5 Winners and 3 Losers from the second pre-season test in Bahrain – who goes into 2026 on a high?

And in the blink of an eye, pre-season testing for 2026 is complete. There are those who will leave the desert delighted with their efforts but others had a bumpier ride and know they have their backs firmly against the wall. Lawrence Barretto picks his winners and losers from the second and final three-day session in Bahrain…

Winners: Mercedes

If you were to look at the classification, there isn’t a lot of information to suggest Mercedes are looking good. They ended up 1.2s off the pace on the final day, though, we do know that times in testing aren’t worth much.

The Silver Arrows didn’t do a proper race simulation, nor did they let rip in power hour on the final day of testing – so that made them trickier to read.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that their short run pace was very strong in the hotter, less representative conditions, while the longer stints they did were very strong relative to their immediate rivals.

They had a few mechanical gremlins – and had two power unit changes during running – but they were rectified quickly and they still ended the test on top of the mileage charts.

Talk to those in the paddock and they’ll suggest Mercedes are back – and the ones to beat. It could be just gamesmanship, but data does suggest they are comfortably inside the top-four. Wherever they are, one thing is for certain, they are in much better shape pre-season this year than in any of the ground effect era years between 2022-2025.

Losers: Aston Martin

Things went from bad to worse for Aston Martin in week two, with the team managing just 128 laps across three days. They only did six of those on the final day – and they weren’t even complete with Lance Stroll not setting a lap time.

Honda discovered an issue with the battery, which meant they could only do short runs. A lack of spare parts meant they had to cut the team’s running 2.5 hours short.

It means Honda have just 128 laps of data to work with as they learn about their new engine. As a comparison, Mercedes have 1554 – helped by having customers in McLaren, Williams and Alpine, while Ferrari have 994, Red Bull Powertrains 736 and Audi 357.

The poor reliability means the team have very little information about the chassis or the engine, and they’ve been unable to do most of the programme teams usually complete to iron out niggles ahead of a season.

The team are staying positive as they know they have the greatest F1 designer of all-time in Adrian Newey, a state-of-the-art facility and strong investment from their owner Lawrence Stroll plus some very talented people – but they know they are massively up against it.

Winners: Ferrari

Ferrari were frustrated to end last season down in fourth – behind McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull – but they knew it could be a case of short term pain for long term gain as they had put all of their resources and time into the 2026 car, built to sweeping new rules, in April.

After a strong start to pre-season testing last week, Ferrari stepped up their game in week two, first bringing an innovative beam wing that cleverly sat behind the exhaust and then catching everyone’s eye with a neat rotating rear wing.

They impressed with their performance, too, both in terms of long runs and the consistently quick laps Charles Leclerc was able to pump in at will on the final evening of testing.

Even if they are not fastest of all, they are right in the thick of it and definitely in contention for podiums and race wins. Considering they didn’t grace the top step last year, this marks a significant step forward for the Scuderia and gives them a great foundation on which to build.

Losers: Williams

When their back was against the wall after missing the Barcelona Shakedown, Williams responded impressively by delivering the joint-highest mileage of any team in week one.

But while they added to that tally handsomely in week two with 368 laps as they searched for performance – with Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz running the softer tyres – the lap time was uninspiring.

This was a team that ended up a superb fifth last year and were hoping to make a big step this year. Instead, their primary focus is to shave weight off the car just to catch up and maintain their place at the top of midfield.

With two very experienced drivers and extensive investment in the team, they have what it takes to recover but it’s going to be a heck of a battle and require pinpoint accuracy with development to do it quickly.

Winners: Alpine

Like Ferrari, Alpine switched their attention very early to 2026 and that left them trailing around the back of the pack and ultimately last in the Teams’ Championship.

It looks like it was worth it, as Alpine look to have made the biggest jump of any team by moving from the bottom to around the top of the midfield.

With a Mercedes power unit in the back and a tidy chassis, the team have not only run reliably – they managed more than 1000 laps across their pre-season shakedown, Barcelona Shakedown and in Bahrain – but they showed some encouraging performance on the final day.

The team feel like they’ve got a good baseline to work from as they look to add performance through the season.

Loser: Isack Hadjar

Rookies tend to have a lot of confidence in themselves when they enter F1 – and Isack Hadjar is no different. If anything, he oozes it more than most. And he needs all of that positive thinking after a troubled start to life as a Red Bull driver.

The Frenchman suffered the lion’s share of unreliability at Red Bull and in week two, managed just 125 laps – only Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll completed fewer – and around half that of tabletopper Arvid Lindblad, the driver who replaced Hadjar at Racing Bulls.

This is not ideal for Hadjar, especially considering drivers in the second seat at Red Bull alongside four-time World Champion Max Verstappen have struggled to deliver – but he’s refusing to let it get him down and the feedback from inside the team is that he’s impressed with his efforts so far in pre-season testing, too.

Hadjar is glass-half full about his situation, too, and with the running he did get, he was able to run through all of the team’s test items and get a good feel for the car heading to the season opener in Australia but he definitely could have done with more prep.

Winners: Haas

Ollie Bearman ended up sixth fastest on the final day of testing, just 0.066s shy of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine. They spent much of the afternoon on Friday trading fastest times – and while the Briton was ultimately usurped by the Alpine, Haas were still very pleased with their efforts on the final day and the whole test.

They ran reliably throughout, completed the third most laps of any team – 404, 28 shy of Mercedes’ leading total – and seem to have a very good understanding of their baseline car heading into the season.

Both Bearman and Esteban Ocon were encouraged by the progress the team made in Bahrain – and when they went searching for performance, they were able to find the anticipated gains.

If they can deliver on this expectation, they should be regular challengers for points when the season gets under way.

Winners: Cadillac

Cadillac may have finished 10th of 11 teams in the mileage charts with 266 laps across test two and they had a fair few niggles to get on top of. But it’s important to remember that they have only completed 10 days of running a Formula 1 car in their history.

That they were so solid and respectable throughout, from the solid car that they’ve built to the way they’ve operated as a racing outfit at track, is impressive and gives them a good base on which to build.

They have a mountain to climb, of course, as they are at the back of the pack, but it would have been unwise to think they’d be anywhere else at this stage considering the experience of all of their rivals.

Importantly, they got some decent mileage – and now have some good data to work with. Now it’s all about relentless progress to see if they can keep up and catch up.