P1 with Matt and Tommy - F1 Testing 2026 – Second Test, Day 3

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Testing is over! And who cares if testing times don’t matter, because Ferrari were fastest! Join one of us in particular for some of the most self-congratulatory podcasting in motorsport. Plus: will this be Max Verstappen’s final year? Will Aston Martin even finish the first race? And who will be best of the rest?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/mattp1tommyThis episode is sponsored by The AA, the UK’s No.1 breakdown provider. It’s OK with the AA, they’re the fastest major breakdown provider with more patrols up and down the country, 24/7, 365 days a year. So, if you want that peace of mind and be back on the road in no time - Join today at www.theaa.com/P1 T&Cs apply. Verify claims at theaa.com/bestFollow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Veehombe on podcast. With Matt and Tommy, final day, done. That's it. Testing is in the locker. And for audio listeners, I am wrapping myself in a Ferrari flag as we speak. Tommy, I feel like we've just won the World Championship and it was testing. I am on cloud nine. you on the other hand

with your go 1.1 seconds off the fastest time I'm not going to gloat at all it's literally only testing but I am I am feeling far too much elation for what is not even free practice 1 this is less meaningful

than what an FP1 would be yeah cut to the last five podcasts of Matt saying testing times don't matter I think I always I think I always said unless Ferrari are fastest and that's exactly what happened. And here we are.

And here we are. And boy, were they fastest by quite a way, indeed. They were indeed. We'll get into that and a lot more. So let's start with a question. From Fair Pregunton, 41. Is this finally Ferrari's year? Yes.

Categorically. It's in the locker. I'm sorry. No, I shouldn't have said that. I feel bulletproof right now. I really do. Yeah. Wow.

I am absolutely cooked. I'm absolutely cooked, Tommy, because this is the most I've believed since 2022 when Charlotte Claire won Australia by a country mile. And I... We've just had testing. Yeah, relax yourself. I mean, I should relax myself. Yeah, you should.

But look, I'm allowed to get excited because this is what I've been waiting for. We are two very different fans, Tommy. You are a fan that has had glory. You just bar, you literally were asking for people to catch Max Verstapp and up so you can watch your driver fight other people. Yeah. I finally believe that Ferrari genuinely have a chance of winning the world championship. And I know I'm getting ahead of myself.

I know a lot of you will be sighing. Oh, here he goes again. But this one feels different. They have had phenomenal reliability. The only time they've conked out was when they were testing low fuel slash no fuel with Lewis Hamilton's car. I totally fully believed that and it wasn't anything else. They've been fast. But most importantly of all, Charles LeCler has been smiling.

And that is something that should tell you all you need to know about what that car is like. Okay. Wow. Yeah, I do think Ferrari are exceptionally good. I think they are good this year. They've definitely surprised a lot of people. If you go back to our predictions, even you, you didn't have much hope,

all the talk we heard about it, I cannot believe how much this has flipped 180 from them being completely useless as Ferrari, you know, they've not got the right power unit, it's all going wrong, Charlotte Claire wants to leave, all this kind of stuff,

to now being here, after testing, not even seen, you know, a competitive session yet. And everyone's saying, surely it's Ferrari's year. Like all the questions were Ferrari's year. I think it's probably, you know, Matt won't agree, but worth taking a step back from the hopium. Maybe, maybe just, you know, put the hopeium down a little bit. I'm currently completely hooked up to it.

I do understand why Ferrari fans are absolutely hyped, like an insane amount. But we've seen this before with Ferrari. with testing. I know not, maybe not to this extent, but you go back to last year, Ferrari set a lap time half a second quicker than McLaren. So we've seen this before. Don't, don't you dare.

Don't come with your facts. I also, do you want to, something else I looked into as well was the pecking order prediction after 2025 testing and Ferrari was second. So they do like to. get hyped a lot after testing. Well, they did fight for second until they didn't.

