The initial evidence and impressions of Formula 1’s blurry emerging 2026 picture point to Mercedes making an ominous start that includes avoiding a problem that plagued it during the ground-effect era.

As Mercedes kept being talked up as the early favourite last year, long before cars ever hit the track, the reality was nobody knew for sure. It was simply the general consensus that Mercedes appeared to be in the best place in terms of its engine development in particular.

Now the W17 and Mercedes’ engine have been running on track, and the team’s feedback on how last week’s Barcelona test went has been established, that sentiment has only been strengthened.

The initial remarks are encouraging on both car and engine, the most amusing being George Russell, claiming to be quoting team boss Toto Wolff, saying the new car is “not a turd”, then Wolff confirming that interpretation.

Though this was unusually jovial there was actually a serious underlying point. As Russell pointed out that even this early on, you know when you’ve got problems. The negatives are highlighted early in testing and Mercedes seems quite confident that has been avoided.

And it is not the reliability or the early pace of the car when it was on-track that has left Mercedes most encouraged. The laptimes are inevitably a red herring at this stage and good mileage only counts for so much.

But how the car feels and what the data is telling them versus expectations is the most reliable information Mercedes has to work with.

This is where things sound better than they ever did in the preceding ground-effect era.

Countless times across 2022 to 2025, Mercedes personnel would end up mentioning variants of ‘the car has this much theoretical potential, but on track it’s doing something else’. After getting caught out at the start of 2022, Russell admitted Mercedes wanted to reel in expectations this year.

Russell said Mercedes was confident there wouldn’t be any “crazy unknowns or unforeseen things” - like the porpoising phenomenon that caused Mercedes nightmares when the ground-effect era began - but the thing about unforeseen problems is you don’t anticipate them in advance.

That’s why Mercedes left Barcelona with such a positive feeling. The car reacted as it expected, the aerodynamic performance being measured on the car tallies with what is being seen in simulations, how the car handles on track is broadly the same as in the virtual world – Kimi Antonelli said it was actually “quite a bit better” than on the simulator.

And Russell said this correlation overall is better than anything Mercedes has had since its last title-winning season in 2021.  

“The car reacted as we anticipated,” he said. “The numbers we're seeing from the aero on the car match what we see back on the simulator. How the car is handling is matching how it feels on the simulator.

“This is something we've not really experienced since 2021 as a team. We're sort of ticking the boxes of everything that we want to tick.”

Something that helps make this a little more meaningful is that Russell claims he was “pushing the limits” of the car immediately. So Mercedes will be optimistic that all the positive early reads aren’t just because the car’s being run too conservatively and all the problems will be unearthed once it all gets turned up to 11.

That obviously doesn’t mean the Barcelona version of the W17 was its final form and when everything is balanced on more of a razor blade in terms of set-up optimisation and engine power, there’s bound to be stuff the drivers don’t like or that the team needs to improve.

But Russell’s implication from saying he was “pushing the boundaries of the car” from the very start is that he was doing enough early on to clock any initial vices and most importantly any big discrepancies with all of Mercedes’ preparations back at base.

And that’s not happened yet, which may be enough to be confident that the particular difficulties of that phase are behind the team and it is now going to get the benefit of all of the work and the digging into the tools to actually make them better.

“That's what I think,” said Wolff. “The pre-investment in tools and in simulations and doing the correlation work will be beneficial.

“But in the same way, the learning curve will be steep. Once we see what the others do, we will better understand. It's quite interesting to see on the Ferrari and on the Red Bull, the way they were managing energy in Barcelona was different to us. It wasn't worse. It wasn't better, but it was just different.

“Learning from seeing the others, learning from the more mileage that we will be doing, the challenges in the races where we realise, ‘hold a minute, on Sunday, we haven't mapped it in the way you win races’. Maybe we have mapped it for a quick lap and then suddenly you fall back.

“The most clever guys in the car and on the engineering side are gonna win.”

'Wary and sceptical'

Mercedes’ confidence or optimism does not extend much further, though, for fear of being misled by its own expectations.

Wolff was willing to at least hint how happy Mercedes is when he said they are enthusiastic about the new rules and “you wake up with a more of a smile if your car is quick” and “generally we are happy people”.

But he was also keen to stress that there is no clear performance picture “contrary to what many people think”, as well as reminding us that he’s a “glass-half-empty person” and is “wary and sceptical” Mercedes has a title-challenging package.

And on whether it’s a car that can win the world championship, Russell inevitably said it’s still “way too early” to tell: “We've had a very reliable test. But we'll have to wait and see if the car lives up to the expectation.”

Still, there’s been no attempt from Mercedes to hide its satisfaction with how its first week of testing had gone. There are no prizes for finishing its three days early but it did mean two things: one, the car ran so well Mercedes had no downtime in between days of running where it needed more time to prepare; and two, it gave itself an extra 24 hours to start crunching all the data accumulated.

Russell said the test “exceeded our expectations” in terms of reliability and how smoothly it went. Engine validation was the primary objective for all the manufacturers last week and Hywel Thomas, who runs the Mercedes engine programme, suggested there is still plenty more to come as “we weren’t running, but we managed to walk” in the test.

That in itself is quite foreboding given the impression Mercedes made on almost everybody, although it mainly means the faster-paced stuff will come at the next two tests in Bahrain, making sure everything is “nailed on and perfect” for the start of the season proper.

Engine edge

Reliability was really impressive among most teams and manufacturers at Barcelona so it’s certainly not as simple as ‘Mercedes was the only team that could get its engine to work, therefore it’s streets ahead’.

This was certainly no repeat of the disastrous start most had with the brand new hybrid engines back in 2014 when hardly anyone could string laps together at the first test. Mercedes technical director James Allison alluded to this when he said it was surprising just how well everybody seemed to run in Spain after expecting a “symphony of red flags and smoking vehicles”.

But it means teams will be hoping to go into the season focused on performance rather than “trying to keep everything held together with baling wire and tape”, as Allison puts it, which places an even bigger emphasis on getting the most out of the new engines early.  

There are early suggestions that works teams have an inherent advantage at this stage of 2026 as their understanding of how to best run the engines is the most advanced.

With significantly more electric power to play with and batteries that need to work extremely hard to recharge to maximise what can be deployed, the new 2026 formula is expected to produce much bigger demands on how the drivers and teams manage the engines strategically.

This favours teams like Mercedes at the moment as they’ve had the most information at the earliest opportunities, and designed their cars around maximising it. It’s considered no coincidence that the best prepared teams last week seemed to be Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

Russell admits there are things that still need to become second nature for drivers as right now all the techniques to maximise recharging the battery are “a bit of a surprise”, so he reckons the ones who put the most work in today will come off best.

In that sense Mercedes racking up so many more laps than most has to be considered a potential advantage. Nothing is guaranteed, though, as all at Mercedes are quick to stress – and inevitably still more to come from this package.

