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Fast cars, lightning reflexes, and the unknown future-- this is Blind Corners. News and chatting about the latest topics around the Formula 1 World Championship. Hosted by Bryce Castillo. Putting the 'theory' in critical racing theory since 2023.
[This transcript has been generated.]
[0:00] The 2026 F1 season is just a week away from its premiere at the Australian Grand Prix. Today, we will cover the major changes to the grid this year, plus three weeks of preseason testing and all of the storylines to follow at the first race at Albert Park. I'm blind Bryce Castillo, and this is Blind Corners.
[0:33] This season introduces a whole new set of rules and regulations for formula one nearly every single part of the car has been modified let's start with energy sources this year the cars are going to be about 50 50 uh power generating between the ice the internal combustion engine and electricity from a battery now there will be no more mgu h that was the system that took heat from the vehicle and recovered it into energy there is still the mguk which takes the braking power and turns that into power to charge the battery in fact i think they are allowed to recover even more energy from that mguk to charge the battery so that's one of the new changes under the hood the other just simply being that the power Units are completely different. They have so much more battery power. The other new thing is on the outside of the car. There's a new active aero that will be a part of the front and rear wings, and those are going to be available every single lap. They've got a straight mode and a corner mode, so they'll be able to flip that multiple times every single lap, regardless of if there's a car in front of them or not. So there's no more DRS, but there is still movable wings. And now the front wings are also moving. On top of the shapes of the car, the cars are now slightly shorter, slightly more narrow, slightly lighter.
[2:02] The other big thing on the shape of the car is that the car floor has been kind of standardized. It's no longer the Venturi tunnel system where the designers get to be really creative and suck up all of the air between the car and the asphalt.
[2:20] Now, DRS is gone, but there is a new thing called overtake mode. So if you're within one second of a car in front of you, you can hit overtake mode, and that'll give you an extra boost of electrical energy to deploy to add a little bit of extra speed. This will be a little more strategic than DRS, because DRS was just opening the flap of the rear wing, and then you would get the reduction in drag. But this is, using just allowing you to use more energy from the battery for a for a moment down in specified zones and since it's still pulling from that energy pool you still have to think about recharging your battery where that energy comes from and some of the drivers are concerned that that may not actually funny enough may not actually give you enough of an advantage because it's it's still your energy You're just allowed to use it earlier and spend it a little earlier. Speaking of electrical deploy, there is still electrical deploy. They'll have a button on the car steering wheel that lets them put a little extra battery juice into the wheels. But this is now called boost. It was already a thing, but I don't think that there was a standardized name for it. Now it will be called boost and it will certainly get confusing with overtake mode, I'm sure. Speaking of changes under the hood, the cars will also run new fuels. These are, quote, advanced sustainable fuels.
[3:50] And these could be pretty different among the different fuel providers. Each team just about has their own different fuel provider, whether it's Aramco, whether it's Golf, Mobile One, Valvoline.
[4:04] To quote a Formula One article about these fuels, the fuel is made from cutting-edge sources like carbon capture, municipal waste and non-food biomass, and it is independently certified to meet strict sustainability standards. The idea is that these fuel formulations could trickle down into more sustainable road car fuel. I think the idea is that they want these new fuels to be drop-in type fuels. I think that means that you could just replace the existing fuel, traditional fuel that you would use with these sustainable fuels, and the car would still work.
[4:39] There's a lot of science going on behind here. There's a real shady, not shady, I'm not going to call it shady, but there's a real behind closed door stuff going on with the fuels. And we may not be able to get a sense of the delta between the different fuel providers until, I mean, maybe a few races in. And finally, this is not necessarily a regulation change, but we do have a couple of team changes from 2025 to 2026. The two big ones being that the kickstake Sauber team has now finally been purchased by Audi and is now an Audi branded car. They're the one with the brushed silver half front and then the glossy black and red back half. I think it looks cool. I think it looks cool. The other one is that Cadillac is a brand new team. We finally have an 11th team back on the grid.
