Temporada F1 2026 🏎

[GoVal]

Espero que recogieran algún dato útil .

[GoVal]

Para la segunda semana de test en Baréin, Pirelli va a llevar toda su gama de neumáticos.

[GoVal]

Estos son los neumáticos elegidos por cada equipo para esta segunda semana en Baréin.







Nachez @Nachez98 · 3h

🚨 OJO

⚠️ Los equipos podrán usar los neumáticos que no usaron en la 1ª semana o que tengan menos de 10 vueltas de uso

👉 Aston Martin solamente usó un neumático duro C1 (le quedan 3) y llevó 16 C2 y no usó todos

CALMA

[McHouserphy]

Espero que recogieran algún dato útil .

Qué malo es el peyote cuando tienes que hacer algo...    

[LaraCroft]

Pensé que era por una promoción de Halloween o algo así   parece que han llenado el coche de telarañas 

[llumia]

Messy 2026 F1 cars leave a deeply disturbing impression

Bahrain testing was Formula 1 2026 finally beginning to showcase itself to the world at large (tentatively) after the attempted secrecy of 'shakedown week', and like everyone else I was curious to see how these all-new cars would perform under the glare of TV cameras and the Bahrain lights.

I'm not on the ground in Sakhir like my colleagues Jon Noble, Edd Straw, Scott Mitchell-Malm and Samarth Kanal, so in actual fact the onboard video of the fastest lap of day one, by Lando Norris's McLaren, put out on YouTube by Formula One Management, was my first properly considered interaction with F1's new cars.

And I'm sorry to say the impression it left me with was deeply, deeply underwhelming.

You can visibly see how starved of power the car is through the higher-speed corners in particular. Turns 12 and 13 are what really did it for me - the car just looks and sounds broken, like the throttle has suddenly been limited to 50% or has failed in some way.

The driving challenge through what used to be one of the most demanding parts of this circuit is now so neutered that Fernando Alonso reckons Aston Martin's team chef could drive the car at the speeds F1 drivers are carrying through there.

"Historically, Turn 12, a very challenging corner, so you used to choose your downforce level to go [through] Turn 12 just flat," Alonso explained. "So you removed downforce until you are in Turn 12 just flat with new tyres. It was a driver-skill decisive factor to go fast.

"Now in Turn 12 we are like 50km/h slower, because we don't want to waste energy there and we want to have it all on the straights. So to do Turn 12, instead of 260km/h [we do it] at 200km/h, [and] you [the media] can drive the car; the chef can drive the car in Turn 12 at that speed."


'The chef can drive the car in Turn 12 at that speed'. To my mind, that is an incredibly damning statement, from someone we can all agree absolutely knows what he's talking about.

I wanted to be sure my eyes hadn't deceived me, so I watched Kimi Antonelli's onboard from the final day. He set the fastest lap of testing so far, a 1m33.669s, a full second quicker than Norris managed on day one.

But honestly it looked the same, an energy-starved mess of a lap. Too much lifting and coasting, too much coasting in general.

Obviously there is a degree of circuit dependency at play here (and maybe a bit of Mercedes engine sandbagging), but it seems the cars are basically so energy-starved on the straights now that pretty much all the corners have to be sacrificed at the altar of harvesting - whether it's literally coasting through what should be the fastest and most challenging corners, or having to do that weird 'Verstappen technique' of mashing the downshifts as low as possible through the slower turns to recycle energy through the battery.

It's horrible to watch, and so I'm not surprised Verstappen has gone on the attack and described this all-new F1 as basically not what F1 should be.

I agree with him. Lighter cars that move around are no fun if basically the threshold of power and grip is so low that it is easily achievable for every driver on the grid - and probably many others who aren't. Are the drivers now really driving the cars, or are they just operating them?

That story about Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri wondering how on earth Charles Leclerc could carry the speed he did through Tabac at Monaco last year - that game of who might dare to tread where few others can - I just don't see it happening with these cars as they are now.

We might get there some day. Norris is right to point out that it's very early days, and that grip and performance is nearly always initially sacrificed when new rules arrive. But I'm not sure I trust him when he says it's still "fun". It doesn't look fun.

