‘Another planet’: All signs point to McLaren mauling; Red Bull’s latest flop explained — Talking Points

Formula 1 left Bahrain around a month ago with a gut feeling that McLaren had the car to beat following three days of pre-season testing.

One month later and it’s no longer just a feeling.

McLaren sent the field an ominous warning after the first day of practice. After a brief and exclusive tussle between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, the Australian ended up on top with a 0.154-second advantage.

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Piastri’s gap to the rest of the field was more than half a second — a whopping 0.527 seconds, to be exact.

Of course it’s only practice, something McLaren has tried to emphasise since the end of Friday running.

But the team’s rivals have no doubt.

McLaren isn’t just the team to beat this weekend. It might be unbeatable — so long as it gets one thing right.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Max Verstappen pinches pole and victory at Suzuka to make it three different winners from the opening three grands prix, but can the Dutchman keep up the pace in Bahrain this weekend?

McLAREN PLAYS DOWN ADVANTAGE, BUT GAP LOOKS OMINOUS

There were lots of takeaways from Friday practice in Bahrain but only one that caught everyone’s attention.

“We expected McLaren to be a step ahead here, and we saw that today,” George Russell said from third.

“When we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now,” Charles Leclerc said from fourth.

“It’s big, yep … I think this gap is very big,” Max Verstappen said from seventh, even suggesting that Red Bull Racing had shown more of its hand than usual for a Friday only to be blown away.

In fact the only drivers not convinced of McLaren’s advantage were the ones wearing McLaren overalls.

“I don’t think they turned up,” Norris said, though as he did so a broad smile broke across his face. “Everyone just looks at the timesheets; they have no idea about the information on who turns up, who doesn’t.

“[Engine modes are worth] like 0.35 seconds, 0.4 seconds around here. That puts us immediately back in the same position as the Mercedes, so at the minutes I won’t say we’re any quicker.

Piastri insisted the same.

“I think the others will a find a bit more tomorrow, so it’ll be close,” he said.

But really there’s no sign to expect anything but McLaren domination this weekend.

Telemetry doesn’t support an argument about engine modes. If it were true, you’d expect to see McLaren making up time down every straight relative to its lower powered rivals, but instead those are the only parts of the circuit where the frontrunners look evenly matched.

There is some hope perhaps in the way that Mercedes in particular but also Red Bull Racing and Ferrari were within 0.1 seconds of Piastri’s fastest time at the end of the first sector. But the fact that all three cars — three very different cars — are subsequently obliterated through the final two sectors carries more weight.

That’s because it speaks directly to McLaren’s key advantage: tyre management.

Bahrain is one of F1’s most aggressive track surfaces, and with the mercury hovering above 30°C, the circuit is proving especially punishing for the tyres.

McLaren is suffering the same degradation problems as the others but much less significantly, meaning it can keep the tyres alive for the entire lap rather than losing grip early.

It was something even McLaren boss Andrea Stella was forced to concede could be a powerful advantage despite attempting to argue that Bahrain could be one of his team’s worst circuits.

“My expectation is that Bahrain is the most difficult venue for McLaren of the first part of the season,” he said.

“The only thing we saw is that the car is gentle on the tyres, which is a feature we couldn’t exploit very much in Suzuka, which was a very low degradation circuit. This one is a high-degradation circuit, so if anything, that could be our strength.”

But he also mounted perhaps the most compelling argument for caution.

“To capitalise on this strength you have to qualify well,” he said. “There are a few things that we need to get right, and yet in this kind of low-speed-dominated configuration, I’m not sure that McLaren will enjoy much advantage at all.”

The MCL39 has shown itself to be tricky to drive, especially in qualifying conditions, even if we’re not talking about Red Bull Racing quantities of capriciousness. Both Norris and Piastri have made mistakes at the limit this season, including just last week in Japan, where Verstappen was able to pinch pole.

These difficult sweltering conditions might on the one hand give McLaren an advantage, but on the other they could make it harder for the drivers to use it.

YUKI TSUNODA RUES LOST ‘FREE LAP TIME’ ON EVENING OF ERRORS

After a competitive but wayward showing at the Japanese Grand Prix, there has been considerable optimism that Yuki Tsunoda could score his car’s first points of the season in Bahrain, at a track at which he’s always done well.

That feeling took a bit of a beating after FP2, when Tsunoda found himself stuck down in 18th, 11 places and 0.694 seconds behind teammate Verstappen.

