Take A Closer Look At 2026 F1 Cars! | F1 TV Tech Talk | 2026 Bahrain Pre-Season Testing

Formula 1 pre-season testing sometimes raises more questions than answers, so in this edition of Tech Talk we're going to turn that all around and we're going to try and answer some of your questions about these brand new 2026 Formula 1 cars. Stay tuned for a whole deep look at a number of not just interesting questions but very interesting details on racing cars that may be in small pieces. We've had a good question come in about why do the 2026 Formula 1 cars do this when they want to practice their starts? That high rev moment and that moment of the driver seemingly sitting there not really knowing what they're doing and revving the engine away is all to do with getting the turbo spun up as quick as possible and also getting the battery in the correct charge state to make a really good getaway off the start line. It's not simple in these new cars, it's a bit of a challenge for drivers to get their heads around and that's why they're all practicing it. Come Melbourne they should hopefully all have it completely nailed down and be able to get it right but it's a big thing they need to practice before the season gets going because there is a big competitive difference. Now some teams have tried to get the start sequence changed for the 2026 racing season but that apparently has been blocked by this team, Ferrari, who don't have to rev the car for as long. Let's have a look. Seems much the same to me but Ferrari apparently by news stories have blocked that approach to change the start sequence and that's the rumour is in the pit lane and I will stress that this is just a rumour that Ferrari have found some way to spool their turbocharger up slightly more efficiently than other teams and isn't that the glory of Formula 1 that different teams have different abilities to be able to get their cars started and these practice sequence with the different power unit manufacturers are all super important and as you can see in here different manufacturers and different teams, different drivers have different approaches to the start sequence. Another question's come in which seems quite pertinent, why do mechanics stand in front of the garage when you're trying to look at the car? Well the answer's quite simple, they don't want me to look at the car in fact they don't want you or anybody else to look at the car because we might see its secret bits. Aston Martin is one of the teams that's been doing that quite a lot during this test, it's totally allowed during testing in a race weekend if you do this you're not actually allowed to block the car with humans, you can't block it with equipment or the covers however there are some interesting rules which a lot of people don't really talk about very much. You can see the covers that the team can put in front of the garage and those can only be put in front of the car even in testing if the floor has been removed from the car. Aston Martin has the floor on the car they can't use the covers but in testing they can use the humans so quite often what you'll find is if you move along and try to look at the car the mechanics will come along with you for a little ride and we have a nice little game of the mechanics try to block the car we try to look at the car and it sometimes works it sometimes doesn't. Aston Martin though in particular has been quite interesting in the way they've been blocking the car over this test and it's a bit of a mystery maybe one for you to solve at home. Whenever the Aston Martin car is started they really don't want me to have a close look at it they don't seem to mind too much when it's not running or when it's just sat in the garage even some of the bodywork removed they don't seem to care too much about that what they don't want me to see is the fire up procedure on the Honda power unit and the curious thing has emerged to me every time they don't want me to look at that Honda power unit it's because the nose isn't fitted to the car until the power unit is fired up. Now that doesn't really make any sense there's nothing in the nose that's got anything to do with the power unit so why can't they fire up the car without the nose fitted it may just be coincidence it may be a little game by Aston Martin of we'll hide this bit over here so you're not looking over there at the bit we really want to hide and I asked some of the mechanics about it they said how do you know we're hiding anything well right now the yellow tape is up and that means they're doing some work on the hybrid system but the mechanics still clearly very keen for us not to look too closely for this lovely new green car now we've had an interesting question come in about the v-car the racing bulls car particularly about its roll hoop and could we have a closer look at the roll hoop and the air box of the v-car so come with me Stephen we'll we'll have a look now if you look behind the driver's head you can see a very large intake that's what we call the air box of the car it's a it's probably the biggest and what it is the biggest on the 2026 cars on the v-car and now you can see that triangular section behind the driver's head that goes up it's not painted it's bare carbon fiber now the center part of that triangular section is where the air goes into that ford branded red bull built v6 engine but the segments either side of it are purely used for cooling the car and that's what we call center line cooling because the team has relocated some of the cooling the radiators the heat exchangers that you see under the bodywork from the side pods into the center of the car and when you look at the racing bull from behind you can see the engine covers pretty chunky behind that air box and that's because some of the coolers have been relocated from the side pods into the center line of the car that raises the center of gravity height of the car quite considerably and with this new generation of car it could be a little bit harder to get that right but it does have a trade-off if you look at the where there's still a fan hanging out the side of it underneath the rear view mirror you can see the side pod inlet duct now by using center line cooling moving that cooling onto the center line of the car it means those coolers can be taken out of the side pod and the car doesn't need such big side pod ducts and it can also have smaller side pods overall perhaps a bigger undercar now around the back of the racing bull you can see there's a lot of rear floor exposed it's quite hard to see from the front of the garage but take my word for it or look at some pictures we took earlier and you can really clearly see that so that's the use of the center line cooling approach and different teams take different levels of center line cooling and some teams like ferrari are not using center line cooling at all they don't think the aerodynamic benefit of that sort of layout is worth it racing bulls clearly do think it's worth it but also you can perhaps judge that maybe the red bull ford power unit requires a little bit more cooling than some of the other power units up and down the grid it's hard to say judged just on the cooling inlets but it does look that way to me a viewer in marinello in italy can't think what they find there has asked the question without the mguh fitted to the engine are the cars slightly louder yes yes they are but it's more than are they slightly louder different cars have different volume levels when they come past you in the pits and pass you on the track so to address