P1 with Matt and Tommy - F1 Testing 2026 – Day 1

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Cars on track - we repeat, CARS ON TRACK!We're back! F1 cars hit the Bahrain International Circuit for the first proper testing of this new regulations set. So, who did well? And who's worried that even the drivers might not be able to understand the new cars? Let's find out...Sign up to our Patreon! You'll get access to every P1 episode ad-free, extended versions of every 2026 race review, early access to tickets & merch, and access to our Discord server where you can chat with us and other F1 fans! Click here to sign up now: http://patreon.com/mattp1tommyFollow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We're here. We have seen cars on track, albeit for one hour, for the first time voluntarily with our own eyes. Not through a tree. Not through a tree. Not through journalists or anything like that. tuning in to wherever you watch Formula One. And it feels good. It feels really good, Tommy.

The start of a new regulation era, so much to talk about. And look, one hour as kind of, you know, it's wet the whistle. But next week, that's when we get the full testing coverage, which I'm also very excited for. Yeah, definitely. And look, Formula One is back. It's the biggest shakeup ever. and the top two in the championship

first and second. How was that happened? Like, oh my word. Like, you couldn't write it, could you? Absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, the, let's just go through the sort of top half. It's Norris Vestappen, Nicclair, Ocon, Piastri, Russell, Hamilton, Gassley, Holkenberg and Albonne were the top 10 for day one of testing.

Yeah, ridiculous. Oh, such a huge change in Formula One. And it's Norris and Vestappen. But times don't matter, remember. No, times don't matter. And also, you will have noticed, where's Mercedes? After all of that? And no, times don't matter.

But where's Mercedes? This is what we, we expected them to at least be in the top five on day one. Let's be real. Let's get to a question. P1 Patreon member sees a role. What do you think about Toto Wolf's comments today? In one interview, he called Red Bull, the benchmark. Now, I feel like this is a question that Tommy can probably,

I don't know if Cook or he'll be pessimistic. We'll wait and see. But what I will say, my initial feeling, because I've watched Formula One for so many years, is that it's just typical deflection. It's typical we're not fastest someone else's chatter, in my opinion. I think you can't jump on these times from the first day in Bahrain.

You just can't. Of course, we're going to try and get. information and I feel as though seeing the likes of Norris and Vastappan first and second is never a bad thing as we head into the next couple of weeks of testing. But, I mean, Toto himself, right? If you haven't seen it, he essentially said that it's been blown way out of proportion, essentially the advantage that they may well have had. So, Mercedes.

May well, yeah, Mercedes, sorry, Mercedes. Toto, yeah, basically just trying to calm the storm, calm the hype his. And put it all on Red Bull instead. And yeah, and basically put it on someone else, which I think is probably the only tactic you can do at this stage. And it's a tactic that has been done forever. When has a team principal ever come up the blocks and gone, yeah, no, we are actually the quickest by a mile?

That being said, we kind of had this conversation after the shakedown, not official testing, but the shakedown, where we kind of said that Mercedes were saying very confident things about, oh, we're ahead of our program. Obviously, they weren't saying, yeah, we're miles clear. But they were very confident with what they were saying. And yeah, now Toto's Red Bull weren't really shown too much. We were talking about after the first shakedown in Barcelona of Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari. Red Bull, of course, were on the back foot after Hadjar's spin and crash.

But we didn't see too much from Red Bull. And now they've turned up with absolutely crazy straight-line speed. It has to be said. and this is the thing that that's kind of toto is talking about here the actual quote was saying that you know he feels like he's he's kind of claiming that they could be a second faster on the straits because their energy deployment is so strong and that basically you know we could speak about this if it's just like a one-off bit of deployment but they're doing it consecutively after constant lapse, which we kind of said, is it deflecting or have Red Bull found

something we also mentioned, didn't we, about how complicated these new cars are? There was a graphic that came up, wasn't there, about all these fancy things you now have to do to drive the car. And what we joked is that probably the entire Christmas break, Airbus Aster Stappen has been on ira racing, probably in a 2026 F1 car, doing all these fancy things to deploy as much energy and harvest as much energy as possible. Max also does have a real simulator at his disposal as well, not just at his eye racing setup at home. But when he's not allowed to be that, yeah.

