acceleration response. Engines have a continuous power output. They don't jerk like that plot is showing.

[Badger]

Either way these acceleration curves will not reveal marginal ICE power differences. It's more indicative of weight, traction, and deployment.

[nico5]

None of the principles from the previous generation have changed.

They actually have, quite drastically. In the previous regs it was a no brainer to run 120kW from K out of the corner and total energy management over one lap was so little of an issue that they would even offload the ICE through the wastegate and run the turbo on H only from battery energy for a few seconds.

Now I don't know if running max electric torque on smaller tyres is that good for traction and tyre temps.
Maybe it's at least worth experimenting.

The graph may be noisy, I agree, but you still not addressing the more relevant fact that those two laps do not differ in straightline performance overall despite, let me add, Norris' lap on D3 having a shallow Northernly wind, while Piastri had the opposite.

On top of that, your analysis makes it look like McLaren was running a more aggressive ICE map than Merc itself on most days, while that goes against what Stella himself claimed, that only the factory team was running race maps, and the clients weren't due to reliability concerns (Merc blew 2 ICEs).

[AR3-GP]

They actually have, quite drastically. In the previous regs it was a no brainer to run 120kW from K out of the corner and total energy management over one lap was so little of an issue that they would even offload the ICE through the wastegate and run the turbo on H only from battery energy for a few seconds.

In the previous regs, cars couldn't do two push laps in a row because they ran out of energy. It wasn't a fantasy world where they didn't have to care about the energy. It just wasn't as extreme as now.
Furthermore, using the maximum electrical energy at the corner exits is very basic principle of the hybrid era. We shouldn't be arguing about this. Here I have provided a deployment map used at Mercedes for the last generation PU. AMG-Turbo mode is MGU-H + MGU-K.



The principles are the same in 2026. The MGU-K zones will just be shorter, which is why it's even more important to use them in the correct place (start of straight, low speed). Any deviation from this is not an optimal lap.

The graph may be noisy, I agree, but you still not addressing the more relevant fact that those two laps do not differ in straightline performance overall despite, let me add, Norris' lap on D3 having a shallow Northernly wind, while Piastri had the opposite.

On top of that, your analysis makes it look like McLaren was running a more aggressive ICE map than Merc itself on most days, while that goes against what Stella himself claimed, that only the factory team was running race maps, and the clients weren't due to reliability concerns (Merc blew 2 ICEs).

Review the post carefully instead of making up things that were never said. viewtopic.php?p=1330828#p1330828


Ferrari is assumed to use a higher power mode relative to their own previous performances because autoracer said they ran with 50kg. If the straight line acceleration is the highest of any day while also carrying 50kg of fuel, it means they used more power. Autoracer also said they used more power. Additionally, I never claimed that Mclaren used a higher PU mode than Mercedes. I said Mclaren ran closer to an upper limit which contains contributions of both power and fuel weight. We can't know the specific decomposition, but we do know that peak accelerations rise as cars get nearer to their peformance ceiling. It's widely assumed that Mercedes is faster than Mclaren, therefore if Mercedes is showing lower peaks than Mclaren, it means Mclaren is running closer to their limits than Mercedes whether it's because of fuel, power, or car setup.

[Juzh]

AR3-GP is right here. Underlying principle is the same as always. Everything you have initially, then taper off.

[Luscion]

Looks like Lewis already has Cedric Grosjean as his race engineer and doesnt have to wait until a few races into the season for his Mclaren extended gardening leave to be up like reported

[johnnycesup]

Either Ferrari built the most dominant car of all time, or Autoracer's reporting is wrong. I know which I find to be more likely. Stay tuned to find out!

they put Mercedes as the strongest team going into Melbourne, didn't they? They've actually been a bit pessimistic about Ferrari this offseason I thought

[Luscion]

Either Ferrari built the most dominant car of all time, or Autoracer's reporting is wrong. I know which I find to be more likely. Stay tuned to find out!

they put Mercedes as the strongest team going into Melbourne, didn't they? They've actually been a bit pessimistic about Ferrari this offseason I thought

i wouldnt say pessimistic but they've been pretty consistent with putting Merc 1st and Ferrari 2nd

they did a livestream after the tests and ranked the teams, this was the excel they showed, only change was Bobbi put Ferrari 2nd instead of Mclaren

[AR3-GP]

The way autoracer talks about the SF26, you would think it's for certain the fastest car. Odd that they only rank it 2nd.

I thought Leclerc did the most impressive race sims of anybody on the last Friday. However, we are told to fear Mercedes instead. Strange.

In my opinion, the italian media think Ferrari has the fastest car but are being superstitious about it.

[johnnycesup]

The way autoracer talks about the SF26, you would think it's for certain the fastest car. Odd that they only rank it 2nd.

I thought Leclerc did the most impressive race sims of anybody on the last Friday. However, we are told to fear Mercedes instead. Strange.

In my opinion, the italian media think Ferrari has the fastest car but are being superstitious about it.

They were very pessimistic before the Barcelona test because the rumours they got from their sources were of an underdeveloped/unreliable engine with mounted on a very rushed car (rushed to do the Fiorano launch and did not appear at the first Barcelona day).

Since the tests actually went well, the positive surprise has them feeling a bit more optimistic, and they are excited that some of the most interesting technical bits have come from Ferrari, but IMO they think Mercedes is first (would be my guess too).