Two of the pre-season favourites ran into trouble during Thursday’s testing action.

Red Bull ran into problems on Thursday in Bahrain (Image: Getty)

Both Red Bull and Mercedes suffered with significant technical problems during the morning testing session on Thursday at the Bahrain International Circuit. The two F1 giants have arguably been the standout teams during the early preparation stages ahead of the 2026 season, but ran into trouble in Sakhir.
After a strong start to the second pre-season test, Mercedes ran into trouble for the second time this year when Kimi Antonelli suffered a power unit issue after just three laps of the Bahrain track. The Silver Arrows were forced to replace the Italian’s entire engine after a suspension problem hampered his Wednesday outing.

In the Red Bull camp, there were problems as well. Laurent Mekies’ squad were forced to keep Isack Hadjar in the garage for over two hours due to a “routine issue during the car build”. The French-Algerian racer is set to complete the entire Thursday session after Max Verstappen stepped behind the wheel yesterday.

Mercedes and Red Bull weren’t the only teams with issues, either. Sergio Perez triggered the first red flag of the day when his Cadillac ground to a halt on his outlap. The American squad’s challenger was lifted onto a recovery vehicle and returned to the garage.

For Red Bull, while Thursday morning’s problems were inconvenient, the mood in the camp is positive. After a strong second outing for the RB22 on Wednesday, the Milton Keynes squad have attracted the attention of drivers and team bosses.

“They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else,” explained Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. “I mean, I’m speaking a second per lap, over consecutive laps.

Toto Wolff has been impressed by Red Bull (Image: Getty)

“On a single lap, we have seen it before – but now we have seen it on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straight line deployment. I would say that, as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always with the caveat of that, they’ve set the benchmark.”

Wolff’s stance was backed up by Williams driver Carlos Sainz, too. “It’s still extremely early days, but if I would have to judge by the GPS data of yesterday, right now it is true that whatever Red Bull Ford Powertrains were doing yesterday was a clear step ahead of anyone else,” he said. “Not only a small step, but a clear step and it was mighty impressive.

“If they manage to turn up to race one with a completely new set of regulations, with a completely new engine, new people, and turn up to be the fastest and most reliable engine, you will have to take your hat off to them and say what they’ve come up with, because at least what they were showing yesterday was very impressive.”