Mercedes chief shocked by F1 testing

Red Flag during testing in Bahrain — Photo: © IMAGO

Mercedes

Mercedes chief shocked by F1 testing - 'Red flags and smoking vehicles'

Reliability was a main concern entering the Barcelona shakedown

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Wednesday 4 February 2026 17:42

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Mercedes F1 chief James Allison has admitted his surprise over a lack of 'red flags and smoking vehicles' during the Barcelona shakedown.

The F1 grid got their first proper taste of their 2026 machinery at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with the target of the five-day shakedown (the teams were permitted three days of running across the week) to see if their new systems were working and to accumulate mileage.

Mercedes did just that, and between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell the team clocked up 500 laps and 2,325km.

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Their were concerns, however, with 2026 being the start of a new ruleset, regarding reliability. During winter testing in 2014, the dawn of the hybrid era, half the grid broke down or suffered some type of issue.

In fact, the teams at last week's shakedown managed more than 400km each on average on day one, which is almost eight times as much as the 2014 test. Moreover, a total of three teams on day one of the 2026 test exceeded the day-one mileage from all teams in 2014 on their own.

Allison: 'Surprised' by 2026 car reliability

Speaking at Mercedes' 2026 launch, the team's technical director, James Allison, reflected on the shakedown and conveyed his surprise at their reliability.

"I think the biggest thing that surprised us, and I'm guessing it's true also for our competitors, has been the really quite astonishing level of reliability that we've seen up and down the grid," he said.

"With everything new as it is, I think it would have been reasonable to expect this first shakedown test to have been just a symphony of red flags and smoking vehicles, but that really hasn't happened.

"And in fact, for the most part, the reliability of these cars has been absolutely comparable, in some cases, better than last year's winter testing, with things that were far more mature, and which were very well understood.

"So that has definitely been a surprise to us, a welcome surprise, and I hope something that means that we can go into the new season, just concentrating on the racing, rather than trying to keep everything held together with baling wire and sticking tape."

F1 Mercedes pre