Winners and losers from the first Bahrain test

With the first Bahrain test in the bag, it’s time to pore through the grid and pick our list of Winners and Losers.

Here is PlanetF1.com’s full list of winners and losers from the first pre-season Bahrain test.

Winners and losers from the first Bahrain test

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Winner: Williams

After all the dramas of missing the shakedown in Barcelona, the unquestionable loser of that event, Williams turned up ready to go in Bahrain and proceeded to smash things out of the park in Bahrain.

With 423 laps completed, the Grove-based squad achieved the greatest mileage count of any team and, right from the get-go on day one, the drivers were able to complete race distances and lap competitively.

Indeed, so strong was its showing, that Williams is just 62 laps behind Cadillac’s total lap count across both tests (Bahrain and Barcelona). Compared to the established midfield runners, Williams is now ‘just’ circa 220 laps behind the likes of Alpine, Red Bull, and Racing Bulls – a tremendous recovery compared to where it was a week ago.

Between its virtual test track sessions and cashing in its two filming days, Williams had managed to soften the blow of missing Barcelona, and then proceeded to complete, roughly, a Grand Prix distance with each driver on each of the three days.

Averaging around 65 laps each morning and afternoon, the FW48 encountered no significant reliability woes, and, speaking after the first day, Carlos Sainz revealed that the car has been behaving predictably and in line with the team’s simulation.

There’s no doubt that Williams is still playing catch-up, with Alex Albon confirming he had only started to play around with energy management and deployment techniques during the second day, but James Vowles’ squad couldn’t have hoped for much more from what was a stellar test.

Loser: Aston Martin

Having managed to pull together some on-track running in Barcelona, the full extent of just how much catching up is facing Aston Martin became very apparent in Barcelona.

“We’re not where we want to be,” team ambassador Pedro de la Rosa said on Friday, with Aston Martin having completed 206 laps across three days.

This total was the lowest of the 11 squads, some 78 laps fewer than Mercedes. Added to that, the car appeared extremely tricky to drive and didn’t show much by way of pace.

“It’s a combination of things, engine, balance, grip,” a deflated Lance Stroll said on Thursday, before tellingly opting against offering a positive of the car when asked directly to do so.

“It’s not one thing. It’s a combination.”

Stroll estimated that Aston Martin is currently four to four and a half seconds off the pace of the leaders, whilst also lacking mileage and reliability that allows it to gain a better understanding of its package and the new Honda power unit.

Also adding to the woes is the fact that, without another team running the power unit, every lap the AMR26 hasn’t done is also a lap less data offered to Honda. In stark contrast, Mercedes has four teams pounding around the track…

In making the switch to Honda, Aston Martin has also had to start working with its own gearbox, another further complication that just slows down the learning process further.

Fernando Alonso suggested the pace gap to the front is considerably less than Stroll’s hypothesis, pointing to how imperfect laps saw him find the guts of a second in individual sectors.

With Aston Martin personnel being quite open and frank about the issues facing the Silverstone-based squad, what is becoming evident is that Adrian Newey’s arrival isn’t going to produce a dramatic uplift in fortunes for the team just yet.

Indeed, his arrival appears to have been too late for the programme’s commencement for ’26 and, having missed Barcelona, the team is still working through the issues that many of the teams faced during that shakedown.

A long and difficult road awaits over the coming months, but Mike Krack said that clear steps forward are being made in integration between Honda and Aston Martin, and that the key priority at this point is simple: start racking up some laps.

Winner: Mercedes

After coming out of Barcelona with the favourites tag, the Bahrain test may have clouded the picture somewhat, but has done little to dispel the theory that the Brackley-based squad is up there somewhere.

Against the context of the compression ratio saga that is playing out behind closed doors ahead of another Power Unit Advisory Committee [PUAC] meeting at which a crucial vote amongst the manufacturers is expected, the F1 team had a lower-key test for most of the three days in Bahrain.

Perhaps this is why Verstappen suggested that “others have been hiding” and “probably trying to make us look good” as both Toto Wolff and George Russell pointed across at Red Bull and RBPT as being the benchmark to beat – Russell going as far as to say Red Bull’s performance was such that it was a “reality check” for the rest of the grid.

But Russell did concede that he believes Mercedes has delivered a very strong car and, on Friday, he and Antonelli set the quickest times of the test as the only cars to drop into the 1:33s.

While some reliability issues hampering running on the first and second day, primarily affecting Kimi Antonelli’s time behind the wheel as suspension work and an engine malady cut short his plans, Mercedes left the best day until last – but Andrew Shovlin still said the team had not achieved what it had wanted to in Bahrain.

As it stands, the Mercedes W17 and its power unit looks well-placed but, if the others power unit manufacturers [PUMs] do succeed in getting a supermajority vote across the line to change the compression ratio regulations, might the Mercedes power unit take a big hit performance-wise?

According to Toto Wolff, if the engine can’t be used the way it was designed, the performance could take a hit and, should the FIA and FOM come together with the other PUMs, they could yet find themselves “screwed”.

The Austrian explained that the performance gain of the compression ratio grey area is in the region of two to three horsepower, although Max Verstappen believes a zero can be tagged onto the end of these figures…

Loser: The F1 2026 engine regulations

Or, more specifically, the perception of them after a week in which a multitude of side effects pertaining to the new drivetrains has become evident.

