F1 Testing 2026 – Day 1

Hey, everyone. Before we get into today's pod, we wanted to remind you about our lovely

Patreon. If you sign up now, you'll get ad-free listening and a load of extra benefits all for

the price of a coffee a month. Plus, it means Tommy and I can keep bringing you the P1 you know

and love. It's as fair and as nicey-nicey as a bit of McLaren team radio. Tommy,

give the people a taste of what they can expect when they sign up.

You'll be able to listen to every episode of P1 completely ad-free.

No more 30-second skips. No more interruptions. It's all killer. No filler. You'll also get

early access to merch and live tickets before they go on sale to everyone else. Plus, access to our

lovely Discord. And the price for all of that? Just five dollars a month. Truly unbelievable value

if we do say so ourselves. And your support genuinely means so much to us. So thank you.

To sign up, head to Patreon.com forward slash Matt P1 Tommy or click the link in the episode

description. Right, on with the episode. Hello, everybody and welcome back to the P1 podcast

with Matt and Tommy. We're here. We have seen cars on track, albeit for one hour,

for the first time voluntarily with our own eyes. Not through a tree. Not through a tree.

Not through journalists or anything like that. Through tuning in to wherever you watch Formula

1. And it feels good. It feels really good, Tommy. The start of a new regulation era,

so much to talk about. And look, one hour is kind of wet the whistle. But next week,

that's when we get the full testing coverage, which I'm also very excited for.

Yeah, definitely. And look, Formula 1 is back. It's the biggest shake-up ever.

And the top two in the championship, first and second. How was that? How was that happened?

Like, oh, my word. Like, you couldn't write it, could you? Absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, the,

let's just go through the sort of top half. It's Norris Verstappen,

Nicola Ocon, Piastri Russell, Hamilton Gasly, Hülkenberg and Albon were the top 10

for day one of testing. Yeah, ridiculous. Yeah. Oh, such a huge change in Formula 1.

And it's Norris Verstappen. But times don't matter, remember?

No, times don't matter. And also, you will have noticed. Where's Mercedes? After all of that?

And no, times don't matter. But where's Mercedes? This is what we expected them to at least be in

the top five on day one. Let's be real. Let's get to a question. P1 Patriot member sees a role.

What do you think about Toto Wolf's comments today? In one interview, he called Red Bull

the benchmark. Now, I feel like this is a question that Tommy can probably,

I don't know, cook or he'll be pessimistic. We'll wait and see. But what I will say,

my initial feeling, because I've watched Formula 1 for so many years, is that it's just typical

deflection. It's typical, we're not fast as someone else is chatter, in my opinion. I think

you can't jump on these times from the first day in Bahrain. You just can't. Of course, we're going to

try and get information. And I feel as though seeing the likes of Norris and Verstappen first

and second is never a bad thing as we head into the next couple of weeks of testing.

But Toto himself, if you haven't seen it, he essentially said that it's been blown way out

of proportion, essentially the advantage that they may well have had. So, may well,

yeah, Mercedes, sorry, Mercedes, Toto, yeah, basically just trying to calm the storm,

calm the hype, his team winning it all. And yeah, and basically put it on someone else,

which I think is probably the only tactic you can do at this stage. And it's a tactic that has

been done forever. When does a team principal ever come up the blocks and go, yeah, no, we are

actually the quickest by a mile. That being said, we kind of had this conversation after

the shakedown, not official testing, but the shakedown, where we kind of said that Mercedes

were saying very confident things about, oh, we're ahead of our program. Obviously,

they weren't saying, yeah, we're miles clear. But they were very confident with what they

were saying. And yeah, now Toto's Red Bull weren't really shown too much. We were talking about,

after the first shakedown in Barcelona, of Mercedes, McLaren Ferrari, Red Bull, of course,

were on the back foot after Hajar's spin and crash. But we didn't see too much from Red Bull. And now

