Detailed Analysis of the F1 2026 “Shakedown” in Barcelona
The 2026 Formula 1 pre-season already has its first chapter, although under the euphemism of “shakedown”. After five days of testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the top of the time sheets showed a predominance of red, an indication that surely pleases Italian fans before the formal tests begin in Bahrain on February 11. But, what can we deduce and what unknowns persist behind the scenes in Barcelona? Alofoke Deportes analyzes the data, the teams’ statements, and the perspectives of this new generation of single-seaters.Initial Impressions: A Promising Design
Although information about the new cars is limited, the first visual impression is positive. The initial Formula 1 renders failed to convey the magnitude of the transformation. Now, the cars look more stylized, with thinner rear and front wings, which generates a striking aesthetic. Drivers usually indicate that a fast car is recognized by its appearance, and so far, these new single-seaters meet the expectations of agility and speed that F1 expected. The simplification of complex elements of previous cars, such as the pontoons and the profusion of exposed carbon fiber, has resulted in a cleaner design. The new cars have achieved an aesthetic balance that surpasses previous designs. Furthermore, the regulations seem to have incentivized some teams to return to glossy paint, after years of prioritizing weight savings in the livery. Red Bull, in particular, looks spectacular after years of matte paint. The sight of the 22 cars roaring towards Turn 1 at Albert Park promises to be an unforgettable spectacle.Mercedes: A Solid Start
With 502 laps completed in three days and the second-best time at the end of the tests, the start of Mercedes’ pre-season suggests a challenge for its rivals. The tone was set from the first day, when Kimi Antonelli was the first driver to take to the track as soon as the lights went green in the pit lane at 9 a.m. local time. By the end of Thursday, the W17 had covered 2,325 kilometers in three days of testing, a distance similar to a round trip between Mercedes’ base in the UK and the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain, a remarkable distance for any F1 car, especially one designed under new regulations. Moreover, on the third and final day, the team was already working on qualifying and race simulations, tasks usually reserved for the final days of testing.Mercedes’ week in Barcelona is reminiscent of the 2014 engine regulation change, which preceded eight consecutive constructors’ titles for the Brackley team. After making mistakes during the ground effect era from 2022 to 2025, there is a feeling that the return of flat-bottomed cars and a greater emphasis on power unit technology could be Mercedes’ path back to the top. Time will tell how far the team is on that path, but Mercedes’ performance in Barcelona couldn’t have been better.“More or less, we met all our objectives,” said Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director. “We finished a day early [on Thursday], but that’s partly because the car allowed us to run the program day by day as planned.”
Andrew Shovlin
Williams: A Challenge Ahead
The situation for Williams is complicated. Team boss James Vowles stated that they could have tried to be present in Barcelona, but at the cost of spare parts for the first races. This implies that Williams will dedicate the first part of the tests in Bahrain to areas that their rivals already addressed in Catalonia, which represents a considerable disadvantage. Although they might find solace in the good performance of Mercedes, their engine supplier, Williams cannot afford delays in the Middle East. The team assures that they will be ready for Bahrain, with a 100-kilometer filming day before testing begins.Debate about the continuity of private tests on the Formula 1 calendar.
It is not clear what caused the delays in the car’s construction. Vowles avoided specific details, minimizing the possibility of an overweight car, but not ruling it out entirely. While he stated that Williams passed all tests to participate, he did not reveal the exact causes of the delays, beyond “aggressive” development goals. It is known that Vowles was surprised by Williams’ poor infrastructure when he joined the team in 2022, and improvements are likely still needed.Audi and Cadillac: Challenges on the Horizon
The main objective of this test week was to give the teams extra time to adapt to the new regulations. It was foreseeable that some teams would need more time than others, and it is not surprising that newcomers Cadillac and the official Audi team had a low number of laps at the end of the week. However, the fact that both were on track for all three days represents a significant milestone, especially compared to the late arrival of Aston Martin and the total absence of Williams.
Cadillac’s story is perhaps the most impressive. The team had only 323 days between approval to enter F1 and the first day of testing this week, but managed to put a car on track for a total of 164 laps (in addition to completing a shakedown in early January).The first significant mileage for Audi’s new engine and gearbox was also an achievement in itself. With only one car on track (compared to the multiple cars of the engine manufacturers supplying customer teams), Audi needed mileage above all else and finished the test with 243 laps, most of which were completed on a productive final day on Friday. Like Cadillac, the lap time is expected to be improved in Bahrain, but Audi’s ambitious project at least has its starting point.“The objective for this week was the shakedown, completing several tests and aspects related to reliability, and securing a stable platform,” stated Graeme Lowdon, director of the Cadillac team, on Friday. “Bahrain will focus more on performance, trying to see how fast we can make the cars go.”
Graeme Lowdon
The Lack of Openness: A Missed Opportunity
Mercedes completed 2,325 km of running during the F1 shakedown tests in Barcelona this week.