With the reveal of details such as drivers coasting through corners in order to save energy, rather than being physics-limited, the difficulties in getting the cars off the line in a timely manner, and the possibility that overtake mode may prove insufficiently powerful to be of much assistance, it’s clear there is still quite a bit of tweaking to be done.

At this early stage, such teething problems are to be expected, but what hasn’t been ideal is the pasting the regulations took in terms of perception with the fans following some, quite negative, comments from the drivers.

Most of the drivers have chosen to speak about the complexity of the energy management requirements, but stopped short of all-out criticism, before more pointed comments from Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton emerged.

The Dutch driver, in particular, didn’t shy away from criticising the direction the new regulations have taken, suggesting that they are ‘anti-racing’, while Hamilton’s comments were in a similar vein as he said the excessive lift-and-coast is “not what racing is all about”.

But, as I wrote about earlier this week, it’s worth remembering the regulations right now are the worst they can be during this five-year cycle. As development ramps up, and power units develop, the situation should improve with regards to energy management.

After all, the F1 2014 season provided plenty of reasons for alarm when the hybrids first took to the track but, with consistent tweaks and the eventual removal of the overly-restrictive token system, the power units quickly improved.

Are the regulations fully-fleshed out with their potential maximised? Absolutely not, and this is likely to lead to frustrations – particularly in this first year. But, in the context of F1 being an engineering arena first and foremost, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic after a test in which reliability has been decent, the pace is not a million miles from the last generation, and the fundamentals of the chassis and aerodynamic rules seem to have made life trickier for the drivers.

However, the drubbing the regulations have taken in terms of public perception will likely take a long time to recover from.

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Winner: Red Bull

With Mercedes pointing across at Red Bull as being the benchmark, there’s little doubt that it has been an impressive test for the Milton Keynes-based manufacturer.

Aside from a hydraulic leak on the morning of Day 2, the RB22 completed a race distance in each session, accumulating a total of 342 laps over the three days.

By the second day, with the performance of the Red Bull Powertrains [RBPT] engine being highlighted by several of the Mercedes-powered competitors, other rivals also spoke about how impressed they have been by the RBPT performance in terms of both reliability and performance.

Certainly, telemetry traces do suggest that the RBPT does have an energy deployment advantage down the straights, but it’s worth remembering that performance pictures can easily be disguised by rivals simply by running different programmes.

Indeed, Charles Leclerc spoke about how he suspects Mercedes are “hiding a lot more” than some of the other teams, while Red Bull’s Pierre Wache also wryly smiled when speaking about the “game that everybody’s playing”.

Acknowledging that the car does have some weaknesses still, Wache confirmed that, from a weight perspective, the RB22 is in a better position than it was at the start of the 2022 rules cycle.

“We are not the benchmark, for sure,” he said, placing McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari as being ahead of Red Bull, similarly playing the same game to the team’s rivals.

From speaking with paddock sources, the suggestion has been that the same top four teams will remain at the front this year, but perhaps with Red Bull starting at the back of that leading pack.

Even if that proves to be the case, to be doing so with a brand-new power unit of its own creation, testing has proven to be massively encouraging for the squad.

Winner: Ferrari

With 421 laps across the three days, Ferrari has a test quite similar to Williams in having a quietly efficient test.

“What is mega good is that nobody is speaking about us, but I like this situation!” Fred Vasseur joked on Friday.

“We can be focused on ourselves already.”

Not denying the suggestion that Ferrari has used a single engine to complete the Barcelona shakedown and Bahrain test, the SF-26 has proven highly reliable already, whilst longer race-pace data from Lewis Hamilton’s Friday afternoon saw him consistently lapping quicker than the likes of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Mercedes’ George Russell.

This pace was noted elsewhere: on Friday evening, Andrea Stella not only confirmed that Hamilton’s Friday run had been quicker than Piastri’s but also revealed that Charles Leclerc’s race simulation on Thursday had caught his eye as being competitive.

With Vasseur visibly happier in his deportment as he spoke to the media and guests around the Ferrari hospitality unit, in stark contrast to the closing stages of 2025, it appears as though the Scuderia may be starting the new regulation cycle in a strong place.

Honourable mentions:

Everybody else!

Genuinely, it was quite an impressive test for most of the teams, with even the complete newcomers, Cadillac, logging over 100 laps per day as the American squad starts to rack up the mileage.

Audi, too, were in the same sort of mileage range, as Jonathan Wheatley spoke with enthusiasm about how the car is proving reliable in the early stages and is allowing the team to start validating its own procedures and improving its execution.

Racing Bulls weathered some minor reliability issues but still logged over 300 laps, while Alpine had a similar story, including precautionary stops as it adjusts to the Mercedes power unit, reaching almost 350 laps.

Reigning champions McLaren also had a strong outing, racking up over 400 laps as Stella explained that it had been an “extremely positive” outing as the full list of tests that the team had set out to sign off on were completed.

Across the field, with the reliability of the new cars proving strong, a potential pecking order is starting to emerge: the usual four teams appear to still be the standard setters, with no particular surprises or significant changes in the midfield, aside from Aston Martin’s struggles.

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