Yes, yeah, plenty of techniques that drivers can use to recharge the battery this year, overloading the throttle. I am still in corners. I don't really, even I need to learn that, right? And I have a Formula One podcast. So lots of things to learn. this year, but that's what's so exciting is all the things we're going to have to keep an eye

out for. But let's not panic. I mean, Tommy's not panicking. Tommy, Tommy has cut gone from predicting Max will not win a race this year to now hearing Toto Wolf saying that Red Bull might have a second clear advantage on the straits. Pretty crazy. I believe it when I see it because it's changing all the time. I mean, at the end of the day, Max wasn't even faster, so we maybe calm down a little bit. Maybe. Not that testing times matter. But straight line speed on the streets, that does matter. A question from bugger lugs underscore.

And this one is a very interesting question. Are Mercedes sandbagging until the FIA make a decision on their power unit? Yes, I also thought this was a very, very interesting question because normally we dismiss all the sandbagging questions going, why in earth would you sandbag because it makes no sense. but here if you want to kind of show that you've got maybe an illegal thing or something that skirts around the rules and it does have this amazing advantage you kind of don't want to show it because then the FAA

would kind of crap themselves and go oh no we don't want this and end up kind of changing the rules so it is an interesting theory the only thing I would say about this is it's not the same as 2014 where, of course, in the back of that car, sorry, in the back of other cars is the Mercedes power unit. So they can't, you know, rely on McLaren or Alpine kind of doing the, or Williams doing the same thing. And now if they were like miles clear, we'd all be going, okay, yeah, Mercedes do have an advantage.

So it's not like they've got their own engine all to themselves with disadvantage and they can sandbag alone. It would almost have to be like this collective thing between the Mercedes teams. But you never know. Is that something that is so far-fetched that it couldn't be possible? I mean, let Mercedes could go, guys, you're going to have to run it at 50% power due to safety concerns. James Fowell's our odd buddy. Could you just miss that entire first test for us? Pretend you're terrible.

Yeah. It's all making sense. But I did find this quite a fascinating question because I feel like there must be. more the FIA can do to learn about how good an engine is or how much they've exploited a rule without just seeing Mercedes out on track. And a lap time as well. Because I think the biggest takeaway from this test, I think for me, is the fact, as you said at the start of the show, where's Mercedes?

We thought they'd be up there at the very least. It was all talk about them being the favourites. And yeah, Russell's down in sixth, Antonell, down in 11th. Obviously, I don't for a second believe that Hass are four-tenths ahead of Mercedes, five-tenths, actually, ahead of Mercedes. But we'll wait and see, won't we? Stranger things have happened. Yeah, true.

But what, you know, again, I can already hear the testing times-don't-matter comments coming in. But what does matter, and something that I love watching and testing, is the onboards. It's the house the handling. You can't just, and you can obviously have very heavy fuel, you can have really hard tyres on, but you can still see the behavior and nature of a car. And Mercedes were making a fair amount of mistakes out there, at least in the final hour that we saw. We saw Ancinelli go off a few times.

Now again, they're all dialing in the car. The performance we see now and the performance we see halfway through the season this year is going to be so different because they are learning with every single corner they turn. So the development is going to be massive, especially for Ferrari when they obviously come from sort of I don't know, Q2 exit in Australia to winning the championship. What a story that would be.

But that's the beauty of a new regulation set, is that it's not as if we are at the end, like last year, and we know what the pecking order is kind of after the first race, and it stays that way. You sound very much like Fernando Alonzo and the Aston Martin launch, whereas, don't worry, it's all about the middle of the season. Yeah, you can't, yeah, if we're going to see an Alonzo World Championship, might not want to leave it to halfway through the season,

or even 2027, as Adrian Newey may well, have suggested. Next question, P1PITR member, Oscar Glazer Roll. Will reliability be a big issue in 2026? Not as big of an issue as we all anticipated. However, there are a couple of teams that have sort of at least taken my notice of struggling a little bit in terms of their reliability. One of them being Audi. I think Audi have been the team to stop out on track most across Shakedown and the the start of this Bahrain test. You've also had, of course, Ghazley, or sorry, Alpine,

I think Colopenta was Colopenta, yeah, wasn't it? Alpine stopping out on track today. But for me, Audi and then of course, Aston Martin, the Aston Martin in terms of mileage, they, again, they're at the bottom of the laps. Yeah, they're at the bottom of the laps.

They're also the only team with the Honda engine. It's not looking great as a forecast for Aston Martin. They've not come out the block strong at the start of this test either. They've not just dropped to 130 laps like Vastappen did today. They've been struggling once again. And so I'd say those two teams are for me the biggest concern.

