What we know (and don't) about F1 in 2026 after Barcelona test

The first test -- ahem, we mean "shakedown" -- of the 2026 Formula 1 preseason is now in the books. After five days of running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the top of the timing screens had a distinctive red hue, a glow that those in Italy are sure to be basking in before the first formal test gets underway in Bahrain on Feb. 11.

So, what do we know -- and what don't we? -- after the sun set on Barcelona? ESPN's Laurence Edmondson and Nate Saunders pored over the data available, spoke to sources in the pit lane, and provided their best analysis of what we saw from this new generation of cars.

What we know

New cars look good on track

While we don't know a lot about these new cars yet (see more below), we can safely say they pass the eye test straight away. It was hard to really tell how the new cars would look based on the renders Formula 1 first put, but the final result looks magnificent. The cars are narrower, the rear wings are lower and the front wings slimmer, which when all put together creates a brilliant visual. Drivers will often remark that it's a good sign when a car looks fast, and so far all of these really do look as quick and nimble as F1 hoped they would.

It was a simple fix, as it turned out. Removing the ultra-complicated elements of the old cars, like the boxy endplates and the horrible mass of jagged and exposed carbon fiber, has created a more streamlined-looking end product. While the old cars looked stodgy and over-built, the new ones have stripped back just enough to absolutely nail the overall look.

The rules also seem to have encouraged a few teams to have moved back to gloss paint, after years of extreme sacrifices made on the livery side to save weight. The Red Bull, in particular, looks absolutely gorgeous after years of matte paint. Watching 22 of these new cars roaring down to Turn 1 at Albert Park promises be absolutely spectacular. -- Saunders

Mercedes bolstered reputation as preseason favorite

With a total of 502 laps completed over three days and the second-fastest time by the end of the test, Mercedes' start to preseason testing looked ominous for its rivals. The tone was set from day one in Barcelona when Kimi Antonelli became the first driver to hit the track as soon as the pit lane light went green at 9 a.m. local.

By the end of Thursday, the W17 had completed a total of 2,325 kilometers over its three days on track, which is just short of a return trip between Mercedes' base in the United Kingdom and the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain --- a remarkable distance for any F1 car out the box, let alone one built to a completely new set of regulations. What's more, by Mercedes' third and final day, the team was already working on qualifying and race simulations with its drivers -- tasks that are often left until the latter days of testing.

"We more or less ticked all our objectives," trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said. "We finished a day early [on Thursday] but part of that is that the car's just allowed us to run the program day by day as we planned it."

Mercedes' week in Barcelona had echoes of the last major engine regulation change in 2014, which preceded eight consecutive constructors' titles for the Brackley outfit. And after making wrong turn after wrong turn during the ground-effect era from 2022 to 2025, there's a feeling that the return of flat-bottomed cars and an increased emphasis on power unit technology could present Mercedes with a route back to the top. How far along the route the team is will only become apparent at the Bahrain tests, but Mercedes' time in Barcelona could not have gone much better. -- Edmondson

Williams is up against it

There can be no sugarcoating it for Williams: they're already in big trouble. Team boss James Vowles said the team could have pushed to make Barcelona but would have done so at the expense of spare parts for the first rounds of races. That might be true, but Williams will now spend the early chunk of Bahrain focusing on areas many of its rivals managed to tick off in Catalonia, meaning they face an uphill climb to catch up already.

They might take some comfort from how strong engine supplier Mercedes looks so far, but Williams is already in a situation where it absolutely cannot afford delays in the Middle East. The team insists it will be ready for Bahrain, with a 100-kilometer on-track filming day to come before testing starts there.