True. I guess they were fighting for second, yeah, in the championship. Because the Red Bull was one car team, but they love a glory run in testing, don't they? And at the end of the day, they are looking a lot stronger. I do genuinely believe this is the best shape they are

have been in since 22. However, to say that, you know, I think they're going to be that clear. I do think Mercedes are holding back massively. Now, I never said they were going to be clear. I just said I believe in miracles and is it unfolding. Look, I don't believe that Charles Lecler and Ferrari at 8 tenths clear of the rest of the field.

Charle was doing literal quali sim runs for the last, it felt like half an hour of testing. He kept putting on fresh sets of tyres. It is inflated. Don't get me wrong. I know this. but at the same time there is nothing bad about him putting in a 31-9 when other teams are struggling to get into the 33s, 32s.

So let's go to another question. But before I do, I also forgot to mention in my list of things I'm really excited about was of course the starts as well. That's something else to add to the equation that Ferrari have clearly done very well. P1, Patreon member, Erez, is the Ferrari P-U start as significant as everyone seems to be saying.

Is it likely to only provide an advantage for a couple of races before other P.U providers work something out? It's true. I think everyone will be looking at it now, although from what my understanding is, it's the way that Ferrari built their turbo, and that's why they're able to do that start. So you're not going to see teams redesign their entire turbo

just for a better start, you'd assume. That's a massive change, but Ferrari knew that this kind of long startup was a thing and have built their car around it. And we saw again today they looked very quick off the line. Ollie Bearman from the back row in, of course, the Ferrari-powered Hass absolutely shot off the line. However, what we did see as well was maybe teams working out a little bit more.

Only yesterday we were talking about McLaren and how they looked pretty useless with their starts and looked like the worst. And Lando had a very, very good start indeed. and rocketed off the line. So maybe it was incredibly exciting watching it, and I do still think that they're going to have a very nice time off the starts,

whether they're going to be Lewis Hamilton, 9th to 1st, like we saw yesterday. We don't know, and teams will eventually get it right, of course, but if they do have this, they need to sort of make the most of it while it happens. and I guess Australia is probably not the place where you can best utilize it. Yeah, I think that the advantage will be there more so at the start of the year as the teams figure out how to launch these cars off the line

because it's a completely different procedure. I don't believe it's going to be anywhere near as big as what's been hyped up on social media and of course the Hamilton from 9th on the grid to taking first into term one. I think it might be worth one or two positions in Australia. that's where I think we sit right now, but only with certain teams. McLaren and Lando Norris had just as good a start, marginally maybe worse than Bearman's,

but it wasn't massively different. So, of course, in the next couple of weeks, in practice, they will have more attempts and more chances to hone in those starts even more so, and I think that they will. I would love to say that Ferrari are going to gain handfuls of positions if they need to, off the line, when I just don't think it will be the case.

It's just more about teams learning, and these are practice starts. It's not like we're actually seeing grid starts. We won't see one until Australia, then we can assess just how much, if any, Ferrari are gaining in actual race start occasions. Next question. Matthew Fassend 1.

Since Max clearly doesn't like the new regulations, do you think there's a chance? that this will be his final season. No, I don't think this will be his final season. I have seen that he has been quite vocal, of course, about the regulations. He's been vocal about how long he will stay in Formula One and that the regulations aren't going in the way that he likes and therefore it's shortening the amount of time he will stay in Formula One.

And I absolutely believe and respect what he has said about life being short and he wants to do other things with his time that mean more to him. Like Formula One World Championships, of course, mean a huge amount to him, but also spending time with his family and his friends, and now, of course, his newborn. There are other priorities in his mind that, you know, you've got to respect that. He's achieved, in his mind at least, or at least what he tells us, enough in Formula One.

