Mercedes emerged as the standout in Barcelona’s pre-season shakedown under the new regulations. Mercedes said its works team completed 501 laps, and that Mercedes-linked power units logged more than 1,000 combined laps, including customer teams. The W17 frequently appeared near the top of timing sheets, and trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said the all-new systems “worked brilliantly.” The team credited work at its Brixworth and Brackley facilities and momentum from an earlier Silverstone outing, while stressing that strong reliability is encouraging but not a definitive indicator of ultimate pace.

Mercedes called George Russell’s outing a “positive surprise.” He posted the second-fastest lap, within less than a tenth of Lewis Hamilton’s 1:16.348 marker, and reported the W17 “feels nice to drive” with no porpoising. Andrea Kimi Antonelli also showed encouraging pace at times. Both drivers covered heavy mileage to build a large data set, which Mercedes says will inform ongoing development.

Pressure persists off-track. Mercedes has not won the constructors’ title since 2021, or a drivers’ crown since 2020, but Toto Wolff remains in charge even as the technical group shifts. James Allison and Simone Resta remain involved, John Owen resigned, and engineering director Giacomo Tortora has assumed a larger role. Team commentary has tied driver futures and leadership scrutiny to on-track results. Russell’s seat and Antonelli’s progression were described as contingent, and Wolff has publicly signalled openness to pursuing other top drivers such as Max Verstappen should Mercedes prove dominant.

The team will next focus on setup exploration and race/qualifying preparation at the official Bahrain test on February 11–13, with further running planned for February 18–20. Those sessions will be key to determining whether the W17’s encouraging start converts into genuine championship contention and whether pressure on drivers and leadership intensifies.

Oscar Piastri’s collapse at the end of the 2025 season is well documented. He held a 34-point lead after the Dutch Grand Prix (round 15) but failed to win any of the final eight races, enduring a six-race podiumless streak. The Australian’s results paved the way for his teammate Lando Norris to seize the championship by 13 points. Piastri ultimately finished third in the drivers’ standings behind Norris (the 2025 champion) and Max Verstappen, while McLaren secured the Constructors’ title for a second consecutive year.

This week, former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner publicly backed Piastri, saying the young Australian will get “better and better” and noting he had earlier described him as an “odds-on favorite” during last year’s summer run. Horner will begin a speaking tour in Melbourne on Feb 24. Broadcaster Martin Brundle predicted that Piastri will “come back with a vengeance,” praising his rapid learning curve and the portions of 2025 when he dominated races, while also pointing to clear areas for improvement, such as low-grip performance and tire management. Brundle added that the rule reset and upcoming preseason activity in February, including closed shakedowns and Bahrain tests, could reshuffle the competitive order before the Australian Grand Prix in March.

Technical critics and coaches have been more prescriptive. Driving coach Martin Villari, on The Red Flags Podcast with Tom Clarkson, labeled limited simulator use and a late-braking approach as the “obvious” problems that cost Piastri time in sequences such as turns 1–3 in Mexico City and at circuits in Brazil. Villari urged increased, focused simulator work and a reframe of corner approach and braking technique. Pundits have suggested Piastri should also heed advice from established rivals like Max Verstappen and combine that technical work with the resilience Horner and Brundle expect.

The consensus is clear. Piastri remains a major contender based on talent and past form. But a concrete program of technical refinement and thorough preparation during the rule reset and preseason will be essential if he is to engineer a title run in 2026.

A technical dispute over the 2026 Formula 1 power-unit regulations erupted as reports said Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains had found ways to run higher effective compression ratios on track while remaining compliant with static tests. The 2026 V6 hybrid rules specify a 16:1 compression ratio at ambient temperature, yet both manufacturers were reported to have configured units that registered about 18:1 in above-ambient conditions — a setup analysts estimated could be worth roughly 0.3 seconds per lap at Albert Park. Teams and technical bodies held an initial meeting and the Power Unit Advisory Committee was scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss possible next steps, but talks so far produced few concrete outcomes.

Christian Horner, who founded Red Bull Powertrains and helped develop the 2026 units, publicly rejected characterizations of the situation as outright cheating, telling Australia’s Today show that engineers naturally push the boundaries and that the dispute was about interpreting rules rather than deliberate rule-breaking. Horner dismissed claims that teams were “cheating like wildcats” and defended both Red Bull and Mercedes; he also described Toto Wolff’s blunt remark to unhappy OEMs — “get your s*** together” — as “a big statement.” Media reports noted suggestions that Red Bull might already be using, or could adopt, similar configurations; Red Bull denied such claims.

