F1 testing: Barcelona ‘shakedown’ offers first hints of Formula 1 2026

Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc said: “There is a lot of excitement, not only at Ferrari but throughout the paddock.” he said.

“As drivers and teams we must adapt to find ways to maximize our new package, especially now when there is much more energy management involved than in the past.”

Teams were allowed to run on a maximum of three days out of five. Mercedes not only completed all of its races by Thursday, but also completed the race before the end of the day.

Russell was generally positive about the new style cars.

“It’s very different,” he said, “but it feels pretty intuitive once you wrap your head around it.

“From a fan perspective, there’s an opportunity to see more exciting racing and I don’t think you’ll potentially see some of the negatives that we’ll feel with the car from a charging perspective, but that will improve a lot over time.”

“Overall, I’m really glad the cars are smaller now. I was a fan of the visually bigger cars when they arrived in 2017, but when I drove them they were huge and now they look great.”

Ferrari also ran reliably and, most impressively, so did the two Red Bull teams.

Red Bull kicks off this new era of F1 with the first in-house engine developed together with its new partner Ford. Russell noted how impressed he was with how smoothly the car ran.

The biggest problem Red Bull encountered in the test was the driver problems. The team made the odd decision to run in the rain on Tuesday, something only Ferrari does.

New driver Isack Hadjar crashed at the fast final corner in the afternoon after switching from fully wet tires to intermediate tyres. The Frenchman did enough damage for the team to send out new parts and he wouldn’t be able to run again until Friday even if Red Bull wanted to.

But most teams had problems of one kind or another.

World champion McLaren started testing late because the car was not ready until Wednesday.

They said it was a deliberate decision to make sure they had as much design and development time as possible, and it didn’t seem to affect them when Norris was impressed on the car’s first day of operation on Wednesday.

But McLaren’s late arrival meant they had less flexibility and when the fuel system issue emerged on Thursday they lost a lot of practice time when they decided to tear the car apart and make sure they fully understood the problem.

With the emphasis on reliability, teams were of course trying to gather all the pieces they could about relative speed.

Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen said: “Of course we all look at lap times and try to estimate how much fuel load everyone has.

“You speculate about other people’s and try to convince yourself that you are competitive, but at the end of the Bahrain tests (in February) we will see long runs where you will make your calculations.”

As is often the case this time of year, on the record, teams were not announcing anything, emphasizing that they didn’t — couldn’t — know where they stood. And almost every one of them expressed the word “positive” about how the test went for them.

However, people inside the team say a picture has emerged. Unsurprisingly, the top teams look to be in good shape. Mercedes appears to be in a similar competitive environment behind Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull, or as the F1 folks say, “in the data noise”.

Alpine, which finished last in 2026, seems to have taken an important step by switching to Mercedes customer engines. It looks like they, the Racing Bulls and Haas are in the midfield.

Having taken over Sauber and producing its own engine, the German manufacturer’s new factory Audi team was hampered by several reliability issues early in testing.

And the all-new Cadillac was in full view, at the rear, as expected.

The most important thing that all teams learned was that running on the track means rapid learning and progress, due to the complexity of new cars and the fact that it takes time to build the knowledge required to get the best out of all systems.

This may be why the factory teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have been so successful, as they have the most experience of what their new engines need and how they should be run.

This means Williams, who did not even test because their cars were not ready, are significantly behind going into the final two tests in Bahrain as they will effectively be two weeks behind everyone else.