So I don't think it'll be his last year this year. I think that honestly, maybe by the time he's 30, that's when he would hang up the gloves and not racing Formula One anymore. I don't see him retiring sooner than that from the pinnacle of the sport, because as much as he says all of that, there's of course the other side of him that's pulling him saying, but you literally love racing more than anything in the world, and you are on the sim all the time,

and clearly it's his biggest passion in life. So that's something that he's clearly sort of having to deal with both sides of that in his brain. But no, I don't think it's the end this year. I think on that with his racing brain and how much he loves racing, the enjoyment of racing, he is a driver that while people may look and laugh and find it ridiculous, that he genuinely takes it as seriously things like his sim racing or every other thing, as important as Formula One. Yes, Formula One is like the pinnacle of motorsport,

but you stick him in a GT car or anything or like what he was doing at the Nureberg ring. It's the most important thing in the world to him and he wants to win. And if he gets much more enjoyment from doing things like that, yeah, he is going to go off and do something different. I don't think it would be as last year. I think you'll see how things develop,

particularly with how competitive they'll be, because I know he says, even if I'm winning, I'll leave. I don't necessarily believe him that, like, fully on that. I do think that there is an element to that about the kind of, if I don't like the rules, I'll go. But if Red Bull did find something halfway through the season, I don't think he's going to go, no, I will pack this in,

because there will be an opportunity to, you know, race at the front, surely you think you'd want to stay a bit longer. But I'm sure, in my opinion, I think he will see out his Red Bull contract or it's crazy, isn't it now? But all that talk of Mercedes, 2028, which takes him to 30, a couple more years, and then maybe he calls it quits. Does seem like the Mercedes rumours and all that

have kind of died down a bit now and him leaving Red Bull and maybe that whole Christian Horner thing and the way they had that amazing end to last year, maybe the team harmony has changed that narrative a bit more now. And maybe it's just a case where, he spends a couple more years at Red Bull sees out his contract and then off he goes

to spend more time with family and do the odd nerve-begging race because that's a lot more. You can spend a lot more time at home doing the odd no-begring race than 24 and that's 24 races now, never mind how many it's going to be in two years' time.

Formula 1 would be so much worse off without Max Verstappen on the grid. He genuinely is one of the pulls of the sport and you know love of course the people that hate him will say otherwise but what he brings of course is his natural talent but just his way of going about things as well the way he races it is just so is such an entertaining character and and i would be gutted you know i'm i want charlaclis to win the world championship but i'd be absolutely gutted to see max wistappen bow out at this stage of his

career because i think he would end up regretting it and i think that he would want to even maybe come back. Who knows? But like, I just don't want to see that progression. I want to, you know, have his career that's long enough to everyone go, cool, don't worry. Now you can go. I don't want him to bow out too early because we've seen greats in the past want to come back after going and Formula One. Let's go to the next question, which is from P1, Patreon member, Cheesehead Dave. Do you think Aston Martin is going to be able to finish the first race in Melbourne? button. It's looking very McLaren Honda, isn't it, for for Aston Martin at the moment? I read online

that the longest run they've done in a race stint is 26 laps before the car broke down with Fernando Alonzo. So they've not even managed to do that yet. They did six laps today and then released a statement to say, we are done. Like that was our program today. To aim for six laps is absolutely insane because last time I checked the even sprint races aren't six laps long. So they're going to be in Struggle Town big time. And yeah, I would not be surprised if we saw Fernando Alonzo, a very familiar scene in Fernando Alonzo's career of him conking out in about 20 laps into the Grand Prix. I don't think Gaston Martin are finishing Melbourne by all the data that we

you've seen because it's embarrassing either way, right? If they DNF or if they're really, really slow and try to go to the end. But I just can't see Alonzo agreeing to that. I can't see Stroll agreeing to that of going, oh, well, let's just go get some data, eight seconds a lap off the pace. And then, you know, you've entering like 107% rule questions, which of course was brought in due to pay drivers in many, many years ago. But like, genuinely, how slow will Aston Martin need to,