“There's definitely still room to improve and I think as with any new generation or new car you bring to the table, everything's not going to be perfect on day one,” said Russell.

“Now, the test exceeded our expectations in terms of reliability and how smoothly everything went, but it isn't to say that everything was perfect.

“We're still pushing really hard to improve on the limitations I had, understanding this new engine, as that was the first time we drove that on the track, and there's definitely room to improve that.

“It's so challenging to say and in a competitive season, you're looking at one or two tenths splits the top couple of teams.

“After these days of testing it's impossible to know who is on the right side of that tenth or not.”

Jorge Martin pulling out of the first 2026 pre-season MotoGP test came out of the blue given he had made no mention of any fitness concerns at Aprilia’s team launch just a few weeks earlier.

He’d even already returned to racing at last season’s final round having seemingly fully recovered from his latest injury.

The 2024 world champion still attended this week’s Sepang test with his Aprilia team despite not taking part, and he spoke to the media for the first time since confirming that he has been forced to undergo yet more surgery.

Martin first conceded only late last week that he was set to miss out the Sepang test, where his injury woes started 12 months ago, after finally admitting that he had remained silent during the team’s presentation about the two further surgical procedures he had undergone to fix issues with both the wrist and collarbone he broke at the Japanese Grand Prix last October. He had crashed out on the opening lap of the sprint race at Motegi, taking team-mate Marco Bezzecchi.

Martin was able to return to action in time for the final round (and its important post-race test) at Valencia six weeks later - but explained at Sepang that it was only in the days afterwards he realised that the bone still hadn’t healed properly.

“After the Valencia race, I was more or less feeling good,” he said, “but a few days after I started to have a lot of pain in the hand and in the collarbone, in my normal life at home. 

“I realised then that I had to go to a second opinion about my injuries and I was right - I had to undergo surgery again. Some of the bones were not healed.

“I had surgery as soon as possible, although for sure there were some days of doubt after all that I have been through.

“To go for surgery again was really tough, but it was the best thing for my future and to finally be at my 100%, because I think through all of 2025 I was never at 100%, all season. It’s a pity, but finally I have closed that state and now I am finally on my way to 100%.”

And while the decision to go under the knife was shrouded in secrecy, he insists that, after a year where he’s openly spoken about his struggles with both his physical and mental health, that keeping quiet was what he needed to do to best prepare himself for his return to action as soon as possible.

“We didn’t still know if I would be able to be here,” Martin added, “so we didn’t want to put all the noise on the injury.

“After six injuries in 2025, I wanted to be relaxed at home even if I was recovering again. I didn’t want a lot of people calling me.

“We left it until the last moment to decide if I would be able to come or not, finally I didn’t, and that’s why we said last week.”

Requiring extensive surgery on his wrist in particular, with a bone transplant from his pelvis needed to finally repair the scaphoid fracture, Martin believes he can now finally start the season fully fit - just not quite yet.

“My target now is to be at the Buriram test [in a fortnight],” he said. “We were a bit on the limit to be here, but finally the doctors said that it was better to wait.

“I will have another check on Monday, and if everything is OK I will start riding motorbikes in Spain before heading to Thailand for the test. That is the target, to have some feedback from the new Aprilia, because if not it will be a bit repeating the season of last year.

“Maybe the wrist is a bit slower. I did the surgery on it two weeks earlier than the collarbone, but the collarbone feels fantastic and the strength is getting there.

“The hand is now consolidated 100%, but the problem is that I have to now gain a bit of strength and mobility. I think I will be at 100% soon, so I am relaxed about it.

“They took some other bone from another part of the body to make the bone heal, and now the plate is much bigger and I have more screws. There is no way it can move. But the recovery process was much better, too. 

“The last time I had surgery, I was moving after two days - and this time I was four weeks without moving. The timing of the recovery was much more normal.”

Yamaha has suspended its participation in this week's Sepang MotoGP test due to safety and reliability concerns with its new V4-powered M1.

The issue is not related to the crash that ultimately ended Fabio Quartararo's participation in the three-day test after only one day but rather due to an engine problem he experienced when he temporarily rejoined the action on Tuesday afternoon before the broken finger that ended his week was diagnosed.

That problem flagged up safety concerns that resulted in Alex Rins, Jack Miller, and Toprak Razgatlioglu initially sitting out Wednesday morning's action.

The team then decided mid-afternoon that it would not participate in the day at all, and would make a decision on whether it runs on the final day of the test on Thursday morning.

“We had an issue with electronics," Quartararo initially told the media on Tuesday when asked if he had engine problems when he rejoined the test in the afternoon. “It was not the engine, as far as I know."

However, that turned out not to be the case, with the problem later diagnosed as something instead related to the new V4, echoing problems that according to The Race's sources Yamaha also experienced during the three-day shakedown test earlier this week.

“Yesterday afternoon, Fabio had a technical issue," team boss Maio Meregalli explained exclusively to The Race, speaking before the decision to withdraw from Wednesday running completely.

"And now just for a pure safety matter the engineers want to really understand what caused this issue before restarting testing.

“We don't know how long it will take; we are still discussing from here to Japan, but hopefully they will come up with at least an answer as soon as possible. We don't know the reason, and they really want to know.

“This was in the afternoon - it wasn't related to the crash."

While it's perhaps not the most costly moment for Yamaha to lose track time given that (thanks to its concession status) it completed three days of shakedown testing at the Sepang circuit last week, Meregalli emphasised that the team was nonetheless keen to find a resolution to the issue as soon as possible. 

“If it is not an issue that can create a safety [problem], then we will restart soon," he explained, before the call to stop all Wednesday running.

“I don't know if soon will be today or tomorrow, but they only found it last night and today when we arrived they asked us to please wait, because they really need to understand the root of the problem.

“Luckily we already did two and a half days during the shakedown, and then yesterday. I cannot say that the plan has been completed, but 80% of the job is done.

“It's always a pity when you are here and cannot ride, but luckily we were able to gather information also last week."

The issue comes amid some complaints from Yamaha's riders that the new V4 engine - designed to close the gap to the faster straightline speed of the rest of the grid over Yamaha's traditional inline four configuration - still isn't enough.

Rins revealed on Tuesday that Yamaha is still awaiting a new and better spec that is unlikely to arrive ahead of the first race in Thailand in less than a month's time.

“It's still missing power," he replied when asked about V4 progress by The Race.

“Everyone can see it on the TV [timing screens]. They explained to us that another engine is coming, but more like in a month or two months. We need to wait."

Having had what should have been a valuable head start in pushing on early with its 2026 Formula 1 car, Williams’ absence from last week’s first pre-season test undoubtedly squandered some of its advantage.

As competitors racked up valuable miles on track, Williams missed out on a first opportunity to check reliability, understand correlation and start getting its head around the energy management headaches that lie ahead for everyone.