that i think we should do a little bit of a scientific experiment now i've got my phone out here and i've downloaded an app onto my phone that allows me to give you a slightly more accurate read on just how loud these cars are so let's have a little look at the results and see who's got the loudest 2026 formula one car shall we well the results of the noise test are in and i can say with absolute certainty that the audi is loudest according to my probably not particularly well calibrated mobile phone it's one decibel louder than everybody else but notably the audi stays louder for longer most of the other cars drop off in terms of their noise the audi doesn't drop off so much the next loudest car some people said was the red bull it's not they're all about much of a around 90 decibels peak though the ferraris are and all the ferrari powered cars like the cadillac are the quietest in the field and it's quite interesting i can't really explain why the cars have different volume levels but i can just say that they do is alpine's rear wing more effective in terms of overall aerodynamics when it's activated well let's have a look alpine have done things slightly differently with their rear wing there's been quite a lot of discussion about it and every car has adjustable aerodynamics active aerodynamics front wing and rear wing it's not like the old drs it's a bit more powerful a bit more effective the rear wing on the alpine is pivoted differently so the back end of the wing the rearmost section of the wing the top surface drops downwards and it looks like the whole wing has gone missing as the car goes down the straight other teams have pivoted the wing at the front so the front of the wing pops upwards and opens a slot gap audi on the other hand they're literally somewhere in the middle they pivot the wing absolutely in the center of the two wing elements and that makes a real difference aerodynamically which is best give me all of these cars and a wind tunnel in a few weeks and i'll tell you or just look at the race season this year and we'll probably work it out because the best solution will be copied by everybody else sticky yuppie bits question mark well yes here's a question we get asked quite often in pre-season testing and sometimes in free practice actually quite often in free practice what are the big grills mounted around the different cars at the start of each session they're what we call aero rates but i think that's actually a really rubbish description their aerodynamic sensor array so those big bits of scaffolding that are mounted all over the car all of those little points on that scaffolding are mounted with air speed or air pressure sensors so the team can understand what the airflow around the car is doing and whether it replicates what they're seeing in the wind tunnel and in the virtual wind tunnel of computational fluid dynamics or cfd and that if they can get all of those things to agree the sensors on the car the green stuff they splatter all over it for flow visualization the wind tunnel and the cfd well that's good correlation and that's what that's all about and you'll see it all the way through the season and you'll see a huge amount of those aerodynamic brakes or those big sensor arrays all the way through the start of the season in free practice sessions in particular so keep your eyes peeled for that it's going to be a big feature as people learn about these new cars and these new regulations as the season goes on what you're looking at there by the eye of the sponsor's logo on the front wing end plate of the mercedes is the front tire sensor now every single car in the field has a tire sensor mounted to the front wing end plate on either side of the car that's really normal teams have been doing that for ages and it lets them see the tire temperatures as the car's going around the track pretty important stuff however a question's come in which i think's really really good question why do some cars not have front tire sensors and when this question first came in i was wondering what they were talking about because well every single you can see it clearly on the mercedes there you see them on the ferrari next door and you can see them on most other cars most other cars and the questioner is exactly right it does look like some cars are not fitted with the front tire sensors but all is not that meets the eye some of the front tire sensors are beautifully hidden within various elements and various aspects of the front wing end plate hopefully you can see some pictures on the screen right now which show you some of the interesting installations alpines for example is almost invisible and there's some other really nicely integrated designs and that is i guess an aerodynamic gain some of the teams look at those tiny marginal gains or how they may mount an even tiny little sensor like that that little sticky outy bit well they want to get rid of that maybe to reduce drag or maybe to make what the end plate does a little bit more effective now as you can see on the mclaren the front tire sensor is really really clearly obvious isn't it can you see it i can't either that's because it's really neatly integrated into that upper aerodynamic element that sticks out the element itself has got a really interesting wing shape it almost looks like it's the wrong way up for a racing car doesn't it it looks like an aircraft wing that would almost generate lift but in the picture you can see on your screen now i took earlier you can actually see where the tire sensor extends from the rear of that aerodynamic element that's one of those interesting one of those interesting mountings for those tire sensors that i mentioned earlier but there are some really neat executions red bull's got a nice design alpine's design for the front tire sensor is absolutely gorgeous and there's a few more up and down the pit lane and sure we'll be taking a look at those in a lot more detail as the season goes on a really curious question has come in about the really curious nose shape on the mclaren not so much its shape because that's all crash structures and aerodynamics more why do the team always blow a fan into the tip of the nose whenever the car stopped in the garage and the answer is really quite simple if you it's quite hot here in bahrain we're in the middle of the desert and it does get hot on a sunny day in the middle east and that's why they put the fan on the tip of the nose it's not cooling down necessarily the car the driver is inside that car and behind that fan housing is a slot in the nose which feeds cooling air to the driver so when the car comes and sits in the garage the driver's just got a nice bit of air flowing over him and stops his feet and lower portions getting a little bit too toasty in the car also it might not hurt too much with some of the interesting electronic systems the front wing actuator and all the other clever gubbins that mclaren has around the front of the car so it's just about keeping the driver cool as well as maybe a few little bits under the bodywork cool as well but mostly it's about keeping the driver cool for now though as we stand outside the mclaren garage and the sun sets not just on the bahrain international circuit but on the first pre-season test here in the middle east there's another test to come up next week but for now i think we're going to wrap up tech talk for this week i don't mean we're wrapping up for the season oh my oh no no no we are only just getting started and yes we are also just spooling up our turbocharger as well