go in order to take that car to the end of the Australian Grand Prix. It is an unknown. So for me, right now it looks like they are in big, big trouble, like genuinely can't even be Cadillac trouble, which is utterly insane and so embarrassing for Astor Martin and Honda. Of course, there seems to be little bits of pointing fingers here, there and everywhere of who's actually at fault. But it's a failure of the team. It's a failure that you can't say that you can't pointing out it's Honda's fault or it's this person's fault that's what it's it's a failure of the team and and clearly the harmony that they have with with Honda and you know what I've seen kind of snippets of them saying oh they've got lots of data's like no you don't in comparison

to the other teams no you don't yeah they don't have enough data at all there's no one else running a Honda engine I know exactly you're so right about them pointing the finger as well because you know they've had gearbox issues that they're making their own um You know, they're making their own gearbox for the first time this year, which is a huge challenge in itself. And they need to learn. I know it's very easy that they want to kind of save face. They've built this amazing factory.

They've bought Adrian Newey on board. And it would be very easy to save face and just blame Honda for everything and say Honda are useless. Why did we go with Honda? But they need to learn from McLaren in a way because, you know, McLaren, they had an absolute nightmare. They did very much the same thing of saying, you know, the Honda engines rubbish.

It's all Honda, blah, blah, blah, it's all Honda. They switched to Renault engines, and they would nowhere near, like they were also breaking down all the time and it wasn't working for them. And then, of course, Red Bull took the Honda engine on board and started winning immediately and ended up winning the World Championship. So, yeah, they need to, they need to, like, work together with Honda rather than making them scapegoats. and I really hope that doesn't happen

because of course the memes are going to be flying around that it's Fernando Londo again with a Honda engine that's in the back of his car that's not delivering. But it's quite clear that there's a lot more problems than just what Honda are doing, I think. Absolutely. Question from Marco MG 02. Can Aston Martin turn this around?

We could always have 2023 McLaren as a reference. Probably not by mid-season, but maybe in the last races, they could be fighting for higher positions. Kind of more of a statement, but I guess the start was a question. It's such an unknown. Like, how do you weigh in on this? Because the final test that they've had was an absolute disaster.

So it's not like this is the first day and we've got two more weeks of testing. This is where they've finished and they've got an abundance of problems. Yes, they will be able to improve. There's no doubt about that. But they need more data. They need more running. I think the first half of the season is going to be utterly embarrassing for them and then perhaps with the amount of data that they will then have accrued through all of that

be able to improve. But the problem is, we've already said that it can change from track to track maybe this year in terms of the pecking order. And everybody's learning as well. It's not like Aston are chasing a non-moving line. Everybody else is still learning and they'll continue to learn in Australia and beyond. So they are so far behind and I think they will continue. continue to be for almost the entire season.

They genuinely need to get to 2027, I think, at this stage, from what we've seen, as quickly as possible. So for me, I don't think they turn this around to the extent of what some people might be saying, oh, they could be fighting for points at some point. I cannot see that. How do they, you know, they're slow and their reliability is terrible. There's no good points. Yeah, you're right.

They are so far off. and it's funny is the wrong word, painful as a Fernando Alonzo fan. But we've seen this with how the narrative was always pushed towards 2026, and they said, this is our plan. For 2026, we're going to be fighting at the grid. I can remember Lawrence Stroll's saying that when they did that big extravagant James Bond kind of launch in 2021, I believe it was, saying, this is our plan, five-year plan. We're in that five-year plan now.

and I saw that Nate Saunders, who's a journalist for ESPN and in the paddock, said it basically did a tweet saying it's funny how all the messaging from Aston Martin is now, 2026 was always a test year, you know, suddenly it's now 27 or 28 when things are going to change. And yeah, it's an embarrassing look because they really, really pushed for this. And as we've said so many times on this podcast, they went so ham with this Adrian Newey thing and unsurprisingly it got a lot of people very very hyped you know particularly Fernando Alonzo fans and particularly over in Spain thinking that this was his moment and it's not looking good at all and I don't see them turning it around any time soon and Fernando doesn't

have the time left so what do they do then does Alonzo go does he does he decide enough's enough and yeah it's looking maybe that could be the case but you just know with Fernando that the second he pulls the plug, they find something and they're amazing. It would be Pete Fernando, won't it? Max goes there, wins a world championship. Well, yeah, I mean, we joked about that earlier, didn't we? I think on the watch long, maybe, of, you know, Max Verstappen could have well gone to Aston Martin this year with everything that was rumored.