Williams team boss James Vowles conceded on Tuesday, as the team revealed its 2026 livery, that there were some big-ticket items that needed ticking off as soon as the next test in Bahrain gets going.

“The top of the priority list for me is we have not got a characterisation of our aerodynamic package or our vehicle dynamics package for suspension,” he said.

“You can do everything in a rig world, in a simulation world, but you need to have it properly characterised and correlated in order to be able to ensure that you haven't taken a wrong turn somewhere. That's the biggest missing piece.”

Live data boost

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Williams is heading to the first Bahrain test starting from zero.

The Virtual Track Testing simulation work it did last week, allied to having Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz running on its driver simulator, meant it was far from learning nothing at its factory.

Its progress was helped by Williams being fed data from engine supplier Mercedes that added to its data bank of knowledge.

On the driver front too, in getting Albon and Sainz up to speed, Vowles believes that the pair got more than enough of an early understanding from driving in the virtual world.

“[We were] using a correlated package from HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains], correlated to running in Barcelona," Vowles explained.

“Whilst there's many things that will help us on track, and definitely for the drivers they need the forces, what we're replicating is pretty much there in terms of them playing around with energy management.”

Another factor too is that while Williams does not have as intimate knowledge of how energy management works around Barcelona compared to those teams that ran there with real cars, the demands for each track are so different that everybody starts again with their learnings in Bahrain.

“Every track is so different that the specifics of Barcelona don't necessarily carry on through into Bahrain or Melbourne,” added Vowles.

“We are just making sure that there's no nasty surprises. And if there's not, then it probably won't be too nasty. But if there is anything, then it puts us on the back foot by a week or so.”

Real-world answers

But despite all Williams did manage to do last week, Vowles is well aware that simulators cannot completely replace knowledge gained in the real world.

There are some aspects of understanding its FW48 that it will not be able to make a start on until it gets out there on track.

“The power unit is reliable, and the gearbox is reliable, and the VTT testing flushed out a lot of the demons that are buried in the car,” he said.

“What's missing is there's a lot of knowledge for the drivers to inherently perfect what's going on track.

“What's missing is a correlation for where aerodynamics really are and a correlation for where our vehicle dynamics really are. So track data is the only way of establishing that.”

While missing Barcelona was not ideal then, Vowles believes that the two Bahrain tests will offer it plenty of time to catch up.

This is especially true because of Mercedes getting so much mileage done over last week.

“We were fortunate to the fact that Mercedes has sufficient runners that [meant there] was quite a bit of information coming back on both the gearbox and the power unit that enables us to get ahead when we come to Bahrain,” he said.

“It means I do not believe, with six days of testing, we'll be on the back foot.”

But for all the reasons why Vowles thinks Williams can still recover what has been lost, he knows that the extreme pain of what it has been through must show why there can be no repeat let down in the future.

“If we just skirted the issue, it doesn't hurt enough that you really get deep into the wound and fix it,” he said.

“This will never happen again, because we are going to dig into it properly and make sure that we learn from absolutely every one of these issues.

“You've got to deal with failure. If you just leave it aside or put your head down, you won't learn from it. You have to let the pain of that failure drive your change.”

More than a decade after it was part of the inaugural Formula E calendar, the Miami E-Prix - this latest version of it, against the backdrop of the Hard Rock Stadium - feels like it has the potential to become a core fixture.

But potential is the key word there.

Formula E is not new to the stadium/exhibition centre model. It has raced around the Seoul Olympic park, in 2022, at the ExCeL since 2021, and also around the colossal BigSight exhibition centre in Tokyo, which hosted its first race in 2024.

But the Hard Rock race was a big one for the world's only all-electric world championship. With an element of plug-in-and-play adaptability, the result of the already-established infrastructure used by Formula 1 since 2022, this should've been a perfect vessel to showcase the product.

As Dan Towriss, CEO of the TWG Motorsports group behind the Andretti Formula E team and Cadillac's F1 entry, told The Race: "Hard Rock here is such an important venue for motorsports. And so for Formula E to be able to race here is great.

"And I think it's also great as we look to grow Formula E in the US as well. Just through education, learning about the sport.

"There's so much that happens in Formula E that has real-world implications for the cars we drive. Just showcases innovation and technology. And so I think there's a lot. There's even a new fan base, I think, that we can attract to Formula E.

"But it all starts with having great races at great venues. And certainly Miami and Hard Rock is one of those."

Did it work out like that?

Well, the weather was not on Formula E's side last weekend. Miami was unseasonably cold last weekend with a night time temperature close to freezing point, the first time the mercury had dipped that low since 1909.

This atypical weather clearly didn't favour curious fans, and so the ticket sales were definitely on the modest side. The promoter, Formula E Operations, quoted just over 10,000 attendees, although the majority of these were VIP guests or those working at the venue.

Read more: Winners and losers from Miami

The track itself, all 1.442 miles of it, felt a bit undercooked in terms of outright challenge and demand, but this is highly likely to be the last time the smallest configuration of the Miami International Autodrome available to Formula E will be used.

Future versions of this race will use an expanded circuit, something that the president of the F1 Miami Grand Prix facility, Katharina Nowak, told The Race would be relatively straightforward to have in place for the first season of the Gen4 era next year.

"The inner loop, that gave us an opportunity to create four new configurations," said Nowak. "Right now, we're running on the shortest configuration that we have.

"If and when we get the confirmation from Formula E that the Gen4 car can run a stronger and longer configuration, we can work with them [Formula E Operations] on the other three extensions that we have to figure out which one works best for that Gen4 car."

This first visit to the Hard Rock Stadium will be remembered for coats and gloves rather than the usual image of shades and shorts, but the Gen4 era kicking in next year will likely make the 2026 Miami race feel more like the real pilot or proving event.

Certainly, the promotion needs to improve to expand the crowd and the reach because last weekend Formula E was front and centre of the motorsport world, up against just the Asian Le Mans Series event in Dubai.

That should have conferred an 'all eyes on Formula E' vibe but certainly in the United Kingdom, where it could only be accessed live online via the ITV X streaming service, that didn't quite ring true.

Towriss's neat 'great races at great places' wrap-up is ultimately a great chunk of what Formula E has to realise. Pairing those two goals has seldom happened completely in the US. But while last weekend's race wasn't an absolute classic, it did enough to establish a foothold for the event to build on.

With more spent on promotion, increasing and maximising initiatives such as Jake Dennis's Ocean Drive showrun in Miami Beach a few nights before the race last week, Formula E can hopefully beef up its prospects of getting more people at the track (or more eyes on it from afar). Then it’s up to the FIA and Formula E to get the Gen4 entertainment-and-technological cocktail shaken to perfection.