Yeah, reliability hasn't been anywhere near as bad as what we kind of thought and mentioned it when we did the Shakedown podcast about how they were doing like some barely even putting 10 laps of a whole day when they first introduced the hybrid engines back in 2014. and yet here we are and Williams who didn't even do the shakedown have just rolled straight out the blocks and done 145 laps in the day is quite crazy even Audi who you mentioned have had problems and I do agree with you in the sense that their car seems to have broken down a few times still managed 122 laps so in terms of like the mileage yeah they they are doing a lot of laps out there

a lot more than maybe we're expected apart from it seems as to master who have kind of the struggles of that first test, sorry, the first shakedown has maybe continued into this day because they said they had like an anomaly and basically like Lance Roll was just chilling in hospitality but not even in the garage because he knew he wasn't going to get out on track. Yeah, 36 laps is not a not a good number to be posting but plenty of testing days to go but they do need to pick up the amount of mileage they're doing and they need to do it fast. I'd say Cadillac had been reasonably impressive. They did

107 today and overall as a new team. I think that is a brilliant job. Yes, they're not lighting up the timesheets but they also don't need to at this stage. They're just trying to learn what that car can do. Next question. Catman 2F3.

Thoughts on Hamilton's comments today about needing a degree to understand the rules? Yeah, I think this is going to be really interesting to see how the new rules are applied and how they communicated as well. When, if you were watching the coverage, when we basically got introduced to the final hour,

it almost felt like we were being presented with constant graphics. Another graphic, another graphic, this is how you do this, another graphic, this is how you do this, another graphic, this is how you do this. And Hamilton himself has actually been very savage with his comments about the cars basically saying that yeah he was sat in the kind of debrief thinking like this is crazy how much information there is he immediately was saying that fans aren't going to be able to understand what on earth is going on here because there's just too much and this is a really important thing for Formula One they need to be able to communicate their new technology to the fans

and make it understandable such a hugely important part of the the sport. And yeah, that is my biggest worry going into into this new rules is that it's going to be too hard to understand. I think as long as the basics are clear, especially when it comes to racing on a Sunday and battery deployment and how that's being used and everybody, me included, have DRS ingrained in our brains as something that is, you know, that's part of racing. That's gone now. on the face of it, I think not everybody needs to understand everything.

Me and you, Tommy, we don't understand every inner working of a Formula One car. We just need to be able to understand the basics. I think Hamilton obviously, he needs to understand everything. He's driving the car and he's managing what is pretty much a spaceship underneath him with all of the different energy things he needs to do. You're muted. So whatever you're saying is really important, really exciting. I'm not a good lip reader.

So let's try that again. I'm making it difficult for you and seeing it, how you, it's like the new Formula One rules. It's like how everyone has tried to lip read Hamilton and Kim Kardashian. Exactly. That was basically what I was trying to do there with you. Yeah, there's levels to it, isn't there, of how much you want to learn about Formula One? Because you could, there's so many things that you could take on a very basic level.

So, say going back to last year, you could maybe, if you're like a really casual fan, you might not know about the tyres or really care about them at all other than the fact that they have to do a pit stop. You might dive a bit deeper and go, okay, there's soft, medium and hard. you might go even deeper and go actually at C1, C2, C3, and all this kind of stuff. So like, there's levels to how much you kind of dive into it. There's levels to this game. And, and, but, but it, you're right, it has to be that, that kind of base level of understanding, you know, as long as we know when things are being deployed and things

are being used, we, we don't need to know every exact, you know, they don't have the break bias and all sorts on the screen. We don't need any of that, that stuff. just be far too complicated, but we need to know when they're using these new gizmos and gadgets and stuff. We do, absolutely. I don't think Hamilton was concerned about how we would understand it, is he's kind of more concerned about the drivers themselves? No, he said the fans. He said the fans. Oh, really? Wow. Okay. So yeah, Hamilton went really quite in on the new rules, saying things like Barcelona, for example, you're doing 600 meters lifting coast on a qualifying lap.

That's not what racing is about. Ferrari used to that, of course, from last year. And he basically said, none of the fans are going to understand it. It's so complex. It's ridiculously complex. That doesn't really go in detail as to what exactly we're not going to understand. The kind of, it says about the regulations. He's talking about the rules and regulations and the new things that have been put on the car, yeah. Okay.