Can you imagine? I think then he would have absolutely, well, to be fair, probably just left Aster Martin and gone to Mercedes or something. But it's just mad to think about a potential scenario that, of course, didn't unfold. But there was, yeah, there was a lot of links there. There's Adrian Urey, there's Honda. He could have easily gone. Right, let's go to a question from P1 picture member, Bex P. Who is your current pick for best of the rest? Hasse are looking good. I would say they've been very, very impressive so far.

Maybe Alpine surprised a little bit at the end there. They've got the Mercedes Power as well, and we know they were a team that did go all in. The only thing I worry about Alpine is I remember the talk of them being kind of best of the rest last year and then were easily the you know the worst team so taking it with a pinch of salt but has uh have really been impressive you know amazing starts like ferrari bullet proof reliability and uh yeah i think that hass are looking very very strong indeed my pick for best of the rest right now is has as well they've been fast, not top four fast, but they've shown decent pace, but they've also put in an absolutely ludicrous amount of laps on the board. Today they did 170 laps, the most of anybody.

Five ahead of V-carb and that was Lindblad on his own. So his poor neck, I think he'll be icing that today. That's some rookie neck training right there. Yeah, that's insane. But for Hasse, I think they've had an absolutely brilliant test across the last couple of weeks. So that plus the fact that they may well have an engine underneath them that can gain them a position or two off the grid at the start. Yeah, if they're getting into Q3, they get out qualified by an Alpine. See you later, Alpine. We'll see you after turn one way ahead of you. So that's kind of where I'm basing Hasse at the moment, but it can easily change as we know.

but a really strong start for Hassan. I'm really happy for them. They've got a line-up that I'm hoping, you know, for Ocon's sake, he brings it to Behrman this year, because Behrman started to get some serious momentum, but the two of them should be able to get some great results. Next question, P1Petri member,

Ghost of Indy 2005. The cars seem a lot more unstable in the corners during testing. Do you think we'll see more accidents compared to last year? This is an interesting question, actually, because we're celebrating the fact that drivers can catch the car, which you would think then sort of just pushes them in a direction of being more aggressive with the car,

and therefore they will have more moments and then potentially go into the side of someone. However, we have to also factor in that these are, of course, testing, you know, they're doing maybe Quali Sims, whatever it might be, they're pushing the car in race trim when they're also managing the battery and managing the tires, are we going to see them pushing as hard as that? I don't think so on a Sunday. So I don't think there's going to be any more or less accidents compared to last year.

We've got less rookies. So maybe you'd say slightly less accidents, just purely down to the experience of the drivers rather than anything else. But then again, the cars have changed massively. I'm changing my opinion, the more I talk. But I don't see the cars being a particular reason for more accidents.

No, I think less, if anything, because they can save them now. With the ground effect here, we were used to a slight moment where the back end steps out. You're going straight into the wall and you can't save it. And now, you know, there's an amazing moment where what's the fast left-hander that a lot of people were running wide on and Charlotte Clare had that big moment on? I can't remember the exact turn number. 10? I did this 10.

Yeah. You keep talking and I'll check. Yeah. So that turn, we saw a moment where Charlotte Claire was basically like got a little bit out of shape, still kind of kept his foot in, got a little bit out of shape again, then kind of kept his foot in again and then got out of shape again and almost lost it. 11. 11. 11 absolutely bottled it. But that's because I think they've.