[5:26] This is the black and white car. They have a cool asymmetrical design. It's all black and white. It's got the IWC logo on their side pod. I think it looks cool. They've got Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez back on the grid. We'll talk about them and take a look at Cadillac in just a little bit here. But it's not looking all bad for the brand new team. So those are some of your new rules, regulations and changes to Formula One for 2026. I am excited about the new formula. Obviously, there are some question marks about the race starts. There are some question marks about the teams have different versions of active aero. The fuels could be a complete black sheep, you know, game changer. And the idea, they always say the idea is to improve the racing. I think they can. I think it could.
[6:18] But we'll have to see. We will have to see about that.
[6:23] We're now on the other side of three weeks of testing across Bahrain and Spain, and it was mainly in the plains that it was happening. Here are some of the hot topics from testing. I think the number one hottest topic is Ferrari. They seem to have a pretty basic sort of testing. Before testing, Ferrari were saying that effectively they were going to bring an A-spec car to testing with the idea that they would pretty rapidly innovate and change and upgrade the car. But then we had a surprise in one of the very last days of testing where Ferrari showed off a new rear wing design where the active aero element of it, instead of just like one angle of the wing.
[7:16] Flipping down to create kind of a slot gap, the whole wing the whole wing element that moves actually rotates almost like 270 degrees it would look like 180 but because of the way that the angle is it has to be even more and basically they run that part of the rear wing upside down so the idea being that it goes from this shape that catches air to create downforce on the rear of the car will flip over and then give the car almost a lift-type effect down the straights. So not only are you lowering drag, but you are potentially increasing lift, which is Hopefully does not create an auto sports accident of all time, but it could be huge.
[8:07] I've seen some data visualizations that show that actually the rotating motion could be extra beneficial for Ferrari because there's a point when the wing is rotating that it acts like a parachute, basically. And because you're, if you're, imagine you're going from a straight line mode where it's upside down and you've got lift, down into cornering mode where it's meant to be the slower mode where it adds drag and down force. And when the wing makes that rotation, there's actually a phase in the rotation where the wing, one of the visualizations I saw called it a parachute phase, where it actually doesn't just like add downforce to the car, it actually drags the car and potentially creates braking power, stopping power into the corners and the curves. That could be a potentially huge way to add braking force into really heavy corners.
[9:14] We'll have to see because that parachute phase seems really short and really almost incidental. But I would love to see this wing be really innovative. I would love to I love to see Ferrari not just like succeed, but actually innovate. You know, when there are seasons like 2025 where Ferrari have kind of given up and moved on to 2026 the next year early, when they're in that mode, Ferrari just kind of feels like a fashion brand. They feel like a fashion brand with a really cool color. But then here they're actually innovating. This It could be potentially huge.
[9:47] This is a lot for something that they ran, like, I don't know, three laps in testing. But you see them, the first time I saw it move, I was, like, actually shocked. It's one thing to hear. I recommend you go and watch the clip.
[10:01] It surprised me seeing it move. To me, that was the most, the biggest question mark over testing. It was a great radio tease for what could happen, what could come out of the scuderia. We'll see if it actually does or not. But I would love to think that that was, a brilliant design. Keeping on some of the top teams, Mercedes did a ton of laps across all of testing. They seem to have the highest amount of reliability out of just about any of the other teams. Of course, they are the works Mercedes team. So that's, they should have, they should, but then we'll get to, we'll get to being a work team and not having the reliability. But there have been good vibes in the whispers. I've seen people saying that Mercedes are going to do pretty well in the season. But, you know, testing, testing. What we did see out of testing was that Mercedes have a high amount of reliability, that they were able to do full race lengths of testing and not have any issues with the engine, which is really, really important in the first phase of a new regulation like this. Some of the other strong showings from testing included Red Bull. It seemed like Red Bull was doing pretty well for their first Red Bull Ford power engine. Had a few testing blips. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen has been to the media multiple times talking just smack about these cars, saying that they're more like go-karts or they're like Formula E, which is very much about energy preservation.
