Never before has Formula 1's annual journey been so long. In factwith the Bahrain prize raced this Saturday, there are still 23 races to be contested that are going to eat up the calendar until today's distant December 8, accompanied by six Saturday prologues known as sprints and also for their discussed usefulness and impact for the show.
It is totally premature to make predictions based on the laboratory tests from a few days ago or on the results of the first valid test – whoever wins – because many technical things are going to change as they adjust the cars, calibrate them to race pace in terms of of tire consumption and achieve a set-up that is reproducible throughout all the laps of that number of valid ones and does not show a sporadic rush of simple practice or classification turns.
Is Mercedes back in top shape? Didn't Red Bull progress as much as they say and are they violating it? Will Ferrari go from being a one-lap car to a contender at the finish line? Is McLaren on the beat? Is Alonso more than Aston Martin? There are many more questions than answers.
Let's put aside what we've seen so far. There is too much bodywork to show and secret technology to create and use in each pit. But it is good to make this reflection: to have an estimate of the potential of each team, You have to look at the performance of car number two in which the fastest hands of the leader of each team are usually excluded.
That's where the difference between, for example, Verstappen over Pérez, Alonso over Stroll, Ricciardo over Tsunoda, Albon over Sergeant, comes out of the game. And in less doses Leclerc on Sáinz or, much less evident, Hamilton on Russell, to only mention the most visible ones, so many do somersaults throughout the year. By putting these times and results on the panorama of favoritism, we see that the dense fight is for class B, in which the roulette will give many options, while ahead the trail of Verstappen and his Red Bull will certainly be the one that most show the way.
However, there are other factors that will be very decisive during the course of the year. For example, 13 of the 20 drivers end their contracts with this tournament. Seen another way They are only fixed on their teams Verstappen (Red Bull), Russell (Mercedes), Norris and Piastri (McLaren), Leclerc and Hamilton (Ferrari) and Stroll (Aston Martin, his dad's team).
The others, starting with Alonso, who is not thinking about retirement, are going to run not only for the Sunday on duty but also to impress enough to achieve continuity in their team or a neighboring one.
Many of them will explore conversations with various squads, but with enough certainty to continue because there are not 13 drivers with a super license to race in F1 or with sufficient skills. Therefore, there will necessarily be many repeaters in a cloud in which all the speculations that will override the results will move.
There is also a dominant reason: the great transfer of the year was already made by Hamilton to Ferrari for 2025 and, therefore, his seat at Mercedes will be the great objective of the unemployed, just like Pérez's at Red Bull, except that Mexican produced a more than exceptional season. And so. The approaches and levers will be more visible than the hidden science of aerodynamics where the great external differences of the cars lie that will seek to advance in the best way in the invisible medium of air. In these months, business is going to be more news than mechanics.
Of course, the development of cars will be at stake anyway. The teams have a controlled budget in the order of 140 million dollars, which is a fortune, but in F1's accounts they are fair and since in the year 2026 all the rules change, these two seasons may not be a check in target for engineering, the juicy contracts of the technical teams and the efficiency of the payrolls that already in the large teams are around 1,200 people working so that only a couple of cars work.
Everyone has to operate and study thinking now about the unknown 2026. It does not mean that these two years are ones of passive transition and evolution, but it is clear that many revolutions are not on the horizon on the technical horizon.
The extensive calendar also works against developments and improvements because there is not enough time between tests to the point that it is known that a more updated and definitive configuration of the cars and lineups will only be seen in the Japan race, chapter four of this pilgrimage that, As a novelty, it offers the return of the test in China and the advancement of the Suzuka race for the spring.
Pilots are already complaining about the intense programming, fatigue that is much more common among team personnel who travel from corner to corner of the world carrying tons of equipment and containers, more than 30,000 tires!, huge barrels of special gasoline. and they form entourages of at least 2,500 official people, plus the press and other actors and vanities who also run behind the scenes.
As always, heF1 is first of all car racing and then 20 exclusive characters who access their complex helms in which they can take advantage of and program the information and references of millions of data that today's electronics provide through the reading of more 250 sensors in each device. These have digitally narrowed the intuitive ability of racers who operate in a critically controlled and monitored window that does not allow inventions or stunts that deviate from the ideal lines of driving in which there are minimal useful variations.
What awaits us? Quite a dose of the same “MaxRed” recipe, sure, but the decks are going to put cards on the track that probably will not allow another tsunami as devastating as the one in 2023.
Joseph Clopatofsky
MOTOR Director
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