Oh, no. No, no. No, actually, no. I'm a fountain. I was just wrong. But no. But no. But the last corner is two.

corners. Yeah, yeah, okay. Which is, again, what I was going to use as my excuse, but then clearly there's a matter of a bit. So yeah, turn 11 is the left hand, a turn 12 is the next right. But 1011, yeah, you saw a lot of people kind of sliding and they could save it. And years gone by, it's just you're darting off in the other direction. It's impossible to save it because of the aerodynamics of the floor. And now it is fun to watch it. For all the complaining about these rules and I'm still adamant, you know, I don't like the fact that we're hearing the word management too much and battery,

this, battery, that I absolutely hate that side. To put a positive spin on it, one thing I do like is if they're talking about less grip, then great, because less grip is more exciting to watch. We're seeing and wrestle the car. I'd love watching them.

Like, you know, they do look what we were promised in the fact that they are more nimble and dartier like we kind of saw in years gone by compared to the kind of big trucks that we saw in years gone by. Let's just hope they can race because. Fingers crossed, but yes, I agree. I love seeing the drivers wrestle the car.

That's like top tier. That's what we want to see is the drivers using their incredible skill to haul a car around a lap. Now, I had touched upon the mileage. I said Hasse was the most with 170 V-Car 165. Let me run you through the rest of the order of, day. Williams did one-four-one. Audi did one-three-five, Ferrari-13-2, Mercedes-131,

Red Bull-24, Alpine-118, McLaren, 113, Cadillac 99, and Aston-Martin 6. So almost the entire field, Barr Aston Martin, did 100 laps. Cadillac, one more lap, and that would have been so much of a nicer, stack to say. But, again, huge amounts of mileage for the teams. And it's a phenomenal job from Audi again, I have to shout them out. putting 135 laps on the board and just being this new team is brilliant Cadillac again with 99 laps of the board.

Yes, they're slow. Yes, Bottas beat Perez by 5.5 seconds. I wasn't going to bring that up, but I got a back my goat Bottas four two up now for the Bahrain testing period. But overall... You just get the aggregate time on... No, we're not doing any aggregate. No, BS, none of that stuff. But yeah, the mileage has been really impressive and has to be said.

that the teams are in good shape to be able to improve these cars. Definitely. And Audi, as you mentioned, we talk about Aston Martin and how, oh, you know, they should have stuck with Mercedes. Why did they try something new? Audi have, you know, done something new. And yes, they had a difficult start. I think they were breaking down a few times.

But they seem to have got on top of it. And they're showing decent pace as well as good reliability. So, yeah, I've been very impressive. with Audi how they've turned it around and I guess Aston Martin may be the only kind of saving grace that they could look at someone like Audi and think they've figured it out quite quickly hopefully they can do the same but we all know that Ashton Martin are in a lot more of a struggle than Audiware. Yeah, Audi and Cadillac should be what Aston Martin are not this way around as crazy as Bruno has entered the building as we are going to go say

goodbye so there's a question from 7 Francis B7 what is your post? testing team order. Well, my team order is, you'll have to wait because we're doing a 20 second to first prediction as our next video. We'll put it out early next week and it is going to be. It's going to be fun. I'm really looking forward to this one. I feel like I have a good idea,

but I really look forward to again at the end of the year, reflecting on how wrong we were. I find that one really difficult as well because you put in a driver and then you go, oh they couldn't be there but then they're not higher than others and lower than others and it's always a really difficult one to do but i'm looking forward to it and the fact that it's a new regulation as well makes it more random i guess of what we're we're going to be predicting and how much the teams are going to involve so it's going to be a really fun fun one and hopefully some more disagreements because last time we did the top five the same which i hope it doesn't

happen again absolutely uh i am as you can see very excited about the upcoming season, a couple of weeks, until we're lights out. Of course, we'll have our watch along back and everything else in between. We'll have a few more podcasts

returning between now and the start of the Formula One season. That is it. Thank you, everybody. Ferrari on top in testing. And I cannot wait for my inevitable heartbreak throughout the 2026 season.

But I will have Bruno to cuddle, so that's fine. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Have you had dinner? P1 is a stack production and part of the Acast creator network.