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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I just want the 2026 Formula 1 season to get going.
There are still 12 days until the season opens in Australia and that is, frankly, just too long. What can I say — the two tests in Bahrain got me excited for real racing.
I’m Alex, and Madeline Coleman will be along later.
Questions: The big storylines to follow next week
I watched all 24 hours of testing action in Bahrain last week to produce our live coverage of the event. Luke Smith provided fascinating behind-the-scenes insight from the paddock — including a Lewis Hamilton fan being so excited to get their hero’s autograph that they promptly burst into tears.
I was curious about what to expect from the new cars, especially after the remarks that came out of the first Bahrain test two weeks ago.
There was the seven-time world champion Hamilton saying, “it’s like you need a degree to fully understand it all.” Four-time world champion Max Verstappen said the new cars are “not a lot of fun” to drive and called them “anti-racing.” And two-time world champion Fernando Alonso said “the chef can drive the car.”
What was this new F1?!
Well, watching Charles Leclerc throwing his Ferrari around the Bahrain track during the entertaining final hours of the 2026 preseason was reassuringly familiar.
The cars do sound weird at times, but overall, it’s still F1. And, as the paddock prepares to leave for Australia, we can pick out the early narratives of F1’s new era, fueled by what was captured in Bahrain last week:
Which team really is the front-runner? Is it Mercedes? McLaren? Ferrari? Red Bull? Because they all basically pointed at each other (mainly in a bid to stop the FIA clamping down on their performances — more on this later).
The suggestion is that all were obscuring their true hands to some extent, as is common is F1 testing. Seriously, CAN IT BE THE AUSTRALIAN GP ALREADY, PLEASE?!
Will the Mercedes engine rule change vote be decisive? The five F1 engine builders will vote on a new test of the 2026 designs this week. This is aimed at restricting an advantage Mercedes is thought to have found.
But there’s a suggestion that the manufacturers who want the loophole in question closed might not vote for the new test, after all that fuss. Expect this one to run on even longer than seemed the case last week.
Do Ferrari fans dare to believe? Leclerc ended up topping the final test with a lap 0.8 seconds faster than Kimi Antonelli — next up for Mercedes. The car looks good on track, in terms of how it responds predictably to driving inputs (Ferrari’s 2025 car very much didn’t do that).
So, can F1’s most storied squad finally end a title drought that goes back to 2008? It’d be some story, but Ferrari has been here before — in 2022 and particularly 2019, when it crushed things in testing with a car powered by a controversial engine before it threw things away when the season got going.
Ferrari’s starts also look mega so far in 2026, and its new wing is nifty. But history tells me it’s too early to get excited.
What’s gone so wrong at Aston Martin? Six laps and no time set on the final day of testing would be bad, if not unexpected, for an all-new team such as Cadillac. That it was the resource-heavy Aston Martin team, helmed by F1 car design legend Adrian Newey and led on track by Alonso, is shocking.
Its Honda engine is being blamed, as the manufacturer ran out of parts to get through the final test. But the Aston car, for all its clever-looking aerodynamic parts, is slow even when it does run. This won’t be a quick fix.
How fast is Cadillac? After making a solid start in Bahrain’s first test, Cadillac was another team that missed plenty of on-track time in the second.
It fell from completing 320 laps one week (and beating the mighty-looking Mercedes’ haul of 282), to logging just 266 the next. A series of difficulties — including malfunctioning sensors — was to blame.
But, heading to Australia, there’s no clear indication of where the newbie really stands in the pecking order. Is it ahead or behind Aston at the rear of the field? Or might it be quietly hoping to emulate Haas and score points on debut? Thankfully, we’ll soon find out.
Bahrain was fine for the new cars, but what of Melbourne? As Luke explained here, the engines powering the new cars are extremely complicated. This is mainly because of the increase in power coming from the hybrid systems.
In Bahrain, the big and many braking zones at that track meant the cars had no trouble replenishing their electrical energy, as converting braking force into electricity remains part of how the engines work.
But in Australia, not only do the drivers spend 78 percent of the lap on full throttle, the braking zones are much shorter and less severe. That could be a problem that leaves drivers running out of energy at critical points. Expect outbursts if they do.
Will fans grow tired of new rules chat? That I’ve even had to include the question demonstrates that things are still rather uncertain with these new rules. And broadcasters will have to dedicate significant chunks of every session for the opening races explaining how the cars work.
This will only increase if the racing in Melbourne is very different from what has come before. F1 has always been about complexity, given the nature of high-speed machines. But for decades now, it has been a made-for-TV product. In broadcasting, simplicity rules. Let’s see how this pans out.
Now, over to Madeline for a word on F1’s regular streaming offering, “Drive to Survive.”
Inside the Paddock with Madeline Coleman: Why ‘Drive to Survive’ is shorter in 2026
After I finished watching “Drive to Survive” Season 8, which is out on Netflix on Friday, I was left with mixed feelings and a few questions, including one that many of you will likely ask: Why are there only eight episodes this time? After all, the seven previous seasons featured 10.
It felt as if many rich storylines were left out this season, such as Isack Hadjar’s first podium, and others were under-discussed and lacked context, as Luke and I explained here.
It just felt as if the magic of the earlier “Drive to Survive” chapters was missing.
Tom Rogers, the show’s co-executive producer, was recently asked if there was a reason for the episode count dropping. He told reporters at preseason testing in Bahrain that DTS is “not constrained by episode numbers or durations. The episodes can be whatever length feels natural.”
He pointed out how the episode that included Romain Grosjean’s fiery crash in Season 3 ran to 51 minutes long, “which for a ‘Drive to Survive’ episode is incredibly long,” Rogers said. The Season 8 finale is also 51 minutes, while the opener is 50 minutes.
As for the number of episodes, Rogers said, “Previous seasons have naturally felt their strongest at 10 episodes. This season naturally felt strongest at eight episodes. And what we wouldn’t want to do is put out two episodes that we didn’t feel were as strong just to hit the numbers.”
Back to you, Alex.
Let’s Rank Car Liveries: And have your say about our list
Madeline and Luke spent the last few weeks evaluating each team’s car color schemes for this season, and ranked each here. As I’ve covered in Prime Tire before, I love a subjective F1 debate. And this one is following in fine tradition at The Athletic.
Ranking all the car liveries has been made slightly more complex in 2026, as the lonnnnng launch season and the first test being held behind closed doors combined to mean we couldn’t compare them properly for a whole month.
That’s from Red Bull and Racing Bulls revealing their liveries in Detroit in mid-January to the start of the first test in Bahrain two weeks ago. At the Barcelona test before that, many teams opted to run in one-off special liveries and keep their real colors under wraps until they officially launched their 2026 campaigns.
Really, we shouldn’t have expected anything other than more of the same from Aston Martin and McLaren — and Luke and Madeline have rightly lambasted the very corporate creations in their ranking as a result.
I think they were harsh placing Audi last, but that’s the great thing about this debate — it breeds analysis of another F1 area, and I’m all here for it.
But what do you reckon? Click here to rank the 11 car liveries yourselves and we’ll share the results in Friday’s PT.
Outside the points
🇩🇪 Mercedes only provided its latest specification of engines to its works team during the second Bahrain test, which means customer squads McLaren, Alpine and Williams should gain performance when they finally use it in Australia next week.
❌ In the new DTS season, ex-F1 driver Jack Doohan revealed the death threats and other awful abuse he was subjected to before he was replaced at Alpine by Franco Colapinto just six races into the 2025 season. Madeline has the full story here.
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