Sure, he's right to say it's more fun than many other humdrum things these guys could be doing for a living. But coasting through fast corners 50-60km/h slower than you know you could go if the engine worked better, to a racing driver, is surely the very definition of frustration.

And don't take my word for it, just reference Liam Lawson's answer when he was asked directly whether these F1 cars are actually fun to drive. One long, drawn-out "Ummmmmm"...

I remember when the hybrid engines first arrived in 2014, and ex-F1 drivers long retired, such as the late Niki Lauda, complained that F1 cars had become too easy to drive. I remember the likes of Alonso bemoaning that early generation of hybrid F1 because the laptimes were too close to GP2 (in the days when GP2 cars were five seconds quicker than Formula 2 cars are now) and everything was so tyre-limited, especially in the races.

I think F1 made a smart move by chasing more outright performance from 2017 onwards: bigger (and heavier) cars, yes, unwieldy and difficult to engineer, especially once ground effect came back in from 2022, but they were bloody fast! The tyres were still a problem, but even that element started to improve, particularly over the past couple of seasons.

Now the cars are travelling so slowly through the turns I don't see how they heat the tyres up, never mind overheat them. The cars have suddenly become too slow for the circuits, unable to achieve sufficient power, when traditionally F1's problem has been the opposite. I can see Monaco being just about all right, but everywhere else these cars are potentially going to look ridiculous.

That people are talking about even what should be flat-out qualifying laps being a challenge of energy management is deeply disturbing. From what we can see of these 'push' laps so far in testing, it's going to be Sunday driving for these guys even on a Saturday...

The fact we've begun 2026 with so much political in-fighting, before the first race has even happened, really doesn't bode well either.

Ferrari versus everyone else on F1's start procedure, because Ferrari has designed an engine to cope with spooling up the turbo from scratch in a way others haven't; Mercedes versus everyone else over compression ratios designed to claw back as much lost power as possible; McLaren arguing the rules need to change already because the sheer lack of battery power available means the cars aren't going to be able to race each other properly and the closing speeds are going to be chaotic.

It's potentially a bit of short-term fun in a narrative sense, but it's a right mess. And so is what we're seeing on track with this extreme lifting and coasting and weird low-speed recharging and drivers looking like they're steering broken cars through high-speed corners.

And how is there going to be any proper 'last of the late brakers' racing and overtaking in this formula if everyone is having to lift and coast everywhere to recharge their batteries?

Never mind Verstappen's unflattering comparisons with Formula E, this is Formula 1 as Frankenstein's monster - rules designed to get Audi through the door (and entice Honda to return), but at a real cost: cars that must have movable aerodynamics, low-drag tyres and wheels, and a much lower minimum weight because otherwise they would be even more dog slow and unsatisfying to drive than they are now.

I know it's very early days, and Norris is right to say performance will likely improve, but it just looks like such a low bar to begin with, and I worry how many people will switch off before we get there, despite F1's best efforts to encourage everyone to toe the 'this is great' PR line (and that's already not working when it comes to Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton).

We can now visibly see those forecasted problems with this new ruleset. Instead of something holistic, we've ended up with completely neutered hybrid engines and then the FIA trying to build a wacky chassis formula around them to somehow claw back the lost performance. So far, the gap between one and the other looks like a yawning chasm.

You can see why, in the early part of last year, such serious and panicked considerations were given to adopting V8s/V10s with sustainable fuels, rather than this halfway house ditching of some parts of the hybrid. I never ever thought I'd say this, but Bring Back MGU-Hs!

Audi and Honda wouldn't be here, sure, but at least the cars would work properly. I worry the new, faster version of Albert Park that hosts the season opener could end up being an embarrassment for F1 in terms of spectacle, with cars desperately trying to avoid running out of energy through that long, high-speed stretch from Turn 6 to Turn 11.

Will the high-speed left/right of Turns 9 and 10 remain the fearsome challenge it once was, or will everyone have to coast through there now to make sure they have enough battery power to make it to Turn 11 without looking like a total shambles?

