The paddock hasn’t even pretended to be subtle this week: it’s shakedown season, and the first proper sightings of the 2026 machines are starting to leak out from behind factory doors.
These early runs are always sold as “systems checks” — the kind of low-mileage, tyre-limited filming days that are meant to confirm the car starts, stops and doesn’t cook itself after three laps. But in a regulation reset year, every blurry trackside photo becomes a minor event. Even when teams try to hide the details under matte-black wraps, the broad strokes are out there for anyone with a long lens and a bit of luck.
Audi were first to show their hand, rolling out at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Friday, January 9. We didn’t get the glossy, controlled reveal you’d expect from a manufacturer that’s been planning this entry for years; instead, the only image doing the rounds came from a fan at trackside, catching a blacked-out car on its first public miles. That’s become the modern reality of pre-season: you can shut the garage door, but you can’t close the circuit.
The more revealing part of Audi’s day wasn’t the camouflage — it was the reaction. Gabriel Bortoleto admitted he had “goosebumps everywhere” when the car fired up for the first time, a reminder that for all the corporate polish around this project, the people inside it are still feeling the weight of the moment. Audi’s first laps as a full works F1 outfit were never going to be just another filming day, even if that’s what it says on the paperwork.
Cadillac, meanwhile, are wasting no time trying to look like they belong. The newest team on the grid got itself running at Silverstone, close to its UK base, with Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas both turning laps. True to form for a brand building its own identity from scratch, the glimpse we got wasn’t from a spectator’s phone but the team itself — a short social clip of the car heading down the Hamilton Straight.
It’s not much to go on visually, and Cadillac won’t be remotely interested in handing out free technical close-ups before it’s even completed its first winter. Still, there’s a significance to simply being on-track early with two experienced hands in the cockpit. If you’re a new operation, the first weeks aren’t about lap time; they’re about processes: radio clarity, basic reliability, procedural rhythm, and getting a crew to function like an F1 team rather than a group of talented departments.
The clearest look so far has come from Racing Bulls, who were photographed heavily during a pair of outings at Imola — one described as a ‘demonstration’ event and the other a filming day. In a week where most teams would prefer to be seen as little as possible, Racing Bulls’ VCARB03 has been the most visible 2026 car in circulation, simply because there were cameras there and no way to hide from them.
Liam Lawson appeared to be at the wheel on Tuesday, giving Racing Bulls valuable early mileage and, just as importantly, a reference point for how the car behaves away from the simulator. That’s what these days are really for: bedding in the fundamentals. You can learn plenty from correlation runs at low speed — steering loads, brake feel, power unit delivery, and whether the thing responds to set-up changes in a way that makes sense — even if you’re not showing your rivals anything you didn’t intend to.
What’s striking, in the small sample we have so far, is how the tone differs team to team. Audi’s first run felt like a milestone. Cadillac’s like a statement of intent. Racing Bulls’ like business as usual — get it on track, get the photos taken, move on.
None of this will decide anything once proper testing begins, let alone when the season starts. But in a winter where everybody is discovering the same new rulebook at the same time, the first cars to break cover always shape the chatter. They start the comparison game, they set expectations (fair or not), and they quietly raise the pressure on the teams still hidden away in their factories.
And the best part — or the worst, if you’re a technical director — is that this is only the beginning. More shakedowns are imminent, more images will escape, and the 2026 grid will slowly take form in public whether the teams like it or not.
