In four months, Formula 1 teams will bring their first iteration of the all-new 2026 cars to an end-of-January shakedown test in Barcelona. But to streamline the development process, predicting those pre-season performance levels has to be done right now.
The vast scale of the regulation changes, with new rules on both the chassis and power unit side, means they are braced for arguably the most challenging regulation shift in F1 history. Teams are having to fit the new chassis around vastly changed, extremely efficient hybrid engines, which feature a near 50/50 split between electric energy and combustion power - a much bigger electric component than the current hybrids.