[11:29] But this could be a strong year for Red Bull, especially if their engine is really strong. Supposedly Ford's involvement on the battery has been a pretty strong advantage. On top of that, we also had McLaren, who looked pretty good. But the sense that I've got is that they are coming at testing from a more defensive position, that they're going to upgrade the car in season to kind of follow potentially successful design trends from others. I think a lot of this just comes from the fact that McLaren, in winning both the Constructors' and the Drivers' Championship last year, had to spend a lot of time in 2025 thinking about the 2025 car, working on the 2025 car. And it is a zero-sum game that distracts from the 2026 car. And so we're going into a new year where the number one driver from last year and the number one team from last year are there's a question mark there's just a question mark over them i would love to see mclaren do well i'd love to see lando and oscar fight for the championship again.
[12:39] But we will have to see there's also has has has kind of softly taken the position of best of the midfield potentially they had some good reliability and that's, pretty much all you can take out of testing, but it seemed like they had a strong testing. Also, Cadillac had a pretty good test for, again, being a brand new team. They had good times, their reliability was pretty strong, so there's a lot of confidence going into Haas for 2026. We'll see if that pays off, though.
[13:16] So there's a lot of potential for Haas in 2026, but we'll have to just see if that pays off also alpine seemed to be doing okay in testing this is their first season with the mercedes engine they no longer have their own reno powered engine but it seemed like they had an okay showing there is grumblings that alpine may be back but they've had such a tough few years but it that was because they were using their the end the reno engine and that reno engine we kind of found out in the last few years of regulation that that engine just wasn't up to snuff it just didn't have as much power as it needed and they weren't really allowed to make that engine any better because there was an engine freeze some of the not so great showings from pre-season we have to start with aston martin they had a really really bad testing they had a lot of engine problems this is their first season uh being a honda works team using a honda works power engine and it is not working out they had a lot of stoppages and engine problems throughout testing and that's the one thing you don't you can't have you need to do laps you need to do a lot of laps and this is a really really bad sign for what i would describe as the the villain team of formula one i would say the team who is most likely to shut down the community center.
[14:44] Is called aston martin they this year they've pumped so much money into trying to have a good showing this year between getting adrian newey the amazing car designer between the building brand new facilities in a wind tunnel for that for for the team um continuing multiple world champion fernando alonso uh on in their garage and yet they are just not able to make it work It's a real tough one for Honda because Honda famously made the Red Bull engine that took Max Verstappen to his multiple world championships. And then Honda immediately left Formula One. And so Red Bull had been maintaining that engine on their own with some then former Honda employees. And so Honda now in the Aston Martin is not Honda from four or five years ago. And that is a that's a real bad sign it's a real bad one for fernando alonso too another bad honda deal for him we don't have to get into that another poor showing from testing was williams they missed the first week of testing there was a behind closed door session of testing that williams missed the entire week of they could have picked three out of five days to do testing and they got none of them and.
[16:08] No matter how you dress it up and zhuzh it up, that is a bad thing.
[16:16] It's no good if you're not able to properly test your car, especially in the first test of the season. I mean, it's not even like this was, okay, the third week of testing and they knew, okay, well, we just need to spend this time to build new parts or what have you. This was the very start. It's a really bad sign. I know James Vowles is working to overhaul the Williams team, but this is a bad sign. This is a huge bad sign. There are also rumblings about the Williams potentially failing a crash test preseason, which sounds like there was a kernel of truth to that, but they are past that. Their car is still underweight. And I feel like for the past, you know, season or two, James Valls has always held it up as like, you know, we're Williams and we're this is how fast we are. But this is how fast we would be if we could lose all of this extra weight that we've got. And they still have all that extra weight.
[17:18] So those are the big stories from preseason. It's tough to get anything out of testing.
[17:23] Those times may not even mean anything. You never know how much or if a team is sandbagging especially in a new regulation where it's not like you can compare performance on a simulator to last year's performance because the cars are totally different but there are plenty of positives at coming out of pre-season testing that made me excited for the upcoming australian gp.
[17:52] We're super close to the return of F1. These are some of the storylines going into the Australian Grand Prix. One of the big ones over the preseason break has been an issue with the power units issue.