Despite the great interest in the start of the new F1 era, it was decided to keep the tests behind closed doors, preventing the attendance of media and fans. While F1 stated that the teams requested that the tests be private, the teams pointed out that F1 imposed limits on the information, videos, and photographs that could be published. Even the lap times at the end of the day (which, it should be noted, are of little importance at this stage of the preseason) were not published and had to be obtained from sources that had access to the timing screens at the circuit. F1 TV conducted a series of brief interviews with drivers and team personnel at the end of each day, but apparently without delving into the questions. Before the tests, sources indicated that the real reason why F1 insisted on calling the five-day tests a “shakedown” was because it had a contractual obligation with Bahrain to host the first official tests in February and did not want to steal the spotlight from the tests in the island kingdom. While the scarcity of information from this week’s testing in Barcelona will likely increase interest in Bahrain, it seems that F1 has missed the opportunity to kick off the year with the narrative and excitement that each team’s efforts deserve. While the sport may be congratulating itself on controlling the narrative from Barcelona, its most loyal fanbase (i.e., those who follow F1 testing) have been forced to consume what can only be described as “pre-season garbage” when they should have been expanding their knowledge and understanding of these remarkable new cars.What Don’t We Know? The Unknowns of the Season
The main unknown is the true competitiveness of the grid. With some teams showing great potential, the real test of the new regulations will come with the performance runs in Bahrain. In 2014, Mercedes achieved an advantage that it maintained for several years, but F1 hopes that the new rules will generate a more balanced competition. This set of regulations also has mechanisms to help teams recover if necessary, so fans should not expect a repeat of the V6 turbo-hybrid era.However, a new regulation always offers a team the opportunity to stand out and dominate from the start. Barcelona did not throw any indication in this regard: a single team, like Mercedes, could be ahead, or it could be Mercedes and McLaren, their engine customer, with the rest chasing. It could also be that Ferrari’s promising performance in Barcelona is a sign of what is to come and the Italian team is in the fight, while Red Bull could also be stronger than many thought.
The four favorite teams are expected to remain the strongest, but will Aston Martin also be in the fight? Will an unexpected team like Haas or Alpine join them, as Williams did in 2014? And what about the new Audi and Cadillac teams? Will they struggle throughout the year, or will both progress rapidly?Ultimately, those are the main performance questions arising from the shakedown. Six days in the desert next month will provide a better idea, especially of the lap times that are set at night, under the lights, when track temperatures drop, of the order of the grid heading into Melbourne.
Ferrari, Title Aspirant?
At first glance, Ferrari’s tests in Barcelona were as impressive as Mercedes’, and possibly more so. The Italian team completed 440 laps (despite running in the rain on Tuesday) and set the best time of the tests on the last day, 0.097 seconds faster than the benchmark time set by George Russell on Thursday. There is the caveat that Lewis Hamilton’s time benefited from an additional 24 hours of track evolution compared to Russell, but, in reality, we don’t have enough information about either lap to make a sensible comparison between the two.
The real reason why it’s harder to get excited about Ferrari’s testing than Mercedes’ is the multiple seasons of disappointment that the Italian team has offered after promising pre-seasons. For example, the team arrived last year after a good finish in 2024 and solid testing in Bahrain, but ultimately finished 2025 without a race victory. That’s not to say that Ferrari will make the same mistakes this year, it’s just that we don’t have enough information at this stage to counteract the overwhelming trend of disappointment established by their performances in recent years. However, one reason for optimism is that the car Ferrari presented in Barcelona seemed quite basic in its development and the team boss, Frédéric Vasseur, referred to it before the tests as a “Spec-A” version built to accumulate mileage rather than exploit performance. While that was probably the case for several teams this week, it presents the possibility that Ferrari could arrive at the tests in Bahrain and become a clear leader with a series of specific improvements. However, until we have a better idea of the final specifications of all the cars for the inaugural race in Australia, it’s too early to start generating enthusiasm around Hamilton’s return in Barcelona.Will the Drivers Enjoy the New Cars?
Although the cars look great, it remains to be seen if they are also great to drive and compete. With the teams releasing limited material to the media during the past week, there were not many opportunities for hard-hitting journalism or to delve into some of the more specific details of these cars during the last five days.
Analysis on whether Ferrari’s dominance in testing will continue into the season.
A curious peculiarity of the new generation is the amount of energy management that drivers must do lap after lap: an energy boost has essentially replaced the old overtaking aid known as DRS. However, aerodynamic devices still exist. Drivers are expected to be in constant communication with their race engineers (especially in the first rounds) about the best way to manage active aerodynamics, the name given to the moving front and rear flaps that they can control with buttons from inside the car, something that will probably be an important topic of conversation at the beginning of the year. This is an important topic for F1, and an important one. Most drivers disliked the previous era of ground effect cars, and F1 designed the new generation to be more agile and better for wheel-to-wheel racing. One of the biggest critics of the old cars was four-time world champion Max Verstappen, indisputably the best driver in the current field, and he previously hinted that he would have no problem abandoning the sport if the new cars were not more fun to drive. That could be the worst-case scenario for F1, but a lot has been bet on these new machines, and we still don’t know if, behind the usual pre-season smiles of the drivers who are simply happy to be back in the cockpit of a Formula 1 car, they like what they are seeing or not.Has Red Bull Fine-Tuned Its Power Unit?
Since Red Bull committed to continuing with the production of its power unit for 2026 on its own, there were doubts about whether its new and bold strategy would fail. Honda’s original decision to leave the sport after 2021 left the team with no choice but to start from scratch, and the project began in earnest in 2022 on the team’s campus in Milton Keynes. The start of Red Bull Powertrains meant that it was reasonable to expect it to take time to match the levels of historic manufacturers such as Mercedes and Ferrari. But the first signs from Barcelona are extremely promising for the two Red Bull-owned and Red Bull-powered teams, as they completed a total of 623 laps between them with the new DM01 power unit.Debate sobre el impacto de Adrian Newey en Aston Martin.
Furthermore, judging by the retractable appearance of the RB22’s pontoons, Red Bull’s aerodynamicists have delighted in working with their own internal engine department to maximize the overall car package. Adding to that the recent speculation that Red Bull, like Mercedes, is exploiting a loophole in the regulations that allows for a higher compression ratio when running hot, and Red Bull could have a competitive power unit from the start. Of course, it’s early days, so the true potential of Red Bull’s power unit remains unknown, but what was once considered the team’s weakness heading into 2026 could actually be one of its strengths.