I really, honestly, don't care for what I've seen of F1 2026 so far. So now I'm just hoping Norris's crystal ball is correct and this mess somehow sorts itself out, through ingenious engineering yet to be determined and the good old fashioned passage of time. In the meantime, I'm a bit worried about what 2026 will bring.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/messy-2026-f1-cars-leave-a-deeply-disturbing-impression/

[llumia]

'Not pleasant at all' – What an F1 driver sees trackside in testing[/b]

Years of experience watching Formula 1 cars trackside pales drastically in comparison to the expertise of driving the real thing.

One of the first rules of observing cars on-track in F1 testing is that you spot the bad stuff first. It's more obvious, more pronounced. Why that might be happening, and what's going on when the big dramatic lock-ups turn into much subtler limitations, becomes a harder task to work out.

Not so much for those who have felt these experiences with their fingertips, and through their backsides, though. Hence the insight of former Alpine F1 driver and now Haas reserve Jack Doohan proved so valuable during a trip trackside to Turn 10 during the first Bahrain test.

The start of the lesson was delayed by a red flag just as we arrived. In a quirk of fate, Doohan's former team was the cause. But before long the cars hit the track.

"He's not able to stop the car earlier," Doohan quickly tells us of Arvid Lindblad, who was circling at the same time as Isack Hadjar in the Red Bull for a great point of comparison.


"He's turning in slightly sooner because he's not stopped the car, because he's not putting as much brake pressure on.

"He's sitting in mid-corner, front scrubbing, understeering and having a much later rotation."

It immediately crystallised a limitation observed in the Racing Bulls throughout testing - a car that did not handle the aggressive downshift demands of the Red Bull Ford Powertrains engine nearly as well as its bigger brother, and looked like hard work for both drivers all week long.

Turn 10 is an established favourite vantage point for The Race. It is a bumpy, off-camber corner and a great spot to see if drivers are able to apply high brake pressure combined with steering, versus being scared of locking up, and any car imbalances that arrive on entry, apex or exit as a result of that.

And it stands out even against the general challenges of the new 2026 cars. There's been a lot of locking observed early in this generation, which Doohan reveals is partly a consequence of this year's active aerodynamics on both the front and rear wings: "Typically with straightline braking, where they have the new fancy wing mode, depending on which wing is closing first and at which rate it can heavily dictate what axle of the car is loaded first, and that then really dictates locking.

"But Turn 10 is obviously different, because there's no fancy wing mode between Turn 8 to Turn 10. It can simply be down to how the car is on ride. It's always a limitation.

"There's a lot of front-left locking on the braking into there, but we're seeing the cars that may be struggling a little bit more, which aren't in a nicer window - which is your Aston Martin, your Williams.

"The Audi has been getting better and better over the three days, but we were seeing they had weaknesses in other areas. I think it really comes down to how the cars are riding over the bumps."

One of those Audi weaknesses was the big dynamic reaction the car had in getting down to first gear, which its drivers seemed to be trying to do earlier than most but then had quite dramatic rear instability to deal with.

Doohan hasn't experienced that in reality but is familiar with it from early 2026 simulator work in years gone by and says it was "quite interesting to see how the cars were behaving" in reality - "even the cars that were getting away with it a little bit more".


"Your Mercedes, your McLaren, your Red Bull - over one lap, it looks fine," he says.

"The Red Bull is obviously very good at getting down to first gear very early. Seems honestly whether it's gear ratio or what they're able to do, it's handling it very, very well.

"But you see over that long-run distance, after lap three-four-five, where the rear starts to be struggling a little bit more, isn't in prime condition, you can still see on that downshift to first gear, that small, slight little bit of instability that is coming with it.

"They're handling it, yes, but it's still not pleasant.

"However, you see the Aston Martin, the Audi, each lap, it's very rare to see them come through clean on that first-gear downshift.

"When we were there watching, there's probably eight out of 10 laps with [Gabriel] Bortoleto on the Audi, he had a moment with the first-gear downshift, and also in the first-to-second gear upshift on power.

"It's not pleasant at all, especially when it's so short."

This is the most unorthodox thing a racing driver can be asked to do. Especially in F1 where first gear has never really been a factor on the track itself outside of race starts or anomalies such as the Monaco hairpin.