It’s painfully familiar territory for that second car.

There was no obvious smoking gun, no big error on his fastest lap, that left him so far down the order. Cue furrowed brows and the faint tingling of concern.

“A bit of learning, I guess,” Tsunoda said. “It’s a bit different also the set-up across the cars to see how the performance looks, it’s also a little bit to do with that as well.

“But the session was just a bit messy overall. I wasn’t able to put it all together. Also there was a lot of miscommunication between our side of the garage on the radio. I think that’s part of the learning process, because it’s still the fifth session since I jumped in [to the team]. It was obviously not the finest session.”

Comparing the telemetry traces between Tsunoda and Verstappen reveals pretty much all his deficit came on one stretch of road from turn 4 to turn 10. It’s the only medium-speed section of the track, where significant demands are made of the tyres.

Tsunoda was just under 0.1 seconds behind Verstappen before this section but lost 0.7 seconds through those seven corners — more than his eventual deficit.

He was very fractionally quicker than Verstappen through the rest of the lap.

In trying to explain what appears to be a specific deficit to his teammate, Tsunoda pointed again to teething problems with the way he’s working with new race engineer Richard Wood.

“My feeling [is that] there’s the potential, but it’s just hard to extract it,” he said. “I could have done much better in the places that lap time comes free, which would make it much smoother — on the operation side, the warm-up, the switches. Everything was messy overall today.

“We just have to avoid this situation in the future. But maybe me and Woody have to go out tonight and build the relationship more.”

Tyre warm-up is something Tsunoda struggled with nailing at Suzuka too. It’s an even more critical problem in Bahrain given the high degradation.

It’s not too generous to say his slow FP2 result is part of Tsunoda’s learning curve, particularly on a day Verstappen struggled to get anywhere near the top three.

How he responds on Saturday is the question.

“I hope it’ll be better; it has to be better than this,” he said. “I’m sure we’re going to change a lot of things.

“For now it seems like I’m struggling, but I know a lot more will come from cleaner operations and everything. That’s free lap time.

“I’m still feeling optimistic, but it’ll be hard for now to go through to Q3.”

F1 BOSSES REJECTS V10 ENGINE MOVE — BUT DREAM ISN’T DEAD YET

A crunch meeting between the FIA, Formula 1, the five 2026 power unit manufacturers and several teams took place on Friday morning in Bahrain to finally put to bed questions over the big rules changes next season and the future of the engine formula.

The origins of the meeting could be traced back to February, when under-fire FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem posted on social media that the sport could return to naturally aspirated V10 motors in the near future despite F1 preparing to introduce a new and more heavily hybridised power unit in just a few months.

It also came despite the already agreed engine formula having been behind Audi debuting into the sport as a works manufacturer, Honda remaining in the sport as a supplier despite having announced its intention to leave and Ford arriving as a technical partner in Red Bull’s first powertrain program.

Reports during the week suggested that Ben Sulayem had got the idea from former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone, though it’s unclear why the long-ousted ex-supremo would have any sway in the matter.

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner had been the plan’s most vocal proponent. Some have theorised it indicates the long-time independent team is struggling to make its 2026 power unit competitive, and Motor Sport Magazine reported ahead of the meeting that the FIA had been made aware of significant performance disparities between the five engine projects that could put the competitiveness of next season at risk.

Wherever the push was coming from specifically and whatever the precise motivation to bring the matter to a head, the resolution was to retain the status quo.

There will be no change to next year’s rules and, at least for now, the five-year regulatory window before a new formula can be introduced.

As expected, Honda, Audi and Mercedes were all opposed to change, while only Ferrari and Red Bull Powertrains were in favour of changing direction.

But the matter isn’t closed just yet.

The FIA said in a statement that “all parties agreed to continue discussions on the future technical direction of the sport”, which has been interpreted as the door being left open to changing the rules before they expire at the end of 2030.

In particular the meeting was sensitive to reducing costs and “building resilience against the fluctuations of the global economy”, an issue suddenly front of mind following the turmoil caused by the United States’s tariff regime.

Those hoping for a return to the naturally aspirated V10s of the 2000s, however, will have gone home disappointed.

“A level of electrification will always be part of any future consideration,” the FIA statement said. “The use of sustainable fuel will be an imperative.”

If the rules do change before 2031, they’re unlikely to be a massive departure from next year’s engine, which itself isn’t that far from today’s motor.