they've turned up with absolutely crazy straight line speed, it has to be said. And this is the

thing that Toto is talking about here. The actual quote was saying that he feels like

he's kind of claiming that they could be a second faster on the straights,

because their energy deployment is so strong. And that basically, we could speak about this

if it's just like a one off bit of deployment, but they're doing it consecutively after constant

laps, which we kind of said, is it deflecting or have Red Bull found something? We also mentioned,

didn't we, about how complicated these new cars are. There was a graphic that came up, wasn't

there, about all these fancy things you now have to do to drive the car. And what we joked is that

probably the entire Christmas break Max Estappen has been on iRacing, probably in a 2026 F1 car,

doing all these fancy things to deploy as much energy and harvest as much energy as possible.

Max also does have a real simulator at his disposal as well, not just at his iRacing setup.

Yes, yeah. But when he's not allowed to be that, yeah.

Yes. Yeah, plenty of techniques that drivers can use to recharge the battery this year.

Overloading the throttle. I am still in corners. I don't really, even I need to learn that,

right? And I have a formal on podcast. So lots of things to learn this year, but that's what's

so exciting is all the things we're going to have to keep an eye out for. But let's not panic.

I mean, Tommy's not panicking. Tommy has cut gone from predicting Max will not win a race this year

to now hearing Toto Wolf saying that Red Bull might have a second clear advantage on the straights.

Pretty crazy. I believe it when I see it, because it's changing all the time.

Like, I mean, at the end of the day, Max wasn't even faster. So we maybe calm down a little bit.

Maybe. Not that testing times matter. But straight line speed on the straights,

that does matter. A question from buggerlugs underscore and this one's this one is a very

interesting question. Our Mercedes sandbagging until the FIA make a decision on their power unit.

Yes, I also thought this was a very, very interesting question because

normally we dismiss all the sandbagging questions going, why on earth would you sandbag

because it makes no sense. But here, if you want to kind of show that you've got

maybe an illegal thing or something that skirts around the rules, and it does have this amazing

advantage, you kind of don't want to show it because then the FIA would kind of

crap themselves and go, Oh, no, we don't want this and end up kind of changing the rules.

So it is an interesting theory. The only thing I would say about this

is it's not the same as 2014, where, of course, in the back of that car,

it's right in the back of other cars is the Mercedes power unit. So they can't, you know,

rely on McLaren or Alpine kind of doing the or Williams doing the same thing. And now if they

were were like miles clear, we'd all be going, Okay, yeah, Mercedes do have an advantage. So

it's not like they've got their own engine all to themselves with this advantage,

and they can sandbag alone, it would almost have to be like this collective

thing between the Mercedes teams. But I mean, is that something that is so far-fetched that it

couldn't be possible? I mean, let Mercedes could go guys, you're going to have to run it at 50%

power due to safety concerns. James Fowles, our odd buddy, could you just miss the entire first

test for us pretend you're terrible? Yeah, it's all making sense. But I did find this quite a

fascinating question, because I feel like there must be more the FIA can do to learn about how

good an engine is or how much they've exploited a rule without just seeing Mercedes out on track.

And a lap time as well. Because I think that the biggest takeaway from this test,

I think for me is the fact, as you said at the start of the show, where's Mercedes.

We thought they'd be up there at the very least. It was all talk about them being the favorites.

