F1 2026 cars faster than expected with performance…

Formula 1 tyre supplier Pirelli has been pleasantly surprised by the all-new 2026 cars following early fears that performance levels would be similar to Formula 2.

This year will introduce the biggest regulation overhaul in F1 history, as a chassis is approximately 32kg lighter with significantly less downforce, while power units are now more reliant on electrical energy.

This follows four years of ground effect machines which were up there as F1’s most powerful ever, but the impressively fast lap times didn’t necessarily translate into great racing.

Many grands prix in 2025, for example, were relatively static with them being won from pole on 16 of 24 occasions and although it remains to be seen if 2026 brings improvement, early simulations look good for Pirelli.

The Italian tyre manufacturer is confident the cars will not be a huge drop-off from their predecessors, despite how two years ago when the regulations were first announced there were concerns that the gap between F1 and F2 would be much closer.

This comes after 2026’s first collective shakedown in Barcelona last month, with F1 in Bahrain this week for one of two official pre-season tests before the Melbourne opener in March.

Oliver Bearman, Haas (Photo by: Formula 1)

"It's too early to say, but the teams have a lot of [data collection] tools on the cars [in pre-season],” said FIA single-seater technical director Jan Monchaux.

“They are not running at the weight they could reach. We don't know how much fuel they are using, but the general feeling is that the cars are where we expected them to be, maybe even better than our predictions.”

That means lap times being much closer to what has been seen in recent seasons, but it should only consistently happen later in the year once teams have fully grasped the new regulations.

This also depends on the circuit characteristics because active aerodynamics and energy management will play key roles in these regulations; they can be used more on some tracks than others, so there’ll be times where the reduction in downforce is evident.

"It will depend a lot on the track,” added Monchaux. “But on some tracks at the beginning of the season, the cars will be on a similar race pace to what they had in 2025. On others, they may be a few seconds behind, it will vary. But the teams are already preparing updates. So I have no doubt that in a few months, the teams will have already made up that margin compared to 2025.”

One of the tracks that Monchaux’s colleague Mario Isola, director of Pirelli Motorsport, reckons could bring similar levels to 2025 is Bahrain. Although he doesn’t expect that to be the case in this week’s test - Max Verstappen set the fastest lap in the first morning with a 1m35.433s, around six seconds slower than the best time from pre-season last year - it should come into play for Bahrain’s second three-day test on 18-20 February and its grand prix in April.

"Someone said that the 2026 F1 cars will be much slower, they will go slowly,” said Isola. “I don't think they will go slowly. We saw it in Barcelona, they were about two-and-a-half seconds slower than they were last year in the race, so we're not that far off.

"Consider that no one pushed in Barcelona, no one tested the real race performance in Barcelona. Moreover, when there are new regulations, there is an important initial development curve.

“We have received simulations from Bahrain that tell us they won't be far off... In fact, they will be substantially in line with the times we saw last year and that's quite surprising with such a new car.

"Then, perhaps, in the first test in Bahrain, they won't push to the limit and we'll see lap times that aren't quite as consistent, but the fact that already in the simulations [the teams] are telling us that performance is in line with last year's means we won't have a slow F1.

“We did a test in cold weather in Spain, with the track not in the best condition, and we were two, three seconds off last year's times.”