Well, look, we don't need to understand everything. We just need to understand who's quick, who's slow, who's going to overtake who. and we can all enjoy Formula One pretty well. But of course, as the testing, as the season goes on, I'm hoping Formula One will be able to break it down in a digestible manner for all of us to enjoy. Okay, next question. P1, Patreon member Captain Offs 3-420.

I know they're not V-10s or V8s, but do you guys like how the new engines sound, especially under-breaking, they sound really cool to me. I might sound like my ears need testing, But realistically, I'm not hearing a massive difference. Of course, there's a little bit more electrical input these days. But it's not like I'm sat here and I'm watching Formula E and going, wow, that is markedly different. But I still love the sound of it.

I think there was a Williams or an Alpine right at the end of F1 testing that was revving the life out of the engine. They sound great. And I'm happy that they still sound great despite more electrical energy being used than ever before in Formula One. So no complaints from my side. I will get a better understanding, I think, when we go to a Grand Prix ourselves and see what it's like in person. Because on TV, for me, they're so similar. Maybe it's because I grew up in the era of V10s and V8.

So then when you... And we can't hear anymore because you've gone to the races. Exactly. But when you heard those and we went to the hybrid engines, it was such a big shift. that we're such a big shift. You are on fire these days. They're not even deliberate.

It's such a big change that you kind of go into hearing that that new change. I'm so used to almost not not caring about the engine sounds, but you watch an old race in the years gone by, and you can hear the cars constantly just buzzing over the commentary almost, whereas I kind of learnt to almost not take too much of the engine sound in. it's just kind of background noise because they're not anywhere near as loud. And then maybe that's why I'm not kind of used to kind of thinking, oh, what's the engine sound like compared to last time?

So I think when I see it in person and go to a track, hopefully, you know, like Silverstone or whatever this year and can stand at the side of the track and listen to it, or get a better idea of going, oh, okay, I can hear things. Because realistically when you're... Last Codman is feasting on his caviar in hospitality, so you'll be able to really absorb. Of course.

Or my helicopter over the track. Yes, yeah, you'll be able to hear a lot in your helicopter. Yes. I'm excited to see the new cars in real life, just generally, not just the engines. Looks wise. Oh, my word, they look so much better. And I'm so fascinated with just the workings of the active front and rear parts of the car. Yeah, there's a lot to...

The flaps. No, we're not using that. We're not using that word. We're not using that word ever again on this podcast, maybe in live streams. Final question from Tavi Simpson. What is Fernando thinking at the moment? He's thinking, why does Honda follow me around for my whole career? He's probably just thinking, why, why, why have I finally got this Adrian Nui car?

and I said this on our live stream that Adrian Newey has been a cheat code in years gone by but I don't think he's going to be a cheat code in a year where it's so reliant on the engines and the workings of, you know, Red Bull for example, that we're talking, obviously we don't know, it's all just hearsay and rumours but they're looking very fast at the moment of people singing their praises. They've obviously lost Adrian Newey the big technical guy and aero guy and it's all about the engine and if Aston Martin can't get a good engine

and do all this kind of battery deployment and everything that needs to be done Adrian Nui's talents kind of wasted to be fair for sure and Toto's comments that we spoke about earlier I think absolutely support that because that's all the teams seem to be focusing on of course there are elements of

that of course will help a car and let's not say that Adrian Rue won't be able to do anything. And it's hard to really gauge where Aston Martin are because of the lack of laps that they've done. They might well have a rocket ship under them, but we don't know. Or five seconds off the pace as they are today. Well, yeah, but they might be scared to run that Honda engine any higher than whatever percent that they are. But again, lots to learn. That's the main takeaway from today. testing times don't matter but Ferrari

a third so we're all good with that Tommy what are your final thoughts at the end of day one Bahrain testing 1-0 to Sergio Perez all the people that said that he wasn't going to beat Bottas and roasted me 1-0 we are starting the scoring

at F1 testing Bahrain is that right absolutely now that Bottas knows because obviously he will have been listening to this now that he knows that he'll pick up his game for day two yeah can't with Botas Setting of 132 tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah. Watch this. One percent of fuel. Yeah, and also, you know, maybe missing. All the energies are doing barren short. Well done Cadillac, even though you got rid of all the Chrome and I'm really upset. Right, that is it. We will see you tomorrow for some more recap action. And live streaming, of course, as well for the final hour.

If you want to come watch with us on YouTube and Twitch. And we'll see you soon. Bye. Goodbye. P1 is a Stack production and part of the Acast's creator network. work.