Formula 1 Bahrain Pre-Season Testing: What Did We Learn from the First Test?
- Rohan Singh
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
ROHAN SINGH - STAFF WRITER
As Formula 1 heads into the second test at Bahrain, it is important to know what you should expect when the cars hit the track once again. First things first, the first Bahrain test gave us the first ‘real’ results that could translate into the upcoming 2026 season. The Barcelona shakedown was merely a teaser focusing on reliability and not the pace of the car. The Bahrain tests are more realistic when we talk about setting benchmarks.
On the first day of testing, McLaren’s Lando Norris topped the timesheets ahead of Max Verstappen in his Red Bull. Leclerc was P3 on the leaderboard for the first day. Day 2 of the Bahrain test showed the real pace of his Ferrari; he topped the timesheets, with Norris and Oliver Bearman following his lead. On the final day, the Mercedes duo of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell were able to bring the Silver Arrows to the front for the first time, locking out the timesheets in P1 and P2, respectively.
On paper, the newest season looks pretty similar. The same old teams are working their way up front, and the same old drivers are looking faster than the others. However, what matters is what is going on behind the scenes.
New Season New Problems: The Power Unit Crisis
The 2026 F1 regulations are well known. To recap, the series is going 50-50 in terms of ICE and electric power from the 2026 season. The MGU-H has been abandoned, and from this season a single electric motor unit, the MGU-K, will provide electric power to the cars. Now, the most prevalent issue that arose was that cars were losing power halfway through the straight.
Imagine a driver ready to deploy the energy they saved up during the laps to earn that extra bit of speed. As soon as they push the button and let their car expend the electric output, they get a boost of speed. However, right about midway, the audience and the drivers notice a drop in RPMs. That is because the energy recovery system has already been exhausted. That extra 20 km/h of top speed is gone.
Now, the car is running in generator mode—a phenomenon known as 'clipping.' The MGU-K is running against the V6 engine to harvest energy while the driver is still driving flat-out. While the crankshaft rotates at full power, the MGU-K harvests energy from it, leading to ‘super-clipping.’ So the car is now burning fuel to recharge its battery and not speed up on the straights. This was a phenomenon that was prevalent earlier too, but in 2026 it has become even more pronounced. To stop the teams from abusing the energy harvest, the MGU-K is capped at 250 kW in harvesting mode. But in reality, this limit is proving too little of a restriction for the cars.
This is expected during the first few runs with the 2026-spec car. A new power unit isn’t going to magically surpass the ones that were developed for years. However, if the issue of running out of energy on straights persists, it is a disaster waiting to happen. The drivers will need to be more careful, lest they lose energy mid-maneuver and end up crashing into each other. It will be wise to look out for the same and closely follow the developments. It will also hamper their ability to drive the car according to their wishes.
According to Fernando Alonso, “Historically, Turn 12 is a very challenging corner, so you used to choose your downforce level to go [through] Turn 12 just flat. So you removed downforce until you were in Turn 12, just flat with new tires. It was a driver-skill decisive factor to go fast.
“Now in Turn 12 we are like 50 km/h slower, because we don't want to waste energy there and we want to have it all on the straights. So to do Turn 12, instead of 260 km/h, [we do it] at 200 km/h, [and] you [the media] can drive the car; the chef can drive the car in Turn 12 at that speed.”
The thing is, Formula 1 cars aren’t exactly at their best when racing through the straights. If you want to drag race across the finish line, you would drive a Bugatti Chiron and not an F1 car. These are developed to be fast and nimble through the corners. If the drivers are having to drive slower through corners because they don’t have enough energy to overtake or defend on the straights, they will have to drastically change their racecraft. F1 racing has always been about taking out the milliseconds from the corner and hitting the apex to come faster than your rival.
The next critical observation from the pre-season testing is turbo lag. It is the exact issue that plagues a turbocharged ICE car on public roads. Turbo lag is the delay in activation of the turbocharger. In simple terms, the turbo requires high exhaust pressure, requiring a driver to ensure that the engine RPMs are beyond a certain threshold. How does a driver manage that? They keep their car in the lower gears since they have higher RPMs, and they can redline the car easily.
Unless a driver manages this maneuver perfectly, they will end up losing their boost pressure. This means the car has less power once again. Historically, Formula 1 has rarely ever used the first gear during a race. As Pierre Gasly mentions, he is having to use the first gear more this year compared to his entire career in Formula 1. Similarly, Max Verstappen is aggressively downshifting the car to keep the RPMs high and the turbo spinning. He had to shift to the first gear numerous times during his lap.
While this affects racing during the lap, the audience and teams are noticing it more prominently during the race starts. The drivers are spending an eternity to rev up their car and push the RPMs to the redline so that the turbo lag is eliminated. For your front row, sure, it won’t be a big deal. But for the back markers, it is a looming threat. Once they line up on the grid, they do not get much time to rev their engines before the race starts. So, if we exaggerate this issue and take the worst-case scenario—the cars would bog down after the green light, a direct result of low boost pressure and lower revs, leading to a slow launch off the line.
The turbo lag is a result of the removal of the MGU-H. It used to pre-spin the turbo and keep it running while the drivers could focus on their reaction time for the race start. The MGU-H would use the harvested electricity to ‘spool’ the turbo and keep the boost pressure up, ensuring an equal start off the line for each car on the grid. With the MGU-H gone, the turbo is once again being handled by the drivers themselves.
All in all, the latest season of Formula 1 has brought forth a wave of new opportunities and difficulties. The first test at Bahrain has shown what the teams are facing. The next will show how the teams are trying to mitigate these issues. It will also highlight the teams that have managed to turn the regulatory changes into a competitive edge.
The Birth of a New Loophole
For the teams, the F1 rulebook is a playground to mess around with the wording. We have seen numerous examples of teams abusing a certain key aspect of the regulations to gain a huge competitive advantage. The double diffuser before the turbo-hybrid era, the mini-DRS of McLaren, the Driver Assist System from Mercedes, and the infamous fuel sensor evasion by Ferrari are the golden geese that resulted in a massive outcry. The team accused of using these loopholes loved it, and their rivals turned to the FIA to abolish it.
This year, we have a very sneaky loophole—the compression ratio increase. F1 cars have a 16:1 compression ratio as mandated by the regulations. But some teams have found a way to increase the compression ratio while evading FIA’s strict inspection. A higher compression ratio yields more power, and more power means faster cars.
What these teams are doing is an innate property of thermodynamics. When a material is heated, it expands from gaining the heat energy. When the cars are at a standstill—like during inspection—their compression ratio is 16:1. They pass the checks, and the engine is deemed legal. On track, the story abruptly changes. The engine hits the required temperature threshold, and the pistons expand. The compression ratio now becomes 18:1. This expansion is a property of the material itself and is bound to happen during the race. As a result, the teams are deliberately using materials that expand easily as soon as the engine starts running. Now, they have a better compression ratio.
Once they are on the cooldown lap, the driver stops pushing the car for more speed, and the engine starts cooling down. And right when the cars roll in the paddock for inspection, the compression ratio returns to the legal limit. The teams that use this new loophole argue that they have not hidden their engine development from the FIA. While building the 2026 power unit, the FIA closely monitors the engine development.
The increase in compression ratio looks like the byproduct of regular racing on the track. On paper, the regulations are being followed strictly. The FIA has yet to address this issue, but it will be interesting to see how they react to the same.