In Numbers: Decoding the Formula 1 preseason testing

Formula 1 will return for its 76th year on Friday, March 6, with the Australian Grand Prix. Following a major regulation overhaul affecting aerodynamic packages, power units, and car dimensions, the teams gave fans a glimpse of their new race cars’ potential during the two-week preseason testing period in Bahrain from February 11 to 13 and February 18 to 20.

What is preseason testing?

Preseason testing is the “free practice” session preceding a new Formula 1 season. It is the first on-track opportunity for teams to validate months or years of concept, design, simulation, and experimental testing. Unlike race weekend sessions, however, there are no competitive stakes, so teams focus on gathering data they deem necessary for further developments on their car.

In 2026, a car shakedown was held in Barcelona, Spain followed by two testing events in Bahrain. The additional test dates this year gives teams more opportunities to gather data and practice with their brand new cars tailored to the new regulations ahead of the season. The testing was done at the 5.412 kilometer long Bahrain International Circuit. The circuit has 15 corners, but is more known for its high speed straights and long run-off areas.

Who went the fastest in preseason testing?

Formula 1 is a sport of speed and strategy. Testing gives valuable insight on the team’s potential for the former. The following plot shows the competitive laps (i.e. excluding laps where a driver makes a pit stop or when there is a red flag) by all 11 teams throughout the six days of testing.

The plot gives an idea which teams are the current frontrunners based on fastest laps (data points to the left of the plot) and average lap time (densely populated parts of the plot). The four top teams from the previous season — McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari — consistently performed across the six testing days. These teams were all pleasantly happy with their testing performances. 

One team that particularly stood out was Mercedes. Despite being one of the best teams on the grid, Mercedes has previously notoriously struggled during preseason testing. This year, they performed well. Kimi Antonelli and George Russell had the two fastest laps at the end of the first week of testing with 1:33.669 and 1:33.998, respectively. They both further improved the following week with lap times of 1:32.803 and 1:33.197. Toto Wolff said:

“It’s a relief that we started testing and it actually feels decent. The drivers are quite pleased with the car, and then on the stopwatch, we know that we are not miles off and that was the case in all of the last three or four years that we had.”

Ferrari, another consistent frontrunner, also had a very productive and successful test period. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, as well as team principal Fred Vasseur confirmed that while testing does not reveal any of the team’s full potential, they are happy that Ferrari is able to run a lot of laps and gather valuable data.

Leclerc even set the fastest lap during the entire testing period at 1:31.992. Interestingly, this is almost one second faster than the second fastest lap of the testing period, set by Antonelli during the previous day (1:32.803), but falls short of the third round qualifying (Q3) knockout time in 2025 of 1:31.228. This does not necessarily mean that the new regulation cars are slower than their predecessors, as will be elaborated on later.

Leclerc’s fastest lap is quite interesting. Comparing straight speeds alone does not appear to give Ferrari a huge advantage over the other teams. In fact, in the speed trace throughout the fastest four laps in the last day of testing (Leclerc, Russell, Lando Norris, and Max Verstappen), it can be observed that no single car has a consistent advantage across a lap. 

The top speeds on straights are very close to each other, but it was reigning World Champion Lando Norris of McLaren who recorded the highest speed of 322 kilometers per hour at the speed trap (point of maximum speed at the circuit). The dips in the speed trace corresponding to corners are also tightly grouped. 

Notably, however, Leclerc seems to carry a higher minimum speed in corners. Analyzing the throttle inputs of the drivers also seem to reveal that Leclerc does not fully release the throttle during cornering while his competitors do, suggesting that Ferrari’s advantage may lie in cornering efficiency rather than straight-line speed.

On the back end of the grid, Cadillac and Aston Martin were the slowest cars but with very opposite stories. As the newest team with only a little less than two weeks worth of total track time, Cadillac has shown great promise during testing which the data may not reveal. 

Veteran drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas are making a comeback this season, and both completed a significant amount of laps bringing loads worth of data for their team. During the last day of testing, Bottas logged the fastest lap time for the new team at 1:35.290, over three seconds behind the grid’s fastest lap. 