The good news is that Formula E has found a strong venue with growth potential as an event. The obvious area to work on is furthering the fanbase and for that, Formula E's keeper, Liberty Global, has to invest much more in showcasing off track what its custodianship has designed on it.

Do that, and there's not just the likelihood of Miami becoming a core event - a scenario both promoter and circuit want - but also a much greater chance of a second event in such a key market finally becoming a reality.

Having whipped itself into 2027 silly season frenzy already, MotoGP finally kicked off official track action for 2026 with the opening day of testing at Sepang.

This can only offer the merest hints of this year's competitive picture - especially as some took part in the shakedown test days prior, but most did not - but there was plenty new to see on track, and plenty of information about the condition in which certain riders and teams are approaching the campaign.

Marquez's lead is deceptive

Away from a MotoGP bike ever since he was taken out of the Indonesian Grand Prix, Marc Marquez claimed a familiar position on the leaderboard on his return - but this wasn't a particularly meaningful first place.

Marquez's right shoulder still needs time and effort, and is being managed in this testing programme. His day was largely about getting himself back into shape - "there was a [testing] plan, but as I didn't feel so good in the morning, I asked Ducati to have the morning for me, just to play well with the body [position]".

"Super stiff in the morning, a little bit more free, more comfortable, in the afternoon," Marquez summed up. 

"But it's true we did very short runs - two-three laps, two-three laps - to avoid extra fatigue tomorrow and day three."

The quarter-of-a-second buffer to Fabio Di Giannantonio (with Maverick Vinales close behind) was not representative at all, he indicated, with the likes of Alex Marquez and team-mate Pecco Bagnaia not showing their cards.

Shakedown times

1 Marc Marquez (Ducati) 1m57.018s
2 Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati) +0.256s
3 Maverick Vinales (KTM) +0.277s
4 Alex Marquez (Ducati) +0.469s
5 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) +0.506s
6 Luca Marini (Honda) +0.551s
7 Joan Mir (Honda) +0.675s
8 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) +0.702s
9 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) +0.851s
10 Franco Morbidelli (Ducati) +1.050s
11 Johann Zarco (Honda) +1.122s
12 Enea Bastianini (KTM) +1.143s
13 Brad Binder (KTM) +1.176s
14 Jack Miller (Yamaha) +1.234s
15 Pedro Acosta (KTM) +1.295s
16 Alex Rins (Yamaha) +1.302s
17 Ai Ogura (Aprilia) +1.595s
18 Raul Fernandez (Aprilia) +1.641s
19 Diogo Moreira (Honda) +1.664s
20 Toprak Razgatlioglu (Yamaha) +1.869s
21 Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia) +1.890s
22 Andrea Dovizioso (Yamaha) +3.663s
23 Augusto Fernandez (Yamaha) +4.036s

And Marquez is in any case, adamant that his target isn't necessarily to beat those two at Sepang, one of his worst tracks on the calendar - but just be close enough.

"[Laptime] was a surprise, but it's not the most important. I used the new tyre in the last part of the practice - me, Di Giannantonio and Vinales - but Alex did the fastest lap I think in the worst hour [for track condition], Pecco also with a lot of heat. 

"For me Malaysia is like always - [the aim is] to try to be there in the group, in the front group, Last year I remember here that Pecco and Alex were much faster than me. But then I know what Malaysia is, and what I need to be competitive in all the calendar."

Bagnaia feels relieved

Ignore completely the difference in seven places between Marquez and Bagnaia - this was a very positive start for the #63, and this was evident too in him spending a big chunk of that afternoon session in first place before others improved.

More importantly, things just felt right.

"I feel good, honestly," Bagnaia beamed. "I thought a lot of this moment during the winter, praying that things would go well. And honestly... it went well. From the start of the day. I enjoyed a lot riding today."

Bagnaia had already expected a step forward based on what he'd tried in Valencia in post-season testing - and that feeling was reinforced. Though the engine is frozen from 2025 and the most visible change on the 2026 Ducati is substantially reprofiled front and side aero, whatever work has gone on beneath the surface has given Bagnaia confidence that his corner entry issues have been mitigated.

"For that, I have to say thanks a lot to Ducati - for helping me, here, to find it. Maybe it's the track, because also last year I was quite competitive here, but last year I was struggling in some areas that today weren't a problem.

"As soon as I started with the '26, I felt good. The braking-entry, I was feeling that the bike was stopping and not pushing. And this is something I was asking a lot last year."

Quartararo's expectations aren't high

Fabio Quartararo denied in the lead-up to the test that he'd already signed with Honda for 2027-28 - but coming out of Tuesday's running, he certainly didn't sound like someone who Yamaha should be optimistic of retaining.

A finger injury after a nasty high-speed crash has ruled him out of the rest of the test, and this will probably have soured the mood - though ultimately it may be a red herring for the season ahead given Quartararo had run in the shakedown beforehand, and felt that even despite the lost mileage he and the team had "already tested everything we had to test" and "did more than enough".

But he is just very obviously not all that thrilled about the new bike and the upcoming days and weeks of grinding to get the V4-engined Yamaha to a competitive level.

"Of course, I cannot say I'm confident," he said. "We see how much we suffer, we see that our laptimes are not very good. But the only thing I can do is do my best, try to be riding at my maximum - and whatever the position is, try to do the best I can."

"There is still work to do - especially on the turning, on the traction, on electronics, on the grip, on the power... There are many things to adjust.

"I didn't do enough laps, but we see also how fast [rivals] are doing just in the first day. In just one day, we saw the laptimes, and it's unbelievably fast. We know where we are. We know that we're super far."

Yamaha will have to wait for top speed

The other Yamaha riders were considerably perkier, clearly more at ease with the idea of building up the project in the coming rounds.

Both Alex Rins and Jack Miller painted a picture of contentment, despite Miller going down at Turn 9 when the engine brake "twitched when it shouldn't have".

"For the kilometres that the bike has done on track, it was great," Rins insisted. "Today Fabio did a 57.8 - he did 57.6, I think, in the shakedown. 

"I mean, still it's missing power, everybody saw on the TV. They explained to us that another engine is coming, but more like in a month or in two months. So we need to wait."

A month would be for the Thailand opener, but that's not the suggestion being made - so chances are Yamaha's V4s will still be compromised in their ability to battle at least in the initial races of the campaign.

No nasty surprises (almost)

While Yamaha takes its first steps with the V4, the main pretenders to Ducati's throne in 2026 - Aprilia, KTM and Honda - all projected some degree of optimism.

The message from Aprilia, courtesy of test rider Lorenzo Savadori (riding in relief of the recovering Jorge Martin), is that the 2026 bike is a bit better everywhere.

On KTM's end, Pedro Acosta indicated a satisfactory resolution to some chassis testing (with aero the next focus), and Acosta's rumoured factory team replacement Vinales was back in the groove, clearly feeling a lot closer to his pre-injury self after the shoulder problems robbed him of much of last year's campaign.

