Charles Leclerc’s early verdict on Ferrari in F1 2026…

Charles Leclerc believes Red Bull and Mercedes are leading Ferrari and McLaren in terms of performance ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 season.

The world championship has introduced new chassis and engine regulations for the upcoming campaign, with the pecking order quite unpredictable as a consequence.

The new power units in particular are a substantial differentiator, requiring numerous energy management tactics such as lift-and-coast and earlier downshifting, which the teams need to master and might contribute to concealing the cars’ true potential.

“There are laps that we are eight tenths up and down by changing one setting,” Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso revealed.

This makes the pecking order even trickier to decipher. “It's so difficult to understand,” Leclerc admitted. “It was difficult with the previous generation of cars, but now with the hybrid and especially the electrical engine being so much more powerful, there are so many small tweaks that you can do, and you can hide the real potential of the car in many, many different ways now. So, it's very, very difficult for us to understand exactly where we stand.

“What I'm happy of is that we are going through our programme. We didn't have any reliability issues so far, and this is a good start. Everything stacks up with what we expected. So that's a good base to then start to work on and to improve.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari (Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images)

Equally, there are large gaps between teams and some semblance of a hierarchy has been emerging.

While Red Bull and Mercedes have been throwing the favourite tag at one another, Leclerc believes they both have a slight edge over the other two top teams, Ferrari and McLaren.

“I think everybody is trying to throw the ball to the other guys, it's normal at that point of the season,” the Monegasque added.

“I think Red Bull have shown very impressive things power-unit-wise since the start of the test, especially here. Mercedes are showing some very impressive things as well sometimes. But I would say they are hiding a lot more.

“I would expect them two especially to be a bit ahead of us. Then McLaren is a little bit more difficult to understand, but from where I stand now, it's Red Bull, Mercedes in front, and then us. But it doesn't seem to be too much of a gap for now.”

Mercedes has set the fastest time of the Bahrain week so far with Andrea Kimi Antonelli in 1m33.669s, leading Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton in 1m34.209s and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in 1m34.549s.

Red Bull’s quickest lap so far has been Max Verstappen’s 1m34.798s on day one, which hints at more potential from the Red Bull Ford-powered RB22.