Sky F1 will only take viewers live for the final hour of running on each day of next week’s second pre-season test in Bahrain, a decision that underlines just how fragmented F1’s winter “show” has become in 2026.
The broadcaster has confirmed it will go live for 60 minutes from 1500 UK time (1800 local) across February 11-13, alongside its usual evening wrap-up programmes. For anyone hoping Bahrain would mark a return to the all-day, wall-to-wall coverage that’s become part of modern testing culture, it’s a deflating bit of news — particularly after the opening Barcelona shakedown was held behind closed doors.
This is the first season of the new regulations cycle and, with it, a brand-new generation of cars. F1 has expanded the pre-season schedule to three separate tests specifically to help teams get mileage and understanding before the championship begins in Australia on March 8. Yet for fans and plenty in the media, actually *seeing* that learning process unfold is proving oddly difficult.
Barcelona’s “Shakedown Week” last month offered almost nothing in the way of conventional access. With no spectators and limited visibility, coverage leaned heavily on crumbs: team updates, local reports and whatever could be verified through timing information before that window narrowed. In that context, Bahrain was supposed to feel like normality — cars in the open, paddock access restored, a proper sense of rhythm returning to the winter.
Instead, the first Bahrain test has been packaged as a compressed live product: one hour a day, at the back end of the afternoon. That timing will inevitably shape what viewers get. Late sessions are often when teams start to pivot towards higher-fuel runs, longer stints and systems checks rather than headline-grabbing single-lap efforts, so the live hour may offer more “how the car behaves” than “here’s a time to obsess over”. For the purists, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that pre-season has always been a tug-of-war between sporting relevance and broadcast theatre.
There is, however, at least a clear line in the sand: full live coverage is expected to return for the final Bahrain test later this month (February 18-20). So this isn’t Sky stepping away from testing altogether — it’s a short-term trimming of the live window for one week of running.
The difference between “some” coverage and “all” coverage matters more than it sounds. Testing isn’t just about watching a lap time pop up. It’s about context: when the times are set, what compound is being used, how teams are sequencing their programmes, whether a car is doing repeated cool-downs, whether a driver is on the radio, whether a garage looks calm or hurried. Strip away hours of visibility and you strip away the ability to read those signals with any confidence. That’s when speculation fills the gaps — and in a year when everyone is trying to decode an entirely new rule set, there will be plenty of gaps to fill.
For those following from home, the knock-on effect is obvious: fewer live reference points, less opportunity to build an informed picture of who’s comfortable and who’s scrambling. For outlets that will be on the ground in Sakhir, access restores some of that texture — you can still piece together what’s happening by watching the flow of the pitlane, speaking to people, and triangulating the usual paddock whispers with what’s running on track. But for the broader audience, this week’s test will feel like it’s happening at arm’s length.
It also lands awkwardly against the backdrop of why F1 expanded pre-season in the first place. Three tests is an admission that 2026 is a reset year — not just a winter of “new wings and a new livery”, but a wholesale learning curve for teams and drivers. You’d think the sport would want that story to be as visible as possible: the first reliability headaches, the early correlation checks, the inevitable red flags and improvised fixes that tell you who’s actually ready to go racing.
We already got a glimpse of what limited transparency looks like in Barcelona, where even basic information became a scavenger hunt once timing access tightened. It left fans watching for the occasional photo or team line to hint at what had really happened, and it pushed journalists into an old-school mode of verification and cross-checking just to establish the basics of mileage and pace.
Bahrain will at least be open, and the paddock will be properly populated. That should bring back the normal cadence of winter reporting — the quiet technical conversations, the driver debrief quotes that reveal more than they intend, the sight of a front wing being wheeled out that sparks a dozen questions. But on the broadcast side, the sport is asking supporters to accept that the most important pre-season in years will, for the next week at least, be served in carefully measured slices.
If the final test later this month delivers the full live experience again, this week may end up as an irritation rather than a trend. Still, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that F1’s pre-season has become increasingly selective about what it wants the public to witness — even as it asks everyone to care more than ever about the details.