And Honda factory pair Luca Marini and Joan Mir both indicated the manufacturer's positive trend from last year was being continued, though both emphasised that a grip deficit was still felt.

It was the kind of day where most riders seemed happy enough to be here after a winter off, as long as they were healthy and their bikes were intact.

But for LCR Honda rookie Diogo Moreira, even a considerable spill - "I think the fastest of my life", at the same corner that injured Quartararo - didn't particularly dampen his spirits, even though freight complications meant both he and team-mate Johann Zarco were limited to a single bike on the day, making any crash doubly sub-optimal.

The other rookie, Toprak Razgatlioglu, narrowly avoided one at that very same corner, admitting that had his reflexes been a little worse, he probably would've written off his V4-engined Yamaha M1.

Contractual steps

Even with track action back underway the 2027 contract scenarios no doubt continue to play out in the background - with one question being whether Ducati will hit its stated target of committing Marquez to a new deal before round one.

There was presumably hope to get something signed already, but the process is still ongoing.

"In this moment we are trying to finalise the contract with Marc. We are close, it seems that we can finalise it soon," Ducati team manager Davide Tardozzi told MotoGP.com.

On whether Marquez wanted a one-year deal rather than the conventional two years, Tardozzi said: "That's not the matter of the discussion. I think that there are small details that with such a champion you have to discuss deeply - but Marc would like to stay with Ducati, Ducati would like to have Marc. I am confident we will find an agreement."

"We are step by step more close," Marquez himself acknowledged.

Ducati's claim is that until that side of the garage is sorted, no final decisions will be made on the other bike - for which Acosta, not Bagnaia, is being reported as a massive favourite.

The Formula 1 car Williams revealed its livery on isn't the team's 2026 F1 car, but it's also not the same show car used by Formula One Management or by Red Bull during its season launch last month.

It's instead a show car designed in the spirit of the 2026 rules and used purely to show off the team's sponsors. Not hide or point to any of its actual design choices.

But it does still contain some amusingly different design details, as Edd Straw explains...

What it shows - and what it doesn't...

Edd Straw

The Williams livery launch car reveals no meaningful details, even lacking a push or pullrod in the front suspension in renders that have been put together more driven by aesthetics than technical accuracy.

While team principal James Vowles has hinted at a "different" front suspension design, the lack of such crucial components and the fact that, as our technical expert Gary Anderson points out, "the flat inboard mounted top wishbone means zero control over longitudinal forces" indicates there's nothing to learn from this part of the car. 

The bargeboards and floor edges are also basic, and while the sidepod shape appears distinct, it is basic in detail, and little can be drawn from that, given the real car will presumably be very different when it breaks cover.

While it's a useful means for Williams to showcase its admittedly impressive roster of sponsors, there's little or nothing to take from this technically and we'll have to wait for the first Bahrain test to see what the real car has to offer. 

Williams has revealed the livery it will use for its 2026 Formula 1 car, which is the most "complex" and "best" design that team principal James Vowles has seen it produce.

The FW48 itself remains under wraps as Williams missed the Barcelona test last week, when many images of the other 10 teams' cars were shared despite the test itself being closed.

The livery Williams will race with is close to those of previous years, although there is prominent white colouring across the sidepod and rear wing. Both of these elements feature branding from sponsor Komatsu.

The sidepod also carries the cyan blue of Barclays, with which Williams announced a partnership on Tuesday morning. That sponsorship is also visible on the rear wing.

Before the car races, Williams will use a fan-selected design at the two official tests in Bahrain this month. That 'flow state' livery features Williams's navy blue lines on a white background.

Williams has endured delays in the build of its 2026 car and declined to show it as part of a launch event on Tuesday, which was set to be hosted at the team's Grove factory but was switched to being online-only.

The renders of the new livery show a hybrid car design, though, that is more advanced than the basic F1 2026 showcar model but not the FW48 in its final form.

Vowles has said that the delay in getting the car ready is down to the steps Williams is trying to take to become a bigger and more ambitious team.

"Aerodynamically, the car is a lot more complex than anything we've put out before," he said. "And in terms of design, it's a lot more complex than anything we've put out before."

Williams sacrificed development of its 2025 car very early last year to focus on the 2026 design. While that has not translated into a smooth winter and car build, Vowles has insisted the new car's aerodynamic development has been maximised by that decision.

That implies the car that runs in Bahrain and starts the season will feel the full benefit of Williams's development choice last year, it has just been a more troubled winter building the car in reality than anticipated.

On how good the car will be, Vowles said it is "impossible to tell" compared to others, but against Williams's own metrics "realistically, the car itself is the best I have seen us produce here".

"Those are facts I can put down," he said. "But that doesn't indicate where it is on a timing sheet. That's what Bahrain and beyond will tell us."

Williams is behind its 2026 rivals after missing last week's test, where the busiest teams completed hundreds of laps and some racked up more than 2000km over their three days of running.

Vowles said he believes the FW48 will not be compromised longer-term by missing that because there are two three-day tests in Bahrain for it to work through everything required.

He also said the track time in Spain completed by others was still beneficial to Williams in a small way because the Mercedes engine it will use has been thoroughly run-in by others and some of that data will be relevant to Williams itself.

It intends to run the FW48 in a shakedown before the first Bahrain test starts next week and has conducted an intense virtual track test (VTT) programme initiated at Grove in lieu of being at Barcelona for real.

"It is really pretty much most of the physical car," said Vowles. "You don't have wings bolted to it, but you have the chassis, the engine, the gearbox.

"You test your braking systems at the same time, so you have all of the brakes fitted.

"And what you're doing is characterising your cooling system, understanding where that is, running the engine, gearbox under load.

"And what you can do, especially in tandem to those running in Barcelona, is run the same code base that they're running on the power unit and the gearbox to understand the effects, but in a more controlled environment than they are.

"So you still get learning on various systems, energy, ECU as a result of it. It's a valuable learning, but it is not the same as running on track.

"It's just a good use of time."

The livery-launch imagery of the Williams FW48 doesn’t show it, but Williams team principal James Vowles hinted it has a bold front suspension design with possible echoes of Adrian Newey’s Aston Martin AMR26 - albeit not as extreme.

Speaking to selected media, including The Race, as part of its livery launch on Tuesday, Vowles was asked several times about his impressions of rival cars, in particular Newey’s latest creation.

While he implied he saw the front suspension geometry of the Aston Martin as particularly bold, Vowles believes Williams’s own design is distinctive. 

“In terms of Adrian, I sort of intimated it a bit, but you'll see it in our front wishbone, it’s slightly different,” said Vowles. “But where Adrian's gone, Adrian is very impressive, very creative, very extreme. I wouldn't want to be a designer for that one, let's put it that way.”

