The first certainty of the new F1: the 2026 cars are (much) faster than the Formula 2s

How strong are the 2026 F1 cars? The shakedown tests in Barcelona are now in the archives and, browsing through the very few images shared by the teams – who pushed for the debut of the 2026 cars to take place behind closed doors, without journalists and away from prying eyes – and in the scarcity of information regarding the km traveled and the lap times, there is a first partial certainty regarding the regulations of the technical revolution of Formula 1: the single-seaters resulting from the new course which provides for a substantial and substantial increase in electric power (which arrives around 50% of the total horsepower, equalizing the express thrust of the combustion engine) are not that much slower than those seen in the recent past. This avoids the bugbear mentioned several times before the debut of this new generation of F1 cars, when there was persistent talk of the risk that the cars were dangerously close to the times of Formula 2. The Formula 2 risk averted A risk promptly averted by the facts. Despite the general uncertainty due to the absence of a public timing system – which generated fantozzian monsters of the type “It was said that Italy was winning 20 to 0 and that Zoff had also scored with a header, from a corner”, which we would frankly have avoided in the era of social media and generative artificial intelligence – the times filtered by the Circuit de Catalunya give us a Formula 1 that remains much faster than F2: Lewis Hamilton’s best lap with the Ferrari SF-26 in 1:16.348 is 9 seconds below Arvid Lindblad’s pole position time (1:25.180) in last year’s Barcelona cadet stage. A gap that is probably even wider in reality considering the less than optimal weather and asphalt conditions in January and that the top series drivers did not push hard, as is normally done in a qualifying session. The (difficult) comparison with the ground effect F1 cars If it is clear that Formula 1 is destined to at least remain Formula 1 in terms of performance, it is less simple to make a comparison with the previous single-seaters. The most immediate reference is the time that earned Oscar Piastri pole position in the 2025 World Championship, with the young Australian from McLaren stopping the clock at 1:11.546, just under five seconds better than Hamilton’s time on day five of the shakedown. The comparison, however, is very difficult: partly due to the discussions already made with F2 – track and weather conditions, but also different “commitment” of the drivers between qualifying and winter tests – but also because in the tests the softest compounds in the Pirelli range, the C5, were available, compared to the fact that in the race weekend of the 2025 Spanish GP the soft tire was the C3 (two steps harder). At the same time, it is also difficult to make a comparison with the last time that F1 ran in Barcelona for a winter testing session: in fact, it happened in 2022 with the debut of the new ground effect single-seaters, with Lewis Hamilton who closed the tests – at the wheel of a Mercedes that promised to be very fearsome and super innovative, but which then turned out to be a flop during the season – with the best time of 1:19.138. And if the circumstance seems perfect for a comparison (also in 2022 the teams were experiencing a new generation of single-seaters for the first time), unfortunately the time three seconds slower than the 2026 one is misleading: at the time, in fact, the Barcelona track still featured the very slow chicane of the third sector, eliminated starting from the 2023 edition of the Spanish GP. In Barcelona, ​​with and without chicane It is then impossible, given the absence of official chronometric data relating to the sectors, to compare, for example, the time of the first and second partials of the track between the 2022 and 2026 F1 tests. But can we still get an idea? Perhaps, in part, yes: in 2022 Charles Leclerc scored pole position in Barcelona in 1:18.750 (only slightly faster than Hamilton’s time in the tests, probably due to the difference in performance between the softer C5 compound and the C3 used in the official race weekend), while in the following edition, without the final chicane, pole went to Max Verstappen in 1:12.272. A time of around six and a half seconds faster under the same conditions (dry qualifying) and tires (Pirelli C3) but not of the car, given the technical evolution of the new generation cars a year and a half after the debut of the regulations. By making the tare without demanding who knows what particular precision, we could therefore consider the version of the track without the chicane to be about 5 seconds faster than the one with the variant in the third sector. It is a finding also confirmed by the qualifications of Formula 2, that is, a single-make category that has not had a great technical evolution from one year to the next (unlike F1): in 2022, Jack Doohan set pole in 1:28.612, while the following year Oliver Bearman was faster by just over five seconds (1:23.546). F1 2026 two seconds (approximately) from 2022 Returning therefore to the times of the Formula 1 shakedown tests this season, we could add five seconds to Hamilton’s 1:16.348 arriving at around the medium-low 1:21: which means that, in the current state, and with the same debut of the new technology compared to the debut of 2022 – which however will have a much faster growth considering the evolution not only of the chassis and aerodynamic part but also the increased knowledge of the new power units – these 2026 F1 machines should be around two seconds slower than those of the previous generation. The Bahrain tests will obviously help us to be even more precise.