It has become a key early part of seeing the 2026 cars in action because the early downshift is needed to spike the revs and help charge the battery for one thing but also spin the turbo to assist with reducing turbo lag off the corner, as these engines do not have the MGU-H to handle that electronically anymore.

And the reaction the car has to the driver forcing first gear is aggressive.

"Obviously, your first gear ratio is much shorter, and you get much more of a braking sensation from the engine," says Doohan.

"Imagine you're in a road car, you're in neutral, there's no friction, the car is just free-rolling. But if you're rolling at 50km/h in neutral, and then put in the first gear, you are going to have a very unpleasant surprise!

"When you release the clutch the rear wheel is going to lock up, the rpm is going to spike like crazy, you don't know what's going on and think you've just blown up your pride-and-joy wagon!

"And it's similar, in a more controlled environment of a racetrack, but the same sort of sensation of abnormalities and not understanding how you're going to make this work. Because all we've known for so long with first gear is either pulling out the garage, pulling off the start line, or if you've got an issue on track and pulling back on.

"First gear is: clutch, gear, and away you go. So it's strange, but with new regulations, and vast new regulations, comes new challenges and new areas for improvement.

"And first gear with high rpm, with deployment being such a huge factor, not just over the lap but it being deployed and recovered many times throughout one lap, means extreme measures are having to be explored."

We tell Doohan the day after going trackside, having quizzed Hadjar on what we had seen, that he had a big grin on his face answering how well the Red Bull's handling the first-gear anomaly.


"Yeah, well I'm sure they're stoked about it! They're very happy they're able to handle it very well," he says.

"I'm sure they're pretty stoked about it getting into first gear 30 meters before anyone else is, and it not jolting the car. So well done to them."

It is a key early point of distinction because every team is having to handle the phenomenon bar the Ferrari-engined drivers, believed to be a result of that engine having a smaller turbo and not needing to be spun up as much. Those drivers tried it during The Race's other trips trackside but the car/engine package didn't like it.

How each engine and gearbox is designed will determine how much it needs but can also withstand in terms of how aggressive to go with the downshift, and then the car platform will go some way to mitigating the extent of the effect. Hence the Red Bull looking better than the Racing Bulls with the same engine.

And it's something that cannot just be easily solved, as Doohan explains: "You could say, 'OK, why don't we just bolt on a longer first gear ratio and have an amazing Turn 10?' But the consequences that come with that is, 'OK, now we're going to go into anti-stall every time we leave the pits' - or at pitstops, or the launch off the grid.

"There's so many complications that come with it. So it's not as easy as, 'Ah, let's just bolt in this longer gearing and it'll be happy days'. There's plenty of compromises that are going to have to be solved."

One thing that became apparent on our trip is that the Cadillac, on a longer run, was struggling. Not with particularly dramatic vices as it didn't look bad in the 'this seems impossible to drive' sense, it just looked grip-limited on both axles.

"It's slower, it's got understeer, but the balance "doesn't look horrendous", Doohan says: "It looks like it doesn't really have the trust to push the entry, mid-[corner] and combine so highly, and then it doesn't really have the traction to put the foot down.

"It looks like they're tiptoeing around a little bit, sliding on top of the tyre. And that's the issue sometimes - the balance can actually feel OK and be in a window, but you end up just being grip-limited, so you push a little bit more and the car snaps.

"When you're inside that limit, it actually feels like a good lap, but you can be two-three seconds off, and that's a very hard, hard thing to fix. Whether that's just lacking aero, plain and simple - which can be the case, I don't know, but it would make sense.

"Mainly it looked more on the degradation side, when they were 12-plus laps into the stint, that it seemed like on traction, or late-combined braking into Turn 10, it was starting to struggle, where up until that point the race pace didn't seem so bad."

A caveat often applied to any of our trackside work is that any individual moment we witness is only a snapshot, which is why we stay out as long as possible, keep going back, and move around the circuit when we can.

Doohan says you "100%" need to be wary of drawing firm conclusions from a single trip but agrees repeat visits help build a relevant picture.