The Aston Martin front suspension is a pushrod configuration, as is de rigueur under these new regulations. However, what stands out is the extreme design of the upper front wishbone. The forward leg is mounted high on the chassis, with the wishbone tilted at an angle.

The upper rear wishbone leg is not only much lower, but also significantly further back towards the cockpit as part of Newey’s trademark extreme aero packaging. This is examined in depth in Gary Anderson’s technical analysis of the car.

As the Williams images show a more conventional suspension, it’s likely we will not see the real design until the car breaks cover for the Bahrain test, having sat out Barcelona owing to delays getting the car ready.

Vowles paid tribute to the ambition of the Aston Martin, but gave the clear impression that Williams hasn’t dared to be quite so bold with the geometry of its own design. 

“It's really impressive,” said Vowles of the Aston Martin. “Adrian is just a creative designer and it's really impressive what he's done with wishbones in places that I don't think they should be, but he's done them.”

The Aston Martin wasn’t the only car that caught the eye of Vowles. Although not participating in the test, Williams kept a close eye on goings on in Barcelona and cited Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari as impressing him. 

“I've been really impressed with Red Bull, especially on the power unit side,” said Vowles. “To do a power unit from scratch and turn up to be that reliable is mighty. Well done to them.

“Number two, Ferrari's consistency. Perhaps the outright pace is in question, but the consistency is really impressive for them again from the get-go.

"And Mercedes always. I've been there for a long time, they're very good at getting regulation change right and walking out with a package that's just robust and reliable. But if you are doing a race sim just about a day into testing, it's very, very impressive.”

The development of Adrian Newey's first Aston Martin Formula 1 car started out "on the back foot by about four months" compared to its rivals.

That's Newey's own claim about the AMR26, which drew plenty of eyeballs when it debuted in the final hour of the penultimate day of F1's first 2026 test at Barcelona, featuring plenty of bold design choices.

In an interview published on the Aston Martin F1 team's own website, Newey said rivals were able to begin testing when the 2026 windtunnel ban lifted on January 1 last year.

Newey started work with Aston Martin as a managing technical partner on March 1, with his full focus on 2026, rather than any 2025 troubleshooting.

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But the 2026 project could not fully start immediately, as the team waited for its new windtunnel - "probably the best windtunnel in the world for F1 application", according to Newey - to come online.

"The AMR Technology Campus is still evolving, the windtunnel wasn't on song until April, and I only joined the team last March, so we've started from behind, in truth. It's been a very compressed timescale and an extremely busy 10 months," Newey, now also team principal at Aston Martin, said.

"The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the '26 car into the windtunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the windtunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year.

"That put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle. The car only came together at the last minute, which is why we were fighting to make it to the Barcelona shakedown."

Aston Martin debuted late last Thursday at Barcelona, with just 65 laps completed across that final hour and Friday.

It completed fewer laps than F1 newcomer Cadillac, which got its full three-day allocation in, and only has more on-track mileage with its 2026 car than Williams, which missed the Barcelona test altogether.

"Because of our compressed timescale, we decided on a particular direction [of aerodynamic philosophy] and that's the one we've pursued," Newey explained.

"Whether that proves to be the right one or not, only time will tell. But you have to choose your path and get on with it."

Asked whether it was an "aggressive interpretation of the rules", as some such as The Race's own ex-F1 technical director Gary Anderson have called it, Newey said: "I never look at any of my designs as aggressive. I just get on with things and pursue what we feel is the right direction.

"The direction we've taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive. It's got quite a few features that haven't necessarily been done before. Does that make it aggressive? Possibly. Possibly not."

He agreed with another typical observation of a Newey-style car that's present on the AMR26: "The car is tightly packaged. Much more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin before."

Newey also aimed to correct a key weakness of the team during the ground effect era.

"The previous generation of ground effect cars from 2022 to 2025 became quite difficult to drive. The Aston Martin, unfortunately, was one particular example of that," Newey said.

"With this new formula, we're trying to make a car that Lance [Stroll] and Fernando [Alonso] can consistently extract a good level of performance from."

'Very different' car for Melbourne

Bold as the AMR26 at Barcelona may have been, Newey promised that the Aston Martin that turns up for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix will be "very different".

He added: "And the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi [the season finale] is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with."

Newey and his team have been focused on their own design path but, as with all teams, will be keeping a keen eye on the competition.

"Now, whether other people come up with a similar solution to ours, we don't know and we won't until we start seeing other people's cars," he said. "We've just tried to pursue what we think is the correct direction for us.

“Other people might have pursued other directions. It's part of the excitement of new regulations, seeing what everybody comes up with."

It’s been known for a while that Formula 1’s 2026 cars are going to be energy-starved, which means harvesting and deploying battery power will be critical to laptime.

Initially this seemed to be relevant to races, but first impressions of the cars at the recent Barcelona test have exposed an element that one team boss has called "scary".

It is that the available energy is on such a knife-edge that even qualifying efforts will be destroyed in 2026 if drivers get things wrong on their outlaps.

Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu has revealed how the fight for pole could be influenced heavily by small errors made in preparation laps.

He reckons that any trip up on this front will not just cost a little bit – it could see a driver lose around half a second per lap.

From Komatsu’s perspective, this could become a major factor in dictating grids early on in the campaign.

“There is more vulnerability at the start of the season,” he said. “I think if something goes wrong, I think it will be pretty obvious.

“If somebody is not deploying correctly, let's say opening a qualifying lap on the pit straight, or going into Turn 1, if somebody is not going very quickly, then you will realise straight away they didn't do it correctly. So I think it will be very visible, especially early on.”

He added: “We're not talking about tenths. You can lose half a second, six tenths, seventh tenths very, very easily. That's the scary bit.” 

Outlap conflicts

What Komatsu is referring to is that, with cars not having enough battery to run laps flat out, drivers can't waste any energy on the outlap at all.

That means not triggering any more usage of the battery element of the package than is absolutely necessary.

But that is a very tricky thing to achieve properly – because drivers cannot just drive slowly to achieve that aim. The demands to warm the tyres, avoid traffic issues and keep up to the maximum delta time mean there is a requirement to get a hurry on as well.

Furthermore, there is no scope in the regulations to simply run a quick outlap on the internal combustion engine alone, as there are strict rules regarding power demand.

Article 5.12.1 of the Technical Regulations states: “At any given engine speed, the driver torque demand map must be monotonically increasing for an increase in accelerator pedal position.”

This effectively means that the trigger for kicking in battery usage is throttle position - not a button on the wheel.

So in effect, the only way to avoid burning up any battery is to be very cautious on the accelerator.

There are therefore a host of conflicting demands of what drivers need to do to cover off tyre preparation, traffic, timing deltas and energy.

And the end result is a massive headache in how to get things nailed perfectly.

Komatsu said that Barcelona offered a first clue about how complicated things were when his team tried some qualifying simulations.