And yeah, Russell's down in six, Anthony down in 11th. Obviously, I don't for a second believe

that Haas are four tenths ahead of Mercedes, five tenths actually, ahead of Mercedes. But

we'll wait and see, won't we? Stranger things have happened. But again, I can already hear

the testing times don't matter comments coming in. But what does matter and something that I love

watching and testing is the onboards. It's the house to handling, you can't just and you could

obviously have very heavy fuel, you can have really hard tires on, but you can still see the

behavior and nature of a car. And Mercedes were making a fair amount of mistakes out there,

at least in the final hour that we saw, we saw Anthony go off a few times. Now again,

they're all dialing in the car, the performance we see now and the performance we see halfway

through the season this year is going to be so different because they are learning with every

single corner they turn. So the development is going to be massive, especially for Ferrari,

when they obviously come from sort of, I don't know, Q2 exit in Australia to winning the championship,

what a story that would be. But that's the beauty of a new regulation set is that it's not as if we

are at the end like last year, we know what the pecking order is kind of after the first race,

and it stays that way. You sound very much like Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin launch,

whereas like, don't worry, it's all about the middle of the season.

Yeah, you can't, yeah, if we're going to see an Alonso World Championship, might not want to leave

it to halfway through the season or even 2027, as Adrian Newey may well have suggested.

Next question, P1P, remember Oscar Glazer Roll, will reliability be a big issue in 2026?

Not as big of an issue as we all anticipated. However, there are a couple of teams that have

sort of at least taken my notice of struggling a little bit in terms of their reliability. One

of them being Audi. I think Audi have been the team to stop out on track most across Shakedown

and the start of this Bahrain test. You've also had, of course, Gasly, or sorry, Alpine,

I think Colopend, it was Colopend, wasn't it? Alpine stopping out on track today.

But for me, Audi, and then, of course, Aston Martin. Aston Martin in terms of mileage,

they, again, they're the only team. They're at the bottom of the laps.

Yeah, they're at the bottom of the laps. They're also the only team with a Honda engine.

It's not looking great as a forecast for Aston Martin. They've not come out the block strong

at the start of this test either. They've not just dropped 130 laps like Verstappen did today.

They've been struggling once again. And so I'd say those two teams are, for me, the biggest concern.

Yeah, reliability hasn't been anywhere near as bad as what we kind of thought and

mentioned it when we did the Shakedown podcast about how they were doing some bell even putting

10 laps of a whole day when they first introduced the hybrid engines back in 2014.

And yet, here we are, and Williams, who didn't even do the Shakedown, have just rolled straight

out the blocks and done 145 laps in the day. It's quite crazy. Even Audi, who you mentioned,

have had problems. And I do agree with you in the sense that their car seems to have broken down

a few times, still managed 122 laps. So in terms of the mileage, yeah, they are doing a lot of laps

out there. A lot more than maybe expected. Apart from, it seems, Aston Martin, who have

kind of the struggles of that first test, sorry, the first Shakedown has maybe continued into this

day because they said they had like an anomaly. And basically, Lance Roll was just chilling in

hospitality, but not even in the garage because he knew he wasn't going to get out on track.

Yeah, 36 laps is not a good number to be posting, but plenty of testing days to go,

but they do need to pick up the amount of mileage they're doing, and they need to do it fast.

I'd say Cadillac have been reasonably impressive. They did 107 today, and overall, as a new team,

I think that is a brilliant job. Yes, they're not lighting up the time sheets,

but they also don't need to at this stage. They're just trying to learn what that car

that car can do. Next question, Catman 2F3. Thoughts on Hamilton's comments today about

needing a degree to understand the rules? Yeah, I think this is going to be really

interesting to see how the new rules are applied and how they communicated as well.

When, if you were watching the coverage, when we basically got introduced to the final hour,

it almost felt like we're being presented with constant graphics.

Another graphic. Another graphic. This is how you do this. Another graphic. This is how you

do this. Another graphic. This is how you do this. Hamilton himself has actually been very savage

with his comments about the cars, basically saying that, yeah, he was sat in the kind of

debrief thinking like, this is crazy how much information there is. He immediately was saying

that fans aren't going to be able to understand what on earth is going on here because there's

just too much. This is a really important thing for Formula One. They need to be able to communicate

their new technology to the fans and make it understandable. Such a hugely important part

of the sport. That is my biggest worry going into this new rules is that it's going to be too hard

to understand. I think as long as the basics are clear, especially when it comes to racing on a Sunday

and battery deployment and how that's being used, because everybody, me included,

have DRS ingrained in our brains as something that's part of racing. That's gone now.