[18:06] Part of the regulations for this year are that the engines have to have a certain compression ratio, 16 to 1, in the cylinders when they compress all the air. It's only allowed to be at 16 to 1. And when it's higher, presumably, you are able to run the engine faster. But this year, with these new regulations, the rules have said it's got to be 16 to 1. The wrinkle is that the way the FIA, the governing body, test that compression ratio is with a cold temperature test. That means that the engine is idle, and then they run it, and they see what that compression ratio is. But what you test at cold isn't necessarily what the operating window is, you know, when it's up at temperature, when it's heated up. And supposedly Mercedes and even, is it Red Bull maybe? Potentially have a twist on this that their engine design allows them to go higher than the 16 to 1 rule when the engine is at operating temperature.
[19:20] Potentially meaning that the cars could have a few horsepowers more in the power units. And Mercedes powers, what, a third of the grid? It's Mercedes, it's McLaren, now it's Alpine and Williams. So if this compression ratio, quote unquote, trick is powerful enough, it could create a real like.
[19:43] Two tiers of teams, if it's really significant. Now, the FAA have said that they are going to start doing hot temperature tests starting in June 1st. That would be before the Monaco Grand Prix. Now, the rumor that I've heard is that Mercedes are not particularly worried about doing this at a hot, doing a hot temperature test because the physics should say, apparently, that when the engine is hotter that the compression ratio will go down i don't i don't i'm not an engine i'm not a rocket scientist i don't i just like that sounds right to me right if it's hotter it has a little more wet a little more give and then that would negatively impact compression ratios but we're just gonna have to see because again even a hot temperature test isn't necessarily the same thing as what the actual compression
[20:35] ratio is when the cars are driving on track. The other big story from pre-season testing to watch out for from the very start of the Australian Grand Prix will be the race-starting procedure. Because of the new formula of cars, the drivers have said that when they're on the grid doing a race start, they will need to rev up the car, the engine.
[20:57] For like 10 seconds, for a really, really long time, so that they can spin up the turbo the turbo unit in the car at for the race start right right on the race start they run through all the gears really quickly and that turbo is is needed because that keeps the power energy going through the straight through uh you know the most vulnerable time of the race the race start.
[21:22] In one of the testing sessions, they did a special test start that included a five-second blue light warning before the regular lights out. The idea is that this would give cars who are at the back of the grid, who have the least amount of time stationary on the grid, a chance to rev up their turbos as much as they can, as much as they need. It seemed like that was an okay workaround, but then I read somewhere that Ferrari may have vetoed making a change to the start procedure. But as far as I'm aware, there wasn't really a final decision about that yet. We're less than a week away from the Grand Prix, so they're going to have to decide it relatively quickly. But I think Ferrari have done that block because they supposedly have a smaller turbo in their car. Having a smaller turbo would mean that you need less energy to actually get it spinning and up to speed in that grid start time. And so for Ferrari, their stance was all of the teams know the rules. We all have to work within this.
[22:41] And also, we think we have a solution for it. So get fucked, get fucked. But we'll see. We'll see. I think for the racers near the start of the grid, you will have 10 seconds. You will have the time to do it. But if you're at the back of the grid, you may get less than five seconds just in all. I guess you would get, what, five or six seconds? You have the five lights, and those are one second each. And then it's a random amount of time for the lights to go out. So, you know, it could be five seconds, it could be eight or nine seconds, but this is all immediately up to the lights going out. But if your turbo doesn't need to rev as much and you're at the back of the
[23:20] grid because you're fucking Ferrari, then who knows? Who knows? Let's go through some of the teams here for the Australian Grand Prix, starting with McLaren. They are your two-time Constructors champion, the reigning Drivers champion, but they do have really modest expectations. Like I mentioned earlier, they have stated that they're going to be playing a little bit of defense at the start of the season. I don't think it's the worst thing for them because they ultimately were able to take the hardware last year.