Haas quickly found out that how cars were driven in the final sector on a preparation lap ultimately decided how quick the subsequent qualifying effort would be.

“It's very, very important how you go through those last couple of corners,” he said. 

“If you don't carry enough speed out of, let's say, Turn 14 in Barcelona, by the time you come to the start/finish line, you don't have enough speed. So your qualifying lap is already ruined.

“But if you try to get the speed up, but then have too much throttle, you are deploying towards the end of the outlap, so you just waste the battery on the timed lap.

“There's a very clear conflict of demand about what a driver needs to achieve, and the system needs to achieve. So you have got to get it right.”

Things could get even trickier at places like Baku, where there is the city section where you don’t want to burn battery power, but also a very long straight before the start/finish line where you'll need battery to deploy.

“In the castle section, there's no point deploying electrical energy in between corners,” added Komatsu. “That's going to do nothing in terms of straightline speed.

“But if you accidentally do that, go on the throttle a little bit too much, and then deploy MGU-K, or use MGU-K to basically engage turbo, then by the time you go to the main straight, you haven't got the necessary electric energy available. Then you pay a big price.”

Komatsu believes that all teams face an uphill challenge to try to get on top of the situation as quickly as possible.

And that will be made even more challenging by the fact that preparations will be done in the tests in Bahrain – run on a Sakhir track with some good heavy braking zones that will allow for straightforward charging of the battery.

However, the season starts in Australia, with the Albert Park track one of the more challenging venues to harvest.

“Even if you get to the stage where you are very confident in Bahrain with consistency, then you go to Melbourne and it is a completely different condition," warned Komatsu.

“That's going to be a huge challenge. So I think it's going to be a steep learning curve for most of us.”

Yamaha MotoGP rider Fabio Quartararo has exited the first pre-season test at Sepang after just a handful of laps due to injury sustained in an early crash.

Quartararo - who has been reported as having signed a Honda deal for 2027-28 this off-season so could be entering his final campaign with Yamaha - "lost it pretty straight" at the quick, sweeping Turn 5 left-hander at the Malaysian circuit. He suffered abrasions to his left arm and a broken finger on his right hand.

Despite this, he returned to the track after the midday break but only added 16 laps to his pre-crash total of eight before he and Yamaha called time on his programme for Sepang.

The missing test mileage will be a particular inconvenience giving that Yamaha is putting its new V4-engined bike - much changed over the winter from the late-2025 prototype - through its paces.

Quartararo did, however, run in the three-day shakedown that preceded the official test - permitted to do so by Yamaha's 'Rank D' concession status - so claimed he has ultimately "tested everything we had to test" at this point in time.

And he said he preferred to sacrifice the rest of the test in favour of the Thailand Grand Prix opener - and the test at Buriram preceding it - in order to allow his finger fracture to heal.

"The arm is a bit sore - but the finger is broken. So we decided to stop for the next two days of testing. I think it's for the best," he told MotoGP.com.

"Of course if it was the race weekend I could continue - but there's no sense to do two more days.

"A bit sad because I wanted to continue but I think also for the first race it's better - the arm is nothing really strange, but especially for my finger is better."

Jack Doohan has joined the Haas Formula 1 team as a reserve driver for 2026 with the target of getting back onto the grid in 2027.

Doohan made his F1 debut in the 2024 season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for Alpine then contested the first six rounds of the 2025 season with the team.

He was the first Alpine junior to race for the team in F1 but was dropped from the seventh round onwards for Franco Colapinto, who Alpine had signed from Williams that winter.

Doohan did not get back in a race seat again, and was not allowed to test either, but continued in a reduced reserve role for the team.

Alpine announced the two parties had split at the start of 2026, freeing Doohan up to complete deals elsewhere.

There were conversations with various teams towards the end of last year including Williams and Sauber, but Haas always looked Doohan's most likely destination.

It affords the best path to an F1 return, even if a race seat is not guaranteed.

Haas currently has Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon as its driver line-up but Bearman is primarily contracted to Ferrari and while Ocon is on a ‘multi-year' deal this does not guarantee he stays beyond 2026.

Read more: F1 2027 grid so far

Doohan joins Ryo Hirakawa among Haas's reserve roster for 2026.

Doohan described Haas as the "ideal place to continue my Formula 1 career" while team principal Ayao Komatsu said he was "personally very excited to have Jack join us”.

"The dedication required to remain sharp and prepared to race while getting to know how the team works and so on, it's challenging for any driver – especially one who's obviously still very keen to race again at this level,” said Komatsu.

"I've enjoyed getting to know Jack and we're looking forward to welcoming him into the team and benefiting from his contributions.”

Not only is Haas probably the team most likely to have a vacancy that Doohan would be an appropriate candidate to fill, it also has a growing test programme to be part of.

Its Toyota deal includes an extensive private testing schedule using old cars, which has primarily been used to give Toyota-backed drivers F1 experience.

Why Super Formula move isn't happening

Doohan will not dovetail his Haas position with a race seat in Japan's Super Formula series as expected, though, despite testing with the Kondo team, which runs Toyota engines, at Suzuka last year.

He suffered a bizarre spate of crashes at the Degner corner combination across his days in the car but a mix of personal backing and what sounded like significant Toyota support meant he seemed on course to join the team for 2026 alongside Williams junior Luke Browning.

But Ukyo Sasahara has partnered Browning instead, with the Doohan negotiations ending due to disagreements over how best to proceed with making Kondo's #4 car more competitive.

Engineering set-ups are known to be a major point of contention when securing drives in Super Formula. F1 juniors like Browning, for example, tend to bring engineers across from Europe and the #4 Kondo car has had poor results for the past three seasons now.

Had Doohan's camp succeeded in getting the compromises deemed necessary to have a chance of a more competitive season than the results in testing suggested, the deal would likely have been completed as budget was not believed to be an issue.

It is unclear if Doohan, who was understood to have a shot at a Hypercar drive in the World Endurance Championship before his Super Formula negotiations developed, will pursue an alternative racing programme.

He has not competed in a full season since his 2023 Formula 2 campaign when he finished third in the championship.

The launch season for the biggest Formula 1 regulation change in decades is well under way.

But in such a busy launch season - particularly when teams' plans are spread out before and after the first pre-season test - it can be hard to keep track of who has revealed what.

So we've compiled all the cars and liveries unveiled so far, below.

McLaren: 2026 car in test livery

McLaren will showcase its real 2026 livery on February 9.

Mercedes: 2026 car

Red Bull: 2026 car

Ferrari: 2026 car

Williams: testing livery

Williams allowed its fans to pick between six different designs for the livery it will use during F1 pre-season testing - when it debuts in Bahrain.

The winning 'flow state' livery features Williams's navy blue lines on a white background.

Williams: 2026 livery

Williams showcased its actual 2026 livery by releasing images of it online on February 3.

