Lewis Hamilton didn’t need a stopwatch to make his point in Bahrain. Under the revised practice-start routine being trialled during 2026 pre-season testing, the Ferrari launched cleanly and aggressively enough on Thursday to catch the paddock’s eye — and to pour a little more fuel on an idea that’s been bubbling away since George Russell first raised it: Ferrari might have found something in the launch phase.
Russell’s claim last week was specific and, in F1 terms, unusually pointed. He suggested Ferrari could have an edge off the line because it’s running a smaller turbo than its rivals. In a regulation reset year where everyone’s trying to map out advantages before they calcify into pecking orders, that’s exactly the sort of detail teams normally keep behind closed doors. Hamilton’s starts didn’t “prove” anything — nothing in testing ever does — but they did provide the sort of visible corroboration that engineers hate and rivals latch onto.
The timing matters too. F1 is trialling a revised practice start procedure in Bahrain amid safety concerns over the new-generation 2026 cars, so there’s more attention than usual on how these cars leave the line and how predictable they are in those first metres. When one looks sharp in that environment, it lands.
Hamilton, now entering his second full season in red, is also uniquely positioned to turn a “nice launch” into a narrative. If a Ferrari shows bite on the getaway, people will connect it to his feel for starts, his relentless repetition of procedures, and his ability to communicate those marginal behaviours back to the team. And if it keeps happening, rivals will inevitably start asking whether it’s driver craft, power unit behaviour, clutch mapping — or something deeper in the Ferrari package.
That “something deeper” is where Bahrain’s other big Ferrari talking point comes in: an innovative rear wing concept that had just about everyone walking a little slower through the garages to get a longer look.
Ferrari debuted a radical rotating rear wing during Thursday’s running — the kind of solution that instantly divides opinion because it’s so visible. The attraction is obvious: in a world of active aero, any cleverness around how you manage the transition between configurations is potential lap time. But the risk is just as obvious: mechanisms and moving surfaces don’t just create performance, they create behaviours. And sometimes the behaviour you didn’t want is the one you get.
The technical concern raised around the design is that the opening and closing motion can produce a “sail-like” effect — a change in aerodynamic load and balance that might be manageable in a straight line but awkward as the car yaws, pitches, or hits a bump. In other words, the wing could be giving with one hand and taking away with the other depending on where you are in the lap.
What’s telling is that this wasn’t, apparently, an idea nobody else had considered. Other teams looked at similar concepts for 2026 and decided the compromises weren’t worth it. Ferrari has clearly landed in a different place on that trade-off — either because its overall aero map makes it less sensitive to the drawbacks, or because it believes the upside is large enough to justify the headaches.
And that’s the key nuance here: this doesn’t have to be a “magic wing” to matter. It only has to be worth enough in enough places — and be stable enough in enough conditions — to force everyone else to waste time reacting.
Williams, for one, sounded more intrigued than alarmed. Team principal James Vowles admitted a Ferrari-style solution wasn’t on Williams’ “radar” when it designed its 2026 car, describing Ferrari’s approach as “an interesting direction of travel.” That’s a carefully chosen phrase: it acknowledges the ingenuity without committing to a scramble. The subtext is equally clear, though. If Ferrari’s concept holds up, it’ll become part of the wider technical conversation very quickly — and teams who didn’t package for it may find it harder to pivot.
While Ferrari dominated the day’s chatter, Bahrain also delivered the other side of new-era testing: the kind of reminder that reliability is still a performance differentiator when everyone’s racing the clock.
Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin stopped on track at Turn 4 after less than an hour of afternoon running on Thursday, and Honda confirmed it was a power unit issue. Aston Martin was then ruled out for the rest of the day, leaving Alonso with just 68 laps completed. With Lance Stroll also triggering red flags on Wednesday, it’s not the sort of quiet, mileage-heavy week any team wants — especially one trying to establish rhythm before the season begins.
There’s an old testing cliché that teams don’t learn much when things go right, and learn everything when they go wrong. It’s also not entirely true. What teams actually need is time: time to validate parts, time to compare setups, time to run through procedures until they’re muscle memory. Losing half a day — or more — is brutal in that context, because it forces you into shortcuts. And shortcuts in a brand-new ruleset have a habit of resurfacing when points are on the line.
Off the track, the FIA is also trying to get ahead of a situation that could become the sort of slow-burn controversy nobody enjoys but everyone ends up caring about. Single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis has explained why power unit manufacturers have been given until August to make changes if an e-vote triggers a regulatory amendment tied to a new compression ratio measurement protocol.
The intent is to settle an ongoing debate around how geometric compression ratio is measured — and to close off a potential loophole before it turns into a competitive flashpoint. The August deadline is significant because it signals the FIA is trying to balance two realities at once: acting quickly enough to preserve regulatory intent, while leaving manufacturers enough runway to implement changes without it becoming a chaotic, midstream rewrite.
Put it all together and Bahrain is already offering a familiar pre-season cocktail: a Ferrari doing Ferrari things — bold hardware, visible performance hints, and just enough uncertainty to keep the rest of the grid guessing — while the FIA and the power unit suppliers quietly spar over definitions that could end up mattering more than any rear wing photo.
Testing, as ever, isn’t about answers. It’s about which questions you’re forcing your rivals to ask. Ferrari has managed that in a couple of different ways already.
