The paddock always loves a loophole story, and the first proper one of the 2026 era has arrived right on schedule. This time it’s centred on the new power unit rules and a set of rumours that Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains have found a clever way of interpreting them — clever enough, supposedly, to have rivals muttering about the spirit of the regulations before a wheel has turned in anger.
Christian Horner, now described as former Red Bull team principal but still an unmistakably influential voice around anything linked to the Milton Keynes orbit, has pushed back hard on the idea that anyone is “cheating like wildcats”. That phrase tells you plenty about the tone of the debate already: not just technical disagreement, but the kind of moral grandstanding F1 can’t resist when the stakes are high and the rulebook is fresh.
Horner’s interest in this one isn’t theoretical. He co-founded Red Bull Powertrains back in 2021, at the point Red Bull’s engine future was being reshuffled after Honda’s original withdrawal announcement. So when he talks about what manufacturers are doing with 2026 concepts, he’s not doing it as a neutral commentator. He’s defending the basic principle that in Formula 1, the job is to read the regulations and find performance — and that you don’t get points for building the most “pure” interpretation of what someone in a meeting room might’ve intended.
It’s also a familiar rhythm: the moment one side is believed to have landed on something interesting, the rest of the grid starts applying pressure through politics and press. If the governing body doesn’t clamp down early, competitors tend to argue that the sport is about to be “broken”; if it does clamp down, the narrative flips to moving the goalposts. Either way, those first few months of a new rules cycle are always when the loudest lobbying happens, because once hardware is committed, “clarifications” can become hugely expensive.
While the engine argument bubbles away, Adrian Newey is doing what Adrian Newey always does — keeping everyone slightly off balance. Aston Martin’s AMR26 has already generated noise after its first public running at a shakedown in Barcelona, not because it set any meaningful lap time, but because everybody wanted to see what Newey’s first proper Aston car looked like in the cold light of day.
Newey, for his part, has leaned into the intrigue. He’s suggested the AMR26 will be “very different” by the time the season begins at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne next month. That’s a pointed choice of words. In F1-speak, “very different” isn’t a gentle refinement package; it’s a warning that the version people have photographed and zoomed in on might not be the one that matters.
There are a few ways to read that. One is that Aston Martin’s initial spec was never intended to be the full statement, more a functional baseline to tick mileage and correlation boxes. Another is that the early car showed something the team didn’t love, and Newey’s already pushing a more radical direction into production. Either way, it underlines a truth teams rarely say out loud: these early unveilings are often as much about information management as they are about engineering.
Away from the headline-grabbing cars and concepts, there have been a couple of moves that speak to the quieter realities of 2026: money, people, and how quickly plans can change.
Williams and Santander have split ahead of the season, bringing an end to a partnership announced with fanfare when Carlos Sainz completed his first test for the team in December 2024. Santander’s relationship with Sainz has been a long-running thread through the grid in recent years, having previously been aligned with Ferrari, and its decision not to continue into 2026 leaves Williams with a hole to plug at a time when every commercial conversation is being reframed by new regulations and new competitive expectations.
On track, Williams has at least started putting miles on its new machinery. The team confirmed a shakedown of the FW48 at Silverstone, with Sainz and Alex Albon sharing driving duties. That’s the kind of low-key day teams crave: get the car through its basic systems checks, make sure nothing catastrophically fails, and start building the dataset that turns a winter of promises into something the engineers can actually interrogate.
Williams also plans a second filming day in Bahrain on February 10, just 24 hours before the start of the second pre-season test at the same venue. That timing feels deliberate — a final chance to bed in procedures and iron out niggles before the more public, more intense scrutiny of official running.
Meanwhile Ferrari has been busy strengthening its operational bench, appointing Guillaume Dezoteux as head of performance operations. Dezoteux arrives from Racing Bulls after 18 years with the Faenza-based outfit, most recently as head of vehicle performance, and Ferrari has confirmed he began work in Maranello this week. It’s the kind of hire that rarely makes front pages but can pay dividends in the long grind of a season: performance operations is where potential lap time either gets extracted cleanly or left sitting in the car.
Put all of it together and it feels like the proper beginning of 2026: a grid trying to look calm while quietly scrambling. The engine debate is already sharpening elbows, Newey is hinting that what you see isn’t what you’ll get, and teams like Williams and Ferrari are dealing with the less glamorous but equally decisive ingredients — sponsorship stability, track mileage, and key personnel.
And if this is the tone before the first race, it won’t take long for the new era to find its first real flashpoint.
