The penultimate day of Formula 1 2026 pre-season testing included an eye-catching technical innovation, some revealing race start practice and more struggles for 2026's most troubled team.
This is everything we learned from day two of the final pre-season Bahrain test.
Ferrari's taken everyone by surprise
Ferrari appears to be leading the way in terms of eye-catching technical innovations right now, as for the second day in a row, it debuted a new part that was a hot topic on social media shortly after its debut.
On Wednesday, it was the unique exhaust wing, but on Thursday, it took things a step further with the debut of a radical ‘upside down’ rear wing.
The rear wing elements rotate about 225 degrees, giving the unique ‘upside down’ effect. It appears legal too with the FIA's technical director Nikolas Tombazis giving it a tentative green light: "The Ferrari solution, we believe, is OK."
It’s certainly taken everyone by surprise. “I saw it, and I was like, f***, what happened?” was Haas driver Ollie Bearman’s reaction when he saw the rear wing open on Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari ahead of him on track.
Our ex-F1 technical director Gary Anderson, was astonished by it while Williams team boss James Vowles said: “That one hasn't come across our radar”.
That’s the case for many teams that will be doing rapid calculations right now, back at their factories, to decide whether it’s a development direction they need to follow.
Of course, it only appeared briefly, so there’s no guarantee Ferrari will even run it come Melbourne as team boss Fred Vasseur confirmed.
And as Vasseur noted, often it’s the innovations you can’t see that make the real difference. This won’t be a huge performance differentiator, but it’s certainly the most unique technical innovation we’ve seen so far in 2026. Bravo Ferrari. - Josh Suttill
Two lessons from race start practice
The series of tests that the FIA has been conducting with new start procedures to help cars get off the line has taught us two big things.
First, that the extra five-seconds being slotted in between the cars forming up on the grid and the lights coming on has alleviated the safety fears that dominated the first Bahrain test.
The second is that it has confirmed a theory that Ferrari’s engine concept – which is believed to revolve around a smaller turbo – has potentially created a rocket ship for the start.
In both the morning and evening practice starts, Lewis Hamilton made blinding getaways – and from ninth on the grid at the end of the day he managed to lead into the first corner.
With the Haas drivers also making speedy getaways, it looks like Ferrari’s deliberate choice on engine configuration may have given it an edge.
Of course, there is a caveat that others may simply not be taking the starts as seriously, but Ferrari’s rivals may well be a bit more nervous now about whether or not they will be able to hold back the Maranello cars when the proper racing comes about. - Jon Noble
Aston Martin is only fighting Cadillac right now
Exactly what's gone so wrong for Aston Martin in 2026 remains unclear, but it's clear it's lacking both pace and reliability right now, with Fernando Alonso losing three hours after stopping on track in the afternoon.
Alonso's stoppage interrupted his race simulation, but he was hardly setting a blistering pace. In fact Liam Lawson's Racing Bulls, running on track at the same time, was well over a second a lap faster.
The only close comparison was Valtteri Bottas for newcomer Cadillac. Not the benchmark that Aston Martin, with all its investment and technical might, should be aiming to surpass.
But right now, Cadillac is Aston Martin's only rival (other than itself). Aston Martin is the slowest team in testing over a single lap and has logged the fewest laps of any team in Bahrain.
Hence Alonso's succinct end-of-day admission: "There are many things we need to fix." - JS
Mercedes angry but still ominous
All of the needling and accusations have clearly taken their toll on Toto Wolff, who fired back angrily at those who have accused his team of not satisfying the rules, first with its engine compression ratio and also with supposedly "illegal" fuel.
But with every passing day of off-track storylines, the team seems to just get stronger and stronger at the track. It set another test benchmark time with Kimi Antonelli, and while Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen toiled through long runs, Mercedes seemed more bothered with testing its pitstop skills and, according to Bernie Collins, even simulated a five-second penalty stop!
Hardly the work of a team feeling the pressure to find pace on track...
But there's no doubt the constant barrage of 'noise' is seriously irritating Wolff. Whether it's performative or genuine is a different question, but it's not impacting the team's performance in Bahrain. - Jack Benyon
F1's 'big four' have a big margin
Barcelona and the first Bahrain test helped establish that there certainly wouldn't be any Brawn GP-style fairytale, nor even a midfield team leaping to the front.
But it now looks increasingly likely that there will be a sizeable gap between the top four teams - or the 'big four' as McLaren's Zak Brown called it - and the midfield in 2026.
That's on the evidence of the long runs in particular, as Bearman points out, it's trickier to hide your pace there because everyone needs to carry similar amounts of fuel to do a race run.
"It's quite impressive how fast those top teams are. I don't know the order of them, but there is a big delta between those four and the other seven that there is now," Bearman said.
"I was not expecting that honestly. But I heard that some of the other people were so I guess...That's where the experience plays in."
Among those 'other people' is Racing Bulls team boss Alan Permane, who last Friday said: "Whenever you have a big regulation change, you're going to get the top teams move away, and the smaller teams fall back, I don't think anyone should be surprised by that." - JS
Trials for energy management fixes
F1 teams have been invited to trial reduced MGU-K power deployment during the final two days of this test as the FIA evaluates a contingency plan to address concerns over 2026 engines.
The main issue is whether cars can harvest enough energy, and deploy full power consistently over a qualifying lap. To recharge, teams are relying on aggressive downshifts and ‘super clipping’ – running the MGU-K against the engine at full throttle – alongside braking and lift-and-coast.
One option is lowering peak MGU-K output from 350kW to 300kW or even as low as 200kW to allow more consistent deployment, though this would alter the near-50/50 ICE-electric power split.
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Another proposal is raising the super clipping to the MGU-K's full 350kW capacity as it's currently limited to just 250kW for reasons that have never been clearly explained but seem to be to avoid teams slowing down too much to recharge.
As that might be what's needed to reduce lift-and-coast, especially in qualifying, it's something the FIA wants to gather data on before considering regulatory changes early in the season. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Overtake mode isn't worth much
Early feedback about the prospect of overtaking in these cars has not been great.
They are slightly smaller, slightly lighter, and follow better than their predecessors although an overall reduction in grip does mean sliding around on the tyre is easier - which isn't great.
Of bigger concern though is that the cars are so energy-poor that deploying the battery more to overtake is a high-risk thing to do.
Esteban Ocon even revealed on Thursday that the new overtake mode, which allows the driver to charge their battery a bit more and then use full electric power for longer at high speed, is actually only worth about two tenths of a second.
This is likely way less than what will be lost when a driver has to charge the battery to be able to use that overtake mode – so there's a high probability at the moment that it's not going to be worth it. - SMM