[23:46] But again, I don't it's not great going into a new regulation, potentially being, you know, a half step or a whole step behind everybody else. I mean, we saw with Mercedes and their very ill fated decision to try out the zero side pod design. That put them aerodynamically behind the entire last rules regulation so much so that now we've got a new one again and mercedes if we can jump over to them maybe back in their top form they may have figured it out um and with everyone having a reset, You know, what did Lewis say? We're Mercedes. God damn it. He didn't say God damn it. But they're Mercedes. They should be. They should be, especially because they're a works team, right? Mercedes-AMG makes the engines. The Mercedes-AMG team races with them. So they could also potentially get the most out of the compression ratio thing because they're a works team. Over at Red Bull, this, again, is their first season with the Red Bull Ford power unit. But this will also be Isaac Hadjar's season up at the senior team alongside Max Verstappen. I like Isaac Hadjar. He's a funny guy. He's a quirky little dude. And it's a very cursed seat that he's taken in.
[25:07] We don't need to get into the Red Bull second driver problem that has plagued this team for a few seasons. But we might have a new one for the grinder. And it's not the app. it's a meat grinder. We also talked about Ferrari and that they supposedly will be bringing a lot of upgrades to their car this year. That would be very exciting. We will see if they bring the rotating wing to Australia. I would love to see it. But if we don't, then I think that means that Ferrari have found problems with it that they can't get around because it's so cool. I don't mean to be a I don't mean to slob the knob but I think it's so cool it's it none of the other teams are doing anything like it and if they don't use it you know, on, on the first time that it actually counts, then I think that will mean that they have found reasons to not end up using it, but I would love to see it. I would love to see that fucking way. I would watch, I would put it on my multicam just so I could watch the wing rotating like a hundred times a lap. I'm, I, it's, I'm, I'm in love with a rear wing. I never thought it would happen. Going down the list, Williams, you know, Williams had a really strong 2025.
[26:21] But um i think of 2025 as a lame duck season because it was the last year of those rule rags and for williams i know that this was that was not the year that they were targeting there's a quote out there from james vall saying i don't care about 2023 or 2024 or 2025 i care about 2026 but uh they scored way more points than anyone expected carlos and alex both did a pretty strong showing we just have to see if they can get the weight under control and if they are able to do engine car development at a rate befitting a successful Formula One team because if not they're going to be seen as the junior Mercedes team sooner or later I mean maybe they they practically are but you know they have deals and stuff but it's not it's not a Red Bull racing bulls thing but you might look at it like that if they keep acting like a b team speaking of b teams i have no i don't have any idea about what's going on with racing bulls they do have arvid linblad joining liam lawson um there on the junior team i surprised liam lawson is still around.
[27:36] Um, not that he's a bad guy. He seems like a nice guy, but he seems like he had a real tough showing of it last season. Of course, it didn't give him a lot of chances to do so. Um, and then Arvid, uh, uh, I don't know much about him. I believe he, you know, obviously was a strong junior, uh, driver in one of the lower leagues, but.
[27:57] Racing bulls. You kind of got the sense last season that the racing bull car was easier to drive than the Red Bull car, despite having the same engine that.
[28:07] You know, presumably sharing a lot of parts. But I don't have a lot of a lot for racing bulls, to be honest with you. We do have a lot for Aston Martin. We really got to keep an eye out for Aston Martin.
[28:17] It is the situation with their power unit is so bad that the rumor on the street is that Honda don't have spare parts for their engine at the moment. They just don't have, they haven't been able to build enough parts for their engine to the point. The rumor is that Aston Martin may not even start the Australian Grand Prix, let alone finish it. I don't know if that's true, right? You have a duty as a team to take part in the races to compete maybe they will maybe but but if you are out of spare parts and you're concerned about the engines that you do have to you you don't just wait though i mean it's a race you got to do the race they don't even they don't they need data at the very least they can use the the australian gp as a testing session and just try to get some data we've seen that happen in previous seasons you could totally just throw the first race of the season away oh my god it's horrible to even imagine then we have Haas Haas have their new Toyota Gazoo Racing not Gazoo Racing um partnership this season which could be strong you know we mentioned that it seemed like they had a really strong um testing that they might be the top of the midfield.
