Stella declares Ferrari and Mercedes ‘teams to beat’ after Bahrain test

McLaren principal Andrea Stella says the team understands the MCL40’s potential after Bahrain F1 2026 testing and believes that Ferrari and Mercedes are a “step ahead” of McLaren.

While Stella does not believe that his team is far behind a leading duo of Ferrari and Mercedes, it is Red Bull which Stella is looking to as the team more closely matched with McLaren.

Ferrari and Mercedes teams to beat, says Stella

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F1 testing is in the books, as focus for the teams now switches to Melbourne preparation, where the hotly-anticipated F1 2026 campaign will get underway.

There, the true pecking order will become clear, but Bahrain offered some clues.

Stella has seen enough to make him believe that Ferrari and Mercedes are leading the way, but not by much.

“Overall, it’s been a positive testing session,” Stella reflected when speaking with PlanetF1.com and others.

“Especially here in Bahrain, the car behaved quite reliably. We pretty much signed off all the test items that we had planned from a functionality, from reliability, and from a raceability point of view.

“This has allowed us to go through loads of laps and loads of learning, and I think we are at the point in which we can say that the potential of the car has been relatively understood and exploited.

“Obviously, it’s all new. Therefore, every run you do, there is something to learn.

“But overall, I think we have added a little bit of performance every single day, just because we were in condition to test and experiment and play with setup and play with aerodynamic optimisation, tyres, and I would say play also with the exploitation, and the optimisation of the power unit, which is definitely a big ticket item in terms of understanding the competitive order.

“I would say that this test has confirmed that Ferrari and Mercedes look like the teams to beat.

“I think McLaren is not far [away]. I think it’s good to see that we are part of the top four group. But I think these two teams, they seem to have shown a little bit of an advantage.”

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It is widely accepted that the top four from last season remains the top four in F1 2026.

So, given his assessment of Ferrari and Mercedes, Stella was asked if he therefore sees Red Bull as McLaren’s closest competitor.

“Very difficult to say.

“There is a race simulation, it was I think yesterday [Thursday], Oscar [Piastri] and [Max] Verstappen. It happened at the similar time of the day, and it was a similar pace.

“Often the race simulation is actually where you can more accurately see what the genuine performance of cars is.

“The reason why I think we have to be careful is that dependent on the time of the day, then the race simulation may be quite a lot faster. Like now Lando, he was performing pretty strongly in the race simulation. But at the same time, probably the end of day three was the fastest time the track has been across the six days.

“So, difficult. I think McLaren and Red Bull probably very similar. Ferrari and Mercedes a step ahead.”

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