It's unclear exactly what caused the delays to car build. Vowles chose his very words carefully when he spoke to the media during the week, downplaying the suggestion of an overweight car but also not dismissing that as a possible issue facing the team. While he said Williams had now passed all tests required to appear at the test, he was also coy about exactly what had held the team back in the first place, other than "aggressive" development targets. It is little secret that Vowles was shocked at just how lacking Williams' infrastructure was when he joined as team boss in 2022, and it is a fair assumption that some of that still needs addressing behind the scenes. -- Saunders

The size of the challenge facing Audi, Cadillac

The whole point of this week's test was to allow F1's teams extra time to get their heads around the challenges of the new regulations. It was always likely that some teams would need that time more than others, and it's no surprise that total newcomers Cadillac and new works team Audi had relatively low lap counts by the end of the week. But the fact both were on track for all three days represented significant milestones in the two projects -- especially against the backdrop of Aston Martin's late arrival and Williams' complete no-show.

Cadillac's story is perhaps the more impressive of the two. The team only had 323 days between gaining approval to enter F1 and the first day of this week's test, yet it still managed to get a car on track for a total of 164 laps (as well as completing a shakedown earlier in January).

"The target for this week was very much shakedown -- ticking off various tests and things that are more to do with reliability, and ensuring that we have a stable platform," Cadillac team principal Graeme Lowdon said on Friday. "Bahrain will be much more focused on performance, trying to see how fast we can actually make the cars go."

The first significant mileage for Audi's all-new F1 engine and gearbox was also an achievement in and of itself. With just one car on track (as opposed to multiple cars for engine manufacturers supplying customer teams), Audi needed mileage above all else and ended the test with 243 laps -- the majority of which came on a productive final day on Friday. Like Cadillac, there will be hope that more lap time can be unlocked in Bahrain, but the ambitious Audi project at least has its starting point. -- Edmondson

This test didn't need to be behind closed doors

Despite a huge amount of interest in the start of F1's new era, a decision was made to keep this week's test behind closed doors and prevent media and fans from attending. F1 said the teams had asked for the test to be private, but the teams pointed out that F1 had put the limits on information, video and photographs being published. Even the end-of-day lap times (which, it should be said, are of little importance so early in the preseason) were not published and instead had to be gathered from sources who had eyes on a timing screen at the circuit.

F1 TV completed a series of short interviews with drivers and team personnel at the end of each day, but seemingly without any desire to dig beyond surface-level questions. Ahead of the test, sources told ESPN that the real reason F1 insisted on calling the five-day test a "shakedown" was because it had a contractual obligation with Bahrain to host the first official test in February and did not want to steal the thunder from the island kingdom's track running.

While the scarcity of information from this week's test in Barcelona will likely mean interest in Bahrain will be higher than it would have been otherwise, it feels like F1 has missed an opportunity to kick off the year with the storytelling and hype each team's efforts deserved. While the sport may be patting itself on the back for 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 "preseason slop" while they should have been extending their knowledge and understanding of these remarkable new cars. -- Edmondson

What we don't know

How widely spread the field really is

With several teams clearly in very good shape already, the real test of the new regulations will come when the performance runs start in the heat of Bahrain. In 2014, Mercedes quickly found an advantage that was locked in for several years that followed, but F1 is hoping the new rules cycle creates a much more even playing field. This current set of regulations also have mechanisms built within them to help teams catch up if necessary, so fans should not expect a like-for-like repeat of the V6 turbo-hybrid era.

However, no matter what checks and balances are put into place, a fresh set of regulations always gives one team the chance to break away from the pack and dominate early. One thing Barcelona did not do was give any indication about this; a single team, like Mercedes, could be ahead, or it could be Mercedes and engine customer McLaren with the rest playing catch up. It could also be that Ferrari's encouraging Barcelona test is a sign of things to come and the Italian team is in the mix as well, while Red Bull might also be stronger than many thought it could be.

You'd expect those four perennial favorites to still be the strongest on the grid, but will Aston Martin also be in the mix? Can a left-field team like Haas or Alpine join them, like Williams did in 2014? And then what of new teams Audi and Cadillac? Are they up against it all year, or will they both find progress comes quickly?

Ultimately those are the biggest performance questions coming out of the shakedown. Six days in the desert next month will provide a better idea -- keep an eye out, especially, for the laps times set in the evening, under the lights when track temperatures cool -- of the pecking order going to Melbourne. -- Saunders

Is Ferrari finally a title contender again?