[29:38] We'll see about that. I guess we'll see.
[29:43] But I feel like I don't have a lot for Haas. I don't know if Cadillac being on the grid is taking away any of my interest in Haas. But this does seem like a year where Haas and their business model of trying to, you know, buy as many spec parts as they can and trying to make a performance team with a lot of price efficiency seems like it could work. They got Oliver Behrman. We all love Oliver Behrman.
[30:08] I don't love Esteban Ocon, but we all love Ollie. We love Ollie, right? For Audi I don't know what's gonna be with Audi right I mean the the Sauber team have been a mid team a midfield a midfield team for a few seasons for a while now Audi's not just doing this for shits and giggles right they want to win Audi are a motorsport company they you know they, succeeded in other categories we'll just have to see if they're able to make upgrades to take advantage of the new formula.
[30:42] It's kind of a shot in the dark with Audi. I mean, there are low expectations for them, given how well.
[30:48] The Sauber team did last year. But then again, it's fucking Audi. It's the fucking VW group. They should, they should do all this, get this right. A big question by the end of the Grand Prix will certainly be if Alpine are able to find any performance out of not having to make an engine, out of using the Mercedes engine. I feel like you can't judge Alpine based on the last regulation set because their engine was so bad and they were never able to fix it.
[31:19] But I also don't think it's great that they have the sport's most infamous cheater leading their team in Flavio Briatore. I don't... I still don't... I still can't... That's still... I hate that. I still hate seeing his fucking face. And to wrap it up, Cadillac, with Austin Martin having such a tough time, Cadillac may not be the last place team at the australian grand prix i don't think i don't necessarily think that they'll get points i don't think that they'll break 10th place but i think that they could on merit you know assuming there's not just like a bunch of dq ds dnfs from aston martin that i think that they could potentially beat another car on track and i know that sounds really infantilizing but that is the level of the goal and expectations for the team. The expectation for the team right now is that they will be last place by a long shot.
[32:24] What it seemed like out of the testing results was that Cadillac certainly was in the 107% rule. Is it 107 or 106? There's a rule that says when you do qualifying, your time must be within 107% of the fastest time in qualifying or in the qualifying session. So if you took the fastest time and you multiplied it by, you know, one, 0.07, your time needs to be within that gap. Otherwise, you don't qualify. You just don't qualify. And it doesn't seem like Cadillac is in that problem yet. Like, assuming there wasn't a lot of really bad, a lot of really heavy sandbagging and testing, Cadillac have a shot at not being last, which again, sounds really shitty, but that is the state of it. And also, we want to see Botas and Perez again. I love Valtteri Botas. Sergio Perez is the one person who could keep up with Max, and even to an unsatisfactory degree there, but still was there. People love these guys. These guys are fan favorites, and it would be good to see them again.
[33:45] That's going to do it for Blind Corners today. Thank you so much for listening. If you're interested in more about this, go to patreon.com slash lfgx. That's how you can support this, support Marble, support the Two Tusks podcast, all sorts of stuff. Of course, check out Two Tusks, me and my buddy Jeff from Rage Select. We've done two seasons now of a pair of great Fleetwood Mac albums. We listen to them track by track and then we compare them to alternative mixes. It's a good time. Check that out, Two Tusks, wherever you enjoy podcasts or support us, patreon.com slash lfgx. I'm really looking forward to the first race of the season. Testing has been good, has slightly whetted my appetite, but I am really back for cars on the asshole. I'm even going to try to follow Formula 2 a little bit this season because Colton Hurta from IndyCar is now at High Tech. I think he's at High Tech GP team in F2. And then also MotoGP. MotoGP was really cool last season, but I only caught like a few races, but I'm thinking about getting their video passing and just following MotoGP. MotoGP's cool. Their races are only like 45 minutes and they're... Anyway, this is not a MotoGP podcast. We'll be back after the Australian Grand Prix. Thank you so much for listening. I'm blind Bryce Castillo. This has been Blind Corners. Meow!