Toto Wolff was very pleased with what he saw during the private test days in Barcelona. Thanks to the sweeping regulation changes that come into force in 2026, the cars for the upcoming season, according to the Austrian, once again genuinely look like Formula 1 cars. “They are no longer the whales of the past,” Wolff concluded, adding he expects the cars will produce many more unexpected overtaking manoeuvres.
Although no concrete conclusions can be drawn after the first test days in Barcelona, teams did get a first glimpse of what the competition has designed for 2026. In particular the Mercedes team looked immediately strong. The Silver Arrows ran more laps than any other team – drivers George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli together completed 500 laps – which led McLaren team principal Andrea Stella to conclude: “Mercedes sets the bar high.”
Team principal Toto Wolff was himself also pleased with what he saw in Barcelona. “I see no negatives,” the Austrian told the media afterwards. “I don’t want to overdo it or present the product as better than it is, but I think the cars are brilliant. They look spectacular. They resemble Formula 1 cars again. They’re neither too small nor too large. They don’t look like the whales of the past. The aesthetics are very good.”
‘Many more overtakes’
Besides the 2026 challengers being smaller and lighter than their predecessors, the new power unit next season will split its output evenly between the internal combustion engine and a larger battery pack. That forces drivers to carefully manage the extra electrical energy during races. In wheel-to-wheel fights it will create significant speed differentials between cars.
Wolff already saw that in Barcelona when George Russell passed Franco Colapinto. “George passed Colapinto while Colapinto was on his long runs. The speed difference down the straight was around fifty or sixty kilometres per hour. It’s going to be super exciting — where, when and how the drivers will deploy and optimise that ‘boost’. We’re going to see many more overtakes, and in places we wouldn’t expect. Aside from the fastest cars and the best drivers, there’s also an extra dimension of intelligent driving and tactics that’s easy for F1 to understand.”