On the face of it, I think not everybody needs to understand everything. Me and you,

Tommy, we don't understand every inner working of a Formula One car. We just need to be able

to understand the basics. I think Hamilton, obviously, he needs to understand everything.

He's driving the car and he's managing what is pretty much a spaceship underneath him with

all of the different energy things he needs to do. You're muted. Whatever you're saying is

really important, really exciting. I'm not a good lip reader. Let's try that.

I'm making it difficult for you and seeing how it's like the new Formula One rules.

It's like how everyone's tried to lip read Hamilton and Kim Kardashian. That was basically

what I was trying to do there with you. There's levels to it, isn't there, of how much you want

to learn about Formula One, because there's so many things that you could take on a very

basic level. Going back to last year, you could maybe, if you're a really casual fan,

you might not know about the tyres or really care about them at all other than the fact that

they have to do a pit stop. You might dive a bit deeper and go, okay, there's soft, medium,

and hard, and then you might go even deeper and go actually at C1, C2, C3, and all this kind of

stuff. There's levels to how much you dive into it. There's levels to this game.

You're right. It has to be that base level of understanding. As long as we know when things

are being deployed and things are being used, we don't need to know every... Exactly. They don't

have the brake bias and all sorts on the screen. We don't need any of that stuff. It would just

be far too complicated, but we need to know when they're using these new gizmos and gadgets and stuff.

We do, absolutely. I don't think Hamilton was concerned about how we would understand that

is he's kind of more concerned about the drivers themselves.

No, he said the fans. He said the fans. Oh, really? Wow. Okay. Hamilton went really quite in on the

new rules saying things like, Barcelona, for example, you're doing 600 meters lifting coast on a

qualifying lap. That's not what racing is about. Ferrari used to that, of course, from last year.

And he basically said, none of the fans are going to understand it. It's so complex. It's

ridiculously complex. That doesn't really go in detail as to what exactly we're not going to

understand. It says about the regulations. He's talking about the rules and regulations and the

new things that have been put on the car. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, we don't need to understand

everything. We just need to understand who's quick, who's slow, who's going to overtake who,

and we can all enjoy Formula One pretty well. But of course, as the testing, as the season goes on,

I'm hoping Formula One will be able to break it down for a digestible manner for all of us to

enjoy. Okay. Next question. P1 Patriot member captain of 3420. I know they're not V10s or V8s,

but do you guys like how the new engines sound, especially under braking? They sound really

cool to me. I might sound like my ears need testing, but realistically, I'm not hearing a

massive difference. Of course, there's a little bit more, of course, electrical input these days,

but it's not like I'm sat here and I'm watching Formula R and going, wow, that is markedly different.

But I still love the sound of it. I think there was a Williams or an Alpine right at the end of

F1 testing that was revving the life out of the engine. They sound great, and I'm happy that

they still sound great despite more electrical energy being used than ever before in Formula One.

So no complaints from my side. I will get a better understanding, I think, when we go to a

Grand Prix ourselves and see what it's like in person. Because on TV, for me, they're so similar,

and maybe it's because I grew up in the era of V10s and V8s. So then when you...

You can't hear anymore because you've gone to the races with this green shirt.

But when you heard those and we went to the hybrid engines, it was such a big shift.

That? Good one.

Such a big shift.

You are on fire these days.

They're not even deliberate. That's the best thing about them.

It's such a big change that you kind of go into hearing that new change. I'm so used to almost...

Not caring about the engine sounds, but you watch an old race and the years gone by,

and you can hear the cars constantly just buzzing over the commentary almost, whereas

kind of learn to almost not take too much of the engine sound in. It's just kind of background

noise because they're not anywhere near as loud. And then maybe that's why I'm not kind of used

to kind of thinking, oh, what's the engine sound like compared to last time? So I think when I see

it in person and go to a track, hopefully, like Silverstone or whatever this year, and can

stand at the side of the track and listen to it, or get a better idea of going, oh, okay,

I can hear things. Because realistically when you're...