The regulatory debate prompted teams at a pre-Barcelona shakedown meeting to consider adding real-time fuel-compression measurement to prevent on-track circumvention, though that change was viewed as unlikely to be implemented during the 2026 season. With power-unit mappings still being finalized ahead of the opening rounds, the matter remained an ongoing technical and regulatory dispute between manufacturers, teams and the sport’s technical bodies as the season approached.

Cadillac F1 completed a private three-day shakedown at Barcelona-Catalunya, running 164 laps. The program prioritized systems checks and reliability rather than outright pace, with engineers treating the outing as a debugging and durability exercise.

Valtteri Bottas, who returned after sitting out 2025, drove during the program and said the team had made rapid progress but still faced a “mountain to climb” to reach the competitiveness and reliability needed for its debut. His quickest Barcelona time was 4.572 seconds — roughly 6% off the test leader but within the 107% qualifying cutoff — suggesting the car could plausibly make the grid even if substantial development remains.

Cadillac has cleared several early technical milestones: a full-car dyno run in December, a Silverstone filming day in January, and the Barcelona shakedown. Those steps helped temper concerns even though the team recorded the slowest combined running across the five-day test programme and the second-lowest lap total among teams present.

Team principal Graeme Lowdon and senior staff note that, despite broad individual F1 experience, the group has only about 11 months of working-together time and some key facilities remain unfinished, leaving operational and development gaps to close.

Engineers collected data for simulator correlation work in the United States ahead of two three-day pre-season tests in Bahrain in February. The team may produce new parts before those Bahrain sessions and will use on-track running there to prove improved reliability and extract further performance. Success in Bahrain — and subsequent iteration before the season opener in Melbourne in March, where Bottas will race alongside Sergio Perez — will determine whether the early milestones translate into consistent, race-ready form.

Until then, the Barcelona outing stands as an important historical step that demonstrated tangible progress while also highlighting the substantial technical and operational work still to be completed.

Mercedes promoted Andrea Kimi Antonelli to a full-time race seat for 2025 as the team’s first-ever rookie signing, elevating him at 18 after scouting him in karting in 2017. Gwen Lagrue, Mercedes’ head of driver development, said the team learned from George Russell’s three-year spell at Williams — which required “half a season to get him up to speed” after joining Mercedes in 2022 — and decided to accelerate Antonelli’s path so he would be ready when the team expected to be more competitive in 2026. Lagrue praised Antonelli’s maturity and leadership, likened her early impression to seeing Max Verstappen at a young age, and told Toto Wolff to secure him for the Mercedes program, framing the promotion as a strategic development gamble because Mercedes did not expect to fight for the title in 2025. The club judged the risk worthwhile to shorten his learning curve and build long-term upside.

Antonelli, who made his Formula 1 debut in 2025 at 19 after replacing Lewis Hamilton following Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, had a rookie season marked by both promise and painful setbacks. Toto Wolff called the appointment a “big ask,” and Antonelli’s year included several high-profile errors — most notably taking Max Verstappen out at the opening lap of the Austrian Grand Prix — and a midseason loss of confidence after a rear-suspension update. He endured a long points drought, scoring only once between rounds seven and 13 with his maiden podium (P3) at the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix, but finished the year with three Grand Prix podiums: P2 in São Paulo and P3 in Canada and Las Vegas, plus a P2 in the São Paulo Sprint after chasing Lando Norris. Those results underlined flashes of pace and resilience amid the typical rookie learning curve.

Looking ahead to 2026, Antonelli has set an ambitious target of winning the World Championship as he prepares for his second F1 season, buoyed by a strong three-day Barcelona pre-season shakedown where Mercedes logged 1,134 laps and suggested the W17 has competitive pace. Mercedes warned that continued speed at the upcoming Bahrain pre-season test would position them as the team to beat when the season opens in Australia. At the W17 launch Antonelli said his goal is to win and to eventually fight for the championship, and he expressed eagerness to compete alongside teammate George Russell. Toto Wolff has counseled caution — recalling Antonelli’s midseason slump in 2025 and warning that Russell-level consistency should not be expected immediately — while nonetheless expressing confidence that the young driver can deliver a strong year.