Six days of running in Bahrain didn’t hand anyone a trophy, but it did hand out something teams value just as much at the start of a new rules cycle: certainty. In 2026, with fresh hardware and a different set of compromises baked into every car, the most revealing column on the test spreadsheet wasn’t the outright pace — it was the lap count.
Mileage doesn’t guarantee speed, but a clean, busy test narrows the number of unknowns. And after two official three-day weeks in Bahrain, a few patterns are hard to ignore: one team simply hoovered up laps, a couple of obvious contenders looked impressively “ready”, and a few outfits left Sakhir with the nagging sense they’re going to be chasing their own tail when the season starts.
McLaren did what championship-level operations tend to do in pre-season: it just kept circulating. The reigning champions were the only team to break the 800-lap barrier across the two weeks, banking 817 in total (422 in week one, 395 in week two). Oscar Piastri’s best was a 1:32.861 on day five, but the bigger story is that the MCLAREN programme barely seemed to miss a beat. Zak Brown and Andrea Stella have already played it straight, suggesting they expect to be in the mix without assuming they’ve got a clear edge over Mercedes or Ferrari. That reads like a team that likes what it sees, but also knows everyone’s hiding something.
Mercedes, meanwhile, looked every inch the outfit that’s comfortable with a new era beginning. Its total mileage was 714 laps — a hefty jump from week one’s 282 to week two’s 432 — and it paired that with the sort of low-drama efficiency that tends to translate into strong early-season form. Rookie Kimi Antonelli posted the team’s best time, a 1:32.803 on day five, before a small issue truncated his final day by 90 minutes. Not ideal, but not the sort of interruption that sends engineers into crisis mode either.
What Mercedes didn’t do is scream “runaway”. The car appeared quick and well-behaved, yet the overall picture from Bahrain suggests the front is crowded rather than settled. There’s also the background noise around a much-discussed power unit compression ratio topic, set to be clarified by an upcoming vote — a governance detail, sure, but one that will matter to how cleanly teams can commit to development directions once the racing starts.
Red Bull’s winter has been talked about for plenty of reasons, but the most consequential one might be the least noisy: it has integrated its own power unit for the first time, and it’s done so without turning the test into a reliability horror show. Across the two weeks it logged 672 laps (343 plus 329) and Max Verstappen’s best was a 1:33.109 on the final day. Laurent Mekies has suggested Red Bull sits just behind the leading pair, and that feels about right from the outside — close enough to pounce, not quite stamping its authority, but with a platform that looks sturdier than you’d expect for a first-year engine project.
If you wanted the headline time, Ferrari supplied it. Charles Leclerc’s 1:31.992 on day six was the quickest lap of the entire Bahrain test, and he didn’t just stumble into it; he kept lowering the bar, repeatedly improving his own benchmark through the final day. Ferrari also drew attention for the way the car launched in practice starts, and for hints of innovation at the rear — the sort of detail rivals clock instantly even when they pretend not to. The Scuderia’s total was 754 laps (420 in week one, 334 in week two), and the blend of pace and functionality is exactly how you inflate expectation in February. Whether that converts into the kind of season Ferrari fans actually want is the familiar next question.
Williams quietly had the kind of test that makes a midfield team dangerous. It racked up 790 laps — second only to McLaren — with Carlos Sainz setting its best time at 1:34.342 on day six. That sort of volume, allied to Mercedes power, is the closest thing to a free confidence boost you can buy in pre-season. Sainz has been candid that Williams is likely to start behind the frontrunners, but the more relevant point is how quickly it can turn a strong base into points. High mileage suggests it’ll at least arrive at round one with its homework done.
Haas was even closer to McLaren on raw running, finishing with 794 laps (390 and 404) and a best of 1:33.487 from Oliver Bearman on day six. For the smallest outfit on the grid, that’s not just a tidy test — it’s a statement of operational stability. The VF-26 has been exercised, not merely shaken down, and in a midfield expected to be brutally condensed, that matters. You don’t need to be the fastest in February if you’re the team that understands its car first.
Racing Bulls also put in serious work: 733 laps (326 plus 407), and Arvid Lindblad’s 1:34.149 on day six was backed up by a monster 165-lap shift on the final day alone. It’s the kind of mileage haul that suggests the team prioritised mapping, systems checks and long-run understanding over chasing a headline time — and with an all-new RBPT-Ford power unit to learn, that approach makes sense.
Audi’s first steps as a works constructor were, by the numbers, encouraging. It logged 710 laps split almost evenly across both weeks (353 and 357), with Gabriel Bortoleto setting a 1:33.755 on day six. There were no fireworks promised and none required; the target is to arrive in the midfield fight with a reliable baseline, and that’s exactly what this test seems to have delivered.
Alpine’s Bahrain reads like a team that’s stopped the bleeding. Total mileage came in at 677 (318 and 359) with Pierre Gasly’s 1:33.421 on day six. The wider paddock sense is that Enstone has dragged itself away from the bottom after a grim previous season, and the amount of running completed should help, particularly with Franco Colapinto still bedding into a full-time campaign. Integrating Mercedes power didn’t look like a stumbling block — a useful box to tick early.
At the other end of the “certainty” scale sits Aston Martin. It completed 334 laps in total (206 in week one, 128 in week two), with Lance Stroll’s 1:35.974 on day four its best. That’s still meaningful mileage in isolation, but the trend line is what hurts: the last day and a half was largely lost. Honda admitted a battery issue for Fernando Alonso, and Aston also faced a shortage of parts, leaving it with a stack of questions it would rather have answered before the freight left Bahrain.
Cadillac’s first official pre-season as a brand-new team landed somewhere between respectable and inevitably incomplete. It managed 586 laps (320 and 266), with Valtteri Bottas recording a 1:35.290 on day six. For a debut operation, simply running “pretty smoothly” counts as progress, even if the drivers have been clear there’s development ground to make up. The expectation is a tough start near the back — but the flip side of starting low is that gains can arrive quickly once upgrades begin to stick.
Put it together and Bahrain didn’t give us a neat pecking order — it rarely does — but it did show who’s walking into 2026 with a stable platform. McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari look like they’ve got enough in hand to start the year sharp. Red Bull’s engine story is quietly impressive. And a couple of teams — Aston in particular — will be spending the opening rounds doing the testing they didn’t get to finish in Sakhir.