Of course. Or my helicopter over the track.

Yes, you'll be able to hear a lot in your helicopter. Yes, I'm excited to see the new

cars in real life just generally, not just the engines.

Looks wise. Oh, my word, they look so much better.

And I'm so fascinated with just the workings of the active front and rear parts of the car.

The flaps. No, we're not using that word ever again on this podcast, maybe in live streams.

Final question from Tavi Simpson. What is Fernando thinking at the moment?

He's thinking, why does Honda follow me around for my whole career? He's probably just thinking,

why, why, why, why have I finally got this Adrian Newey car?

And I said this on our live stream that Adrian Newey has been a cheat code in years gone by,

but I don't think he's going to be a cheat code in a year where it's so reliant on the engines and

the workings of Red Bull, for example, that we're talking, obviously we don't know,

it's all just hearsay and rumors, but they're looking very fast at the moment of people

singing their praises. They've obviously lost Adrian Newey, the big technical guy and aero guy.

And it's all about the engine. And if Aston Martin can't get a good engine and do all this

kind of battery deployment and everything that needs to be done, Adrian Newey's talents are

kind of wasted, to be fair. For sure. And Toto's comments that we spoke about earlier,

I think absolutely support that, because that's all the teams seem to be focusing on. Of course,

there are elements of aero that, of course, will help a car. And let's not say that Adrian Newey

won't be able to do anything. And it's hard to really gauge where Aston Martin are because of

the lack of laps that they've done. They might well have a rocket ship under there, under them,

but we don't know. Or five seconds off the pace as they are today.

Well, yeah, but they might be scared to run that Honda engine any higher than

whatever percent that they are. But again, lots to learn. That's the main takeaway from today.

Testing times don't matter, but Ferrari are third. So we're all good with that.

Tommy, what are your final thoughts at the end of day one? Bahrain testing?

One nil to Sergio Perez, all the people that said that he wasn't going to beat Bartas and roasted

me. One nil. We are starting the scoring at F1 testing. Is that right? Absolutely.

Now that Bartas knows, because obviously he will have been listening to this,

now that he knows that he'll pick up his game for day two. Can we Bartas setting up 132 tomorrow

on 1% of fuel? Yeah, and also maybe missing all the energy to do Bahrain short. Well done,

Cadillac, even though you got rid of all the chrome and I'm really upset.

Right, that is it. We will see you tomorrow for some more recap action and live streaming,

of course, as well for the final hour. If you want to come watch with us on YouTube and Twitch,

and we'll see you soon. Bye. Goodbye.

P1 is a stack production and part of the ACAST creative network.

Payments, leads, payroll, basically everything.

But with Intuit QuickBooks, your workload gets unloaded.

QuickBooks gives you access to Intuit's powerful AI agents

and trusted human experts who work together

to handle the tedious stuff

so you can get back to what actually grows your business.

And because everything's streamlined on one platform,

your customer management, accounting, expenses,

and payroll all work seamlessly in one place.

So go ahead, outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks.

Get 50% off QuickBooks online for three months.

Terms and conditions apply.

Feature availability may vary by product.

Visit quickbooks.com for details.

F1 Testing 2026 – Day 1

About this episode

Formula 1

regulation era

benchmark

testing

Mercedes

energy deployment

iRacing

FIA

sandbagging

power unit

Ferrari

Q2 exit

regulation set

Aston Martin

Audi

Honda

hybrid engines

Williams

Cadillac

Formula One

DRS

tyres

V8

V10

Silverstone

active aerodynamics

Adrian Newey

engine performance

Red Bull

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from P1 with Matt and Tommy