"The corners here to get a pretty good idea of how a car behaves are Turn 8 to 9/10, and also Turn 11," he says.

"You get to see a very low-speed balance and medium-to-high speed balance, you're not going to go to Turn 12 and see the car go through Turn 12 and dictate what the car is doing.

"Within two corners you could really start to see where the cars are at."

That's the 'where', then. Then there's the 'what'. What are you seeing, and what's it really telling you?

"With varying fuel loads, you can make a car look very poor," Doohan says.

"It doesn't look like it's stopping, locking the front left. But the car's got 100kg more fuel in it and the driver's still trying to push like there's 30kg.

"They're going rearwards on the [brake] bias, now the rears are overheated because you're eight laps into a long run. So instead of locking the front left, you're pinching the rears.

"It's very easy to come to a conclusion that might not necessarily be so accurate."

Which brings us to the 'when': "Knowing that between 5.45pm to 6.30pm most cars are going to be on a new C3 tyre, between 30kg to 50kg fuel, in a window to do a quali sim, that'd be your best time to go out and obviously have an understanding of where the cars are at.

"You don't need to go and see every single corner, because that can vary also, driver to driver.

"But if you have a key slow-speed corner, a key medium-to-high-speed corner, you can have a rough idea of where a car's at or not."

Which makes for a very handy guide for when The Race returns trackside for the final test...

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/f1-2026-testing-trackside-jack-doohan-what-we-learned/

[GoVal]

nicolas carpentiers @carpentiers_f1 · 1h

Interesting to see how much Williams has moved the steering rack forward #Williams #FW48 #F1 #TechF1

[GoVal]

PJ @SmilexTech · 1h

La Mercedes non aggiorna solo il fondo ma anche le pance della W17, che ora sono meno spigolose nella parte posteriore. Il cofano è ora chiuso, senza gli sgoghi intermedi #AutoRacer #F1Testing
Mercedes ha actualizado no solo los bajos, sino también los pontones del W17, que ahora son menos pronunciados en la parte trasera. El capó ahora está cerrado, sin las salidas de aire intermedias #AutoRacer #F1Testing

[GoVal]

Juan Cruz Alvarez @Juanito77ok · 2h

Delante de la rueda trasera es una de las pocas superficies del piso donde se puede trabajar con cortes/deflectores aquí vemos la comparacion entre Aston, Alpine, Haas y Cadillac.

[GoVal]

Un onboard comparando el Ferrari F2004 con el SF-26.



https://x.com/JunaidSamodien_/status/2023687748008243485?s=20

[llumia]

Uno de los temas recurrentes esta pretemporada es  el de la conducción "raruna" que imponen estos autos esta temporada.

A continuación, se muestra una comparativa telemétrica de las mejores vueltas para el primer día, de las pretemporadas 2025 y 2026, realizadas por el mismo piloto, NOR.

En el canal de "velocidad", se ven inconsistencias, no existe un patrón que indique que los autos esta temporada sean más lentos o más rápidos. Además se puede observar lo que comentaba ALO, que en la curva 12, el año pasado, circulaban a 271 km/h y este año ellos a 200 km/h, bueno NOR a 231 km/h :risitas:

En el canal "Acelerador" se puede observar la cantidad de veces que NOR, se obligado a levantar el pie del acelerador en los finales de las rectas, el famoso 'lift & coasting'.

[llumia]

Se han modificado las metodologías de programación de los algoritmos ("algos") y hasta que no me 'cosque', en ocasiones, tengo que volver a los gráficos básicos. Sorry.

Este es el canal 'RPM' para las dos vueltas mostradas con anterioridad de NOR. La línea azul, corresponde a la temporada 2025 y la naranja, a la temporada 2026. Se observa como "sobrerevoluciona" el coche, esta temporada, en varias ocasiones durante la vuelta rápida:

 

[McHouserphy]

gráficas del primer día de la segunda semana, 18/02/2025

[llumia]

Comparativas telemétricas para "vuelta rápida":

RUS vs PIA: Misma motorización, distinto chasis. RUS por delante aunque haya realizado la vuelta haciendo mucho más 'lift&coasting'