On the face of it, Ferrari's Barcelona test was as impressive as Mercedes' -- and arguably more so. The Italian team completed 440 laps (despite running in the wet on Tuesday) and set the fastest time of the test on the final day with an effort 0.097 seconds quicker than the benchmark set by George Russell on Thursday. There is the caveat that Lewis Hamilton's time benefitted from another 24 hours of track evolution compared to Russell's, but in truth, we don't have enough information about either lap to make a sensible comparison between the two.

The real reason Ferrari's test is harder to get excited about than Mercedes' is the multiple seasons of disappointments served up by the Italian team following promising preseasons. For example, the team came into last year following a strong finish to 2024 and a solid test in Bahrain, but ultimately finished 2025 without a race victory to its name. That's not to say Ferrari will make the same or similar mistakes this year, it's just that we don't have enough information at this stage to counter the overwhelming trend of disappointment set by its performances of recent years.

One reason for optimism, however, is that the car Ferrari fielded in Barcelona looked fairly basic in its development and was referred to by team boss Frdric Vasseur ahead of the test as a "Spec-A" version built to rack up mileage rather than exploit performance. While that was likely the case for a number of teams this week, it presents the possibility that Ferrari could arrive at the tests in Bahrain and become a clear frontrunner with a raft of targeted upgrades. Until we have a better idea of the final specifications of all the cars for the opening race in Australia, though, it's too early to start building hype around Hamilton's Barcelona lap just yet. -- Edmondson

Will drivers enjoy the new cars?

While the cars look great, it remains to be seen if they drive and race great. With teams putting out limited media materials over the past week, there were not many opportunities for hard-hitting journalism or deeper questions into some of the more specific details of these cars over the past five days.

One curious quirk of the new generation is the amount of energy management drivers now have to do lap to lap -- an energy boost has essentially replaced the old overtaking aid known as DRS. However, aerodynamic devices do still exist. Drivers are expected to be in constant communication with their race engineers (especially in early rounds) about how best to manage the active aero, the name given to the moveable front and rear wing flaps they can control with buttons from within the car, something that will likely be a major talking point at the beginning of the year.

This is a big topic for F1, and an important one. Most drivers grew to dislike the previous era of ground-effect cars, and F1 designed the new generation to be nimbler and better for wheel-to-wheel racing.

One of the biggest critics of the old cars was four-time world champion Max Verstappen, unquestionably the best driver in the current field, and he has previously hinted that he would have no problem walking away from the sport if the new cars are no more fun to drive. That might be the absolute worst-case scenario for F1, but a lot has been staked on these new machines, and we still don't know if, behind the usual preseason smiles of drivers just happy to be in the cockpit of a Formula 1 car again, they like what they are seeing or not. -- Saunders

Has Red Bull nailed its power unit?

Ever since Red Bull committed to going it alone with its power unit production for 2026, there were questions over whether its bold new strategy would backfire. Honda's original decision to leave the sport after 2021 left the team with little choice but to start from scratch, and the project got underway in earnest in 2022 at the team's campus in Milton Keynes.

Red Bull Powertrains' standing start meant there was a reasonable expectation that it would take time to match the levels of historic manufacturers such as Mercedes and Ferrari. But the early signs from Barcelona are exceedingly promising for the two Red Bull-owned and -powered teams as they completed a total of 623 laps between them with the new DM01 power unit.

What's more, judging by the shrink-wrapped look of the RB22's sidepods, Red Bull's aerodynamicists have relished working with their own in-house engine department to maximize the overall car package. Add to that 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 may have a competitive power unit straight out of the box.

Of course, it's early days, which is why the true potential of the Red Bull power unit remains an unknown, but what was once seen as the team's weakness heading into 2026 could actually be among its strengths. -- Edmondson

How competitive are Aston and Honda?

Aston Martin finished the test with the fewest laps completed (65) of the teams who appeared in Barcelona, and sources confirmed to ESPN that the team spent the entirety of Friday running at much lower engine modes to its rivals. That was reflected in a fastest time between the quickest Audi and Cadillac cars.