F1 Bahrain pre-season test: What to expect, driver run plans and more
- Peter Johnson
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
Written by Peter Johnson, Edited by Meghana Sree
Everything you need to know ahead of F1's first round of public pre-season testing in Bahrain for the new regulatory era.
Following Formula One’s private excursion in Barcelona two weeks ago, all 11 teams are taking to the track in Bahrain under the watchful gaze of the public for the first time in 2026.
In recent years, teams have been afforded just three days of testing in Bahrain, but due to the enormous regulation overhaul for 2026, their time has been doubled to six days of running across two tests.
The first of these runs from this Wednesday 11th February until Friday 13th.
Since the behind-closed-doors shakedown a fortnight ago, several teams have revealed their livery for the upcoming season — and Williams have built their car.
McLaren, Aston Martin and new boys Cadillac all ran special paint jobs in Spain and have revealed their true colours — literally — before jetting off to Bahrain.
Unlike this stage of most seasons, all of the teams have already reached rather varying levels of understanding of their cars as a result of the Barcelona shakedown.
Mercedes impressed both in terms of lap time and number of laps, completing over 500 laps while George Russell posted the second fastest time of the week.
By contrast, Aston Martin managed barely one full race distance, while Williams didn’t show up in Barcelona at all. Team Principal James Vowles opted to maximise time in the factory, which may pay off in the long term but leaves the Grove team a long way behind their rivals at this early stage.
Aston and Williams will have an opportunity to claw back some of that lost on-track time in Bahrain, because there is no limit to the amount of running teams can do, unlike in Spain two weeks ago.
The one usual testing caveat still applies, though, because teams may only run one car at once. That means that every pair of drivers will split the on-track time between them.
World Champion Lando Norris will take to the circuit on Wednesday morning and all day on Thursday, while his McLaren teammate will handle Wednesday afternoon and Friday.
Last year’s championship runner-up Max Verstappen will pilot the Red Bull for the whole of Wednesday and Friday morning, while this year’s title favourite George Russell will be driving the Mercedes on Wednesday morning, Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.
Ferrari are yet to announce the schedule for the whole week, but have confirmed that Lewis Hamilton will drive on Wednesday morning and Charles Leclerc in the afternoon.
All of the teams who were present at the shakedown were rather positive about their progress, while there was a consensus among the drivers that the new generation of cars — with drastically different engines, aerodynamics, fuel and tyres — are indeed a serious departure from their predecessors.
Last year’s championship runner-up Oscar Piastri said: “There’s such a big departure from what we’ve had the last few years and all of my time in F1 that there’s a lot of things to understand.
“There’s going to be some aspects of these cars that we’ve never really had to do before in our careers, so there’s plenty of lessons to be learned.”
Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson concurred: “There’s a lot to learn for all of us as the 2026 car is very different to drive, so I just tried to adapt as much as I could.
“The car has less downforce compared to the past, so it moves around quite a bit; there’s a lot of power when the battery is fully deployed but the way in which you have to manage it is something completely new.”
Meanwhile Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who by the end of 2025 was unequivocal in his dislike of the old regulations, was rather positive with his team’s shakedown: "The [new] car generation is actually a little bit more fun to drive.
"It's oversteery and snappy and sliding, but it's a little bit easier to catch and I would definitely say more enjoyable."
While the purpose of the Barcelona shakedown was to allow teams and drivers to get their collective heads round the all-new regulations, things will get more serious on the Gulf as they begin to unlock performance and reliability.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. Remember when Max Verstappen failed to finish two of the first three races of 2022 as Red Bull failed to grasp the amended engine regulations for that season. He did eventually win the title at a canter, mind…
If you’re wanting to follow testing, it is more public than the Bahrain shakedown. The last hour of each day’s testing will be streamed online wherever you catch the sport, including F1TV, while lap timings and performance updates will be more widely available.
The second test will run from Wednesday 18th to Friday 20th February, with the new season kicking off in Australia on 8th March.
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