Racing Bulls: 2026 car

Aston Martin: 2026 car in test livery

Aston Martin will unveil its real 2026 livery on February 9.

Haas: 2026 car

Audi: 2026 car

Alpine: 2026 car

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Cadillac: 2026 car in test livery

Cadillac will showcase its proper 2026 livery at the Super Bowl halftime show on February 8.

The limited explanations from Williams for an “incredibly painful” delay with its 2026 Formula 1 car last week did include a significant admission from team boss James Vowles.

For the third time in seven seasons, Williams has been late finishing its car build.

In 2019 (pictured above) that manifested in missing a large chunk of the first pre-season test. In 2024 the car made it to testing but was overweight, while Williams was short on spares and had a compromised development schedule as a result.

This year, Williams lost three days of testing and is now some 2000km of on-track running behind the teams it aspires to be on the level of. And the jury is out on whether the exact reasons for that will leave the car overweight and compromised into the season, again.

What is known is that Williams fell behind in its FW48 build and had trouble with certain crash tests. It seems each time its processes become more complicated, or done in the way Vowles and his leadership team insist is necessary to eventually be a top organisation, there is a risk of a major setback.

“One of the tasks that has been on my shoulders for a few years is making sure we transform this business at the absolute maximum rate possible,” Vowles said.

The team’s performance in 2025, scoring two podiums and finishing fifth in the constructors' championship, is clearly testament to Vowles’ leadership taking Williams in a better direction.

But two compromised builds in three years suggest that is coming at a big price even in the context of Vowles’ rationale of “pushing the boundaries and limits hard and aggressively, and find your limitation” because he believes “there’s no point being just underneath the curve or voluntarily underneath the curve if you want to transform at speed, you need to find the pain points and put them right very quickly, which is exactly what we're doing”.

Vowles has had to roll out that bullish logic to justify short-term setbacks more than he would like as team boss. To his credit he is usually very open and detailed in fronting up to issues - of which Williams has had quite a few now under his leadership, including things like taking Logan Sargeant’s car off him at the 2024 Australian Grand Prix and giving it to Alex Albon after Albon damaged his beyond repair.

Interestingly, this time the explanation has been less specific and revealing than most. But that might be because there’s some sensitive information to protect for now - and there was still a telling revelation in him confessing he has misjudged what Williams needed as a team, in order to manage what he was asking of it for 2026.

Vowles says this car has been developed in a way that is “not what we were doing two years ago”.

“You do have to accept that the shapes [being designed] in order to achieve them and pass the tests, and by that, I mean flexibility of front wing, rear wing, all that sort of jazz as well, it does take quite a bit more work in order to get there, and that's an output of it,” Vowles said.

“So, I'm actually incredibly happy the car is more complex, but I didn't scale the business in the right way to achieve the output, clearly.”

As Vowles said, it is on his shoulders to improve Williams as quickly as possible. So are any failings. For Vowles to front up to an extent is significant. Williams didn’t get its build right but Vowles, who has spent the last year telling us how everything was geared towards 2026, misjudged what it needed.

“The car this year that we've built, just to put a number on it - it doesn't matter if I use number of hours or number of components - is about three times more complicated than anything we have put through our business beforehand,” Vowles said.

“So to put that in perspective, it means the amount of load going through our system is about three times what it used to be. And we started falling a little bit behind and late on parts. And there's compromises you can make as a result of it.

“In addition to that, we have absolutely pushed the boundaries of what we're doing in certain areas. And one of those is in certain corresponding tests that go with it. But those were only, I would say, a blip in the grand scheme of things.

“So it's more of an output than anything else of pushing not just the boundaries of design, but the boundaries of just simply how many components can be pushed through the factory in a very short space of time.”

Beyond a team with tools and processes falling behind by “1% or 2%” in efficiency and “actively demanding investment”, we may not get a better explanation for how exactly this happened given Williams prioritised 2026 so much.

But another surface-level reason is that, according to Vowles, it did not want to sacrifice the design it was working on for something too conservative.

This is despite claims late last year Vowles wanted to sign the car off at a time that would ensure there were no problems with the car build. But perhaps both are true and it ties in with the failure to scale up the organisation sufficiently: perhaps Vowles underestimated the extent of the challenge, or overestimated the level he had brought Williams too.

“I said last year we were sacrificing '25 [for] '26,” said Vowles. “Aerodynamically we've done that. But if we print the car in February last year, it's way too early and leaves too much performance on the table.

“And more than that, you don't push this business to championship level of how late you can start offsetting everything. So what you're seeing is an outcome for making sure we're making aggressive decisions to keep as much performance on the car as possible.”

There is credit in the bank after 2025, and with 2026 not even having started in earnest, Williams clearly has time to show that it was right to do the car this way even if it caused short-term stress and embarrassment.

If there is a backwards step on-track, or lingering consequences into the season, that credit will be significantly diminished. If there are more major setbacks than these two problematic car builds then the credit will be gone completely.

It is, after all, bad enough that this comes just two years after Vowles and co said that Williams could not go through as bad a winter as 2023-2024 again. And Vowles’ lengthy answer to The Race’s question about how this compares to that, and how it happened again, should really be read in full.

“Yeah, I remember my comments,” Vowles said. “I can assure you this is as painful in some regards as '24. There is a difference, though.

“We're sized differently. We're using structure differently. It was a little bit of organised chaos back then, and it's not today. Actually, what I have around me is cool, collected, calm individuals that are giving me proper answers on when we'll have information by, when we'll have bits by, when we'll have components by. That is a world of difference from where we were.

“But also, we have to acknowledge that we were trying to push more throughput through the system than we were able to achieve. And if you do that one week, you can kind of make it up. If you do that for a number of weeks running, you can't.

“And then if you have various bits of the system, there are differences. And it can be small regulation changes. It can be a difference in what you want to do as a pathway from an engineering standpoint or issues along the process which come out of testing.

“You need to dynamically change. Where we're not good enough at the moment is in that agility of being able to dynamically change. We're not there. And simply, that caused us to then fall behind further than we wanted to.

“There are still elements in processing systems that are not at the right level. Those are facts. Simple as that. When we're dealing with the quantity of parts we are right now, I'm still very reliant on humans going above and beyond to make sure we get the car built.

“It is different to what we had before because the car was a lot simpler back in '23-24. I really can't put words to how well this team have done in terms of making this car a lot more what I'm used to.

“But we're simply not able to get the throughput for the business at this point in time.

“What we're doing about it is we have experts and specialists who have been with me now daily for the last few weeks and will continue to do so to make sure we chomp through this and get ourselves there.

“We're not having to unwind a lot of what we've done. A lot of what structure we have I think is correct.

“But what's very clear to me is we're in this halfway house where we're using systems and where they're not quite fit for purpose we're falling back to old techniques and human glue.”