Cadillac’s team principal Graeme Lowdon has expressed that he is very happy with his team and how they have worked through the program without any major issues.

On the other hand, Aston Martin has been disappointing. There were a lot of expectations placed on the team especially with the appointment of renowned aerodynamicist Adrian Newey, who has won championships for Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull, as new team principal. However, Aston Martin has been struggling. The team was already late to the previous Barcelona shakedown and faced several major setbacks during testing. 

Apart from Fernando Alonso setting the tenth fastest lap on the first day of Week 1, both Alonso and Lance Stroll have consistently had among the worst lap times across the sessions. The team’s pace is arguably worse than the new Cadillac team, and it does not help that they also faced a power-related issue. Honda has released a statement on the issue, which reads:

“Our last run with Fernando Alonso yesterday showed a battery-related issue that impacted our test plan with the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team. Since then, we have been carrying out simulations on the test bench in HRC [Honda Racing Corporation] Sakura. Due to this and the shortage of power unit parts, we have adapted today’s run plan to be very limited and consist only of short stints.”

The following plot shows the spread of the best lap times set by each driver for each test day and how it compares to the rest of the grid. 

How indicative of season success is preseason testing?

After testing, Ferrari’s team principal Fred Vasseur said:

“Now, performance is not relative – it’s not performance relative and, at the end of the day, we don’t know the level of fuel of the others, we don’t know the engine mode, we don’t know that we didn’t have the same tyres.”

Indeed, while testing data is valuable for both teams and fans, it is undeniably insufficient to conclude which teams will be successful in the upcoming season. Teams have likely not used their optimal race setups or have pushed flat out to hide some of their car’s potential and the drivers are still getting used to the new systems. There are also discrepancies in fuel loads and engine and tyre settings which makes comparison across teams less straightforward.

In the two-week span of Bahrain testing, teams have already made significant improvements to their individual cars and it is expected that more will be observed as the season progresses. 

Evidently, drivers were able to log faster lap times in the second week of testing, presumably thanks to adjustments based on data gathered from the previous week. The improvement was evident in the median lap times logged by the teams.

All teams logged improved median lap times on the second week of testing. For reference, the median lap time during the 2025 Bahrain Grand Prix was plotted as a benchmark. 

As expected, the top four teams have already demonstrated paces around this number, and they are expected to still be the main championship contenders in 2026. Williams and Aston Martin are struggling while Alpine, Audi, and Haas are showing some promise.

Williams has had a rocky start to the season. The team missed the Barcelona shakedown because their car was not ready. Williams was able to log 760 laps across six days in Bahrain, which is the third most by any constructor, to make up for the lost time. However, the pace was simply not there and their lap times put them at the back end of the grid. Carlos Sainz expresses his thoughts on this by saying:

“We go into the first half of the year with lower expectations than 2025 knowing that we’ll be starting slightly on the back foot. However, I’m really looking forward to getting started and focusing on improving the cars through the year to become more competitive.”

In 2025, Williams pulled an impressive comeback after a rough couple of years, earning a fifth place constructors championship finish and a podium finish. Though the team may not have had a stellar preseason, it would be very wrong to count them out.

In fact, the testing lap times set by the 10 constructors before the previous season were not completely indicative of their successes in 2025.

In 2025, Alpine joined the top four teams among those with the best lap times during testing. However, they ended up dead last in the constructors’ championship. 

On the other hand, Williams was one of the worst performers, but ended up fifth by the end of the year. One of the things that makes Formula 1 exciting is that the cars can evolve throughout the season, consequently changing the standings and pace of the teams. Thus, while it is great to be excited over the good results during testing, we must remember that this is not an immediate indicator of success.

The Bahrain testing provided valuable performance insights across the grid. While it is exciting to see close lap times among top teams and promising development for several midfield teams, fans must be reminded that testing metrics are primarily developmental indicators rather than predictive benchmarks for season success. 

If testing accomplished anything beyond thousands of laps and millions of telemetry data points, it was the rekindling of fan excitement ahead of the new season. The true competitive picture will begin to form once the lights go off in Melbourne. – Rappler.com