The Development War Has Already Begun! | F1 TV Tech Talk | 2026 Bahrain Pre-Season Testing

The development race has begun. The 2026 Formula One season features the biggest rule changes in the history of the sport and that's created a wonderful variety of ideas and technical solutions on the new cars. No two cars are actually really alike and every single one of them is packed with creativity and interesting aerodynamic elements. With such uncertainty around how to design a 2026 Formula One car, the development war will be absolutely crucial this season and at the second pre-season test, that development race has truly begun. In this video, we'll take a look at the top four teams from 2025 and see how they have started to develop their cars. First up, it's Ferrari because that's going to come as absolutely no surprise to anybody who follows these things. In fact, there's been great expectation on Ferrari with many people expecting it to rapidly launch a major upgrade package on the SF26 and perhaps be as dramatically different as the Audi upgrade was in Test 1 where the Swiss-German team brought a car that looked nothing like the car they'd launched. Well, so far, the new Ferrari parts are not quite as comprehensive as those brought to the Audi last week but the Ferrari parts are no less fascinating and in some ways, maybe a bit more fascinating. Before we get into the detail though, let's just have a look at the wider situation down at Ferrari. Ferrari reportedly used the same power unit in its car during the runs in Fiorano and in Barcelona and all the way through Test 1 and if that's the case, then it has a huge amount of reliability that you have to wonder if it was fully turned up to the maximum performance level. But let's get into the details with the Ferrari itself and where else to start with the package than at the back of the car. Ferrari rolled out of the garage with a fascinating upper extension to the diffuser which almost completely blocks the exhaust tailpipe. It must have some seriously strong thermal barrier treatment applied because it's going to get seriously hot in that location. Note also in this shot, the cooling outlets on the bodywork. I had wondered if Ferrari was a bit undercooled in its initial running with no louvred panels fitted but it seems to be relying on these two outlets ahead of the main outlet at the rear of the car. But back to that strange panel or winglet behind the exhaust tailpipe. Some people are calling this device a blown diffuser. Well, it's not really anything of the sort but it does clearly use the exhaust plume for some aerodynamic benefit. I wonder, for example, if it creates a low pressure area behind the new element which might help airflow through the diffuser. It's fascinating as I say and it's worth taking a look at the smoke coming out of the oil system breather pipe in this footage which seems to be being drawn upwards in the wake of this device. And that's quite nice because we don't normally get any sort of direct gaseous flow visualisation techniques but that breather pipe is giving us a tantalising shred of evidence as to the purpose and function of that new winglet behind the tailpipe. In case you're wondering, all cars have these breather pipes. They were introduced a few years ago when it was suspected that at least one team was using the power unit's lubrication system to vent a lot of excess oil vapour into the combustion chamber. This in theory could have had the effect of a small power boost as venting an additional combustible substance into the combustion chamber in a fuel flow or energy flow limited formula could be quite valuable so the FIA quite rightly put a stop to all of that and introduced these mandatory breather pipes on top of the rear impact structure. Meanwhile, down at Red Bull, the team didn't really want us to get too close a look at the RB22. This is a shift in behaviour from the first test in Bahrain where they didn't really mind you looking over the bodywork at quite close detail but as soon as the car turned up in test 2 they covered the front of the garage with Red Bull liveried mechanics and so it's very clear that Red Bull Racing was very keen that we didn't get too good a look at the modified RB22. In fact when the mechanics do this it's a sure sign of there being something worth looking at on the car. So of course what are we going to do? We're going to show you all of the details that we've noticed on the RB22 that's been upgraded for the second test so let's take a look at some of them. How the wings work on this generation of cars has already got quite a lot of attention so far in 2026 and I think we're going to see a lot more attention coming. You can see both wings closing on the Red Bull quite nicely here on the straight in the previous test session and how the wings open and close particularly how they close and how the airflow reattaches to them as the car switch from straight mode to corner mode is a major area of research and development at every single team and that's especially true when a team brings a new wing which is what Red Bull has done for the second test. Compare the wing that the team ran in the first test at Bahrain to this new wing which has a far more sculpted leading edge. Additionally on the first day of the second test the team was doing a huge amount of work on the cooling layout of the car and trying to work out how best to understand the new Red Bull Ford DM01 power unit and how best to cool it. During some runs the team opened up cooling exits at the rear of the halo while on others though it was completely blanked off which may reduce the aerodynamic drag. Looking at the car through the corner as well it's worth noting the lack of undercut on the side pod as well you can see that quite clearly here. Before we get into the test 2 upgrade it's worth just taking a quick look at this footage of the right hand side of the Red Bull because at the rear of the halo just ahead of that duct which they open up and sometimes close is this louvered panel. Now I've only actually seen it on the right hand side of the RB22 I haven't seen it on the left hand side that doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't used it on the left hand side of the car just that I haven't seen it but it doesn't necessarily mean it's there either. Sometimes teams do run asymmetric cooling layouts on the cars as different coolers under the bodywork are located on different sides of the car and cooling different things so quite often you might see a car running what I sort of call a Quasimodo layout of the cooling outlets you quite often saw Ferrari doing that in the previous generation and other teams have done it quite a lot with different coolers on different sides of the car maybe that's what's going on with the Red Bull. But moving into test two immediately noticeable were two small vertical fins on the trailing edge of the halo as the car drove out of the garage and it looks like Red Bull's trying to manage the airflow around the rear of the cockpit and that mandatory safety device and these vertical aerodynamic elements I wonder if these have another name that we could use for them. I can't think what that would be. The side pod shape of the car has been heavily revised and a substantial undercut is now clear to see on the side of the Red Bull and I think the cooling outlet we were talking about earlier on has also been reshaped and possibly ever so slightly relocated and the changes to the side pod overall though are a pretty substantial change to the overall shape of the car and that will have big implications in terms of the aerodynamic performance of the car overall. While it won't completely put everything they learned last week into the bin it means there's still an awful lot of aerodynamic learnings to come from Red Bull for the RV22. Like most of the other big teams Mercedes has also turned up with a pretty significant upgrade package on the W17 at the start of this second pre-season test. Late in 2025 there was a change to the technical regulations. In 2026 the cars were originally planned to have partly open wheels in place of the wheel covers used in 2025 but that rule was then changed and teams had to fit wheel covers after all and this is a pretty significant change aerodynamically because the way the air flows through the wheel is quite important. However with the rule change the teams were told that no all of the wheels must now have wheel covers but in a major shift in that regulation the teams are free to design their own front and rear wheel covers whereas in the past they had to buy them all from Red Bull Racing. So here's a look at the design of the Mercedes rear wheel cover but it's worth taking a deeper look at these wheel covers how they're designed and how they're optimized in a later episode of tech talk so we will do that. The side pod of the Mercedes W17 has also been significantly reshaped which is most notable at the training edge of the side pod which in test one had this quite abrupt rear trailing edge it was quite blunt but now it seems to blend into the rest of the rear bodywork quite a lot more smoothly and that suggests there's really been quite a lot of change not just on the upper surface of the side pod but also in its overall shape and function. On top of the side pod the mirror supports have also been extended for aerodynamic benefit as well and as we watch the car go through the corner here we get a good look at just how undercut the revised side pods are. There's also a nice look at the so-called mouse hole in the side of the diffuser. I think that must be a pretty big mouse at Mercedes but this is a feature that is appearing on quite a few cars and I think it's all to do with managing the airflow along the edge of the inside of the diffuser to stop that nasty tyre vortex the tyre squirt from getting into it and reducing the downforce so it is quite an important area of development. Now if you look at the top four teams from 2025 in the pit lane in Bahrain for the start of the second test one team sticks out more than others and it's not just down to the orange, sorry papaya, paint job. McLaren has opted not to bring any upgrades to its car during the pre-season test at least that's what it claims to be doing we'll have to wait and see if that's actually the case but the reigning world champions have stated that the car that they will run in testing will pretty much be the car which starts the season and that the car has been designed specifically to be quite adaptable. McLaren has been forced into this pragmatic approach because it won the constructors championship twice in a row meaning that it has the smallest amount of wind tunnel time of any team at all in the field. As a result the team has decided to essentially look and see what ideas other teams are trying out on their cars to help McLaren prioritise which similar of its own ideas to develop in CFD and the wind tunnel. Because the wind tunnel and CFD time is so tightly restricted the team will have to pick and choose which development directions to pursue in CFD and the wind tunnel and that means looking at other team's ideas will give them at least a clue of what ideas are worth pursuing or at least which ones to prioritise because those other teams have used their wind tunnel design and their CFD processes to develop and iterate those design concepts when McLaren has such limited time that it's not able to develop as many different concepts so it's picking and choosing what it sees the others do. That's not to say McLaren are not going to come up with their own ideas and develop those as well they absolutely are but they're just taking this pragmatic approach to having basically no wind tunnel time compared to a lot of their rivals to just work their way through it. Let's not forget that McLaren has a really incredible wind tunnel and aerodynamic component development rate which we've seen demonstrated in the past couple of seasons so I think that we'll see McLaren really come fighting back to the front once they've got some of those ideas onto the car but for now it's just a very adaptable very baseline car to start the season with. Sticking though with McLaren for a moment we had a question come in for the previous episode of tech talk on social media and I know quite a few people are asking the same question and that is with the active aerodynamic system does it take longer to change the nose of the cars? Well I tried to find out and this was the answer I sort of got. Now I'm not entirely sure that bit of footage is entirely representative because sometimes when you're standing down in the pit lane watching a team go through a certain test or process it might do it a little bit slower or take a bit more time over it than you're used to or what you were expecting to see and I do wonder if that was the full nose change procedure for McLaren or if they made a couple of other adjustments when the car was in and out. I think when we see race pit stop happen those nose changes will probably be a lot quicker but possibly not as quick as they have been in previous seasons though a lot of the teams have got dry brake hydraulic connectors on the front of the car and clean quick release electronic connectors so I don't think it's going to be that big a difference though I do think the noses themselves are probably a little bit heavier than they have been previously as well with that two-stage breakaway system. However if you've got any similar questions then please do let us know and we will try to answer them a bit like we've done here and on these new cars there is an awful lot to look into and that's exactly what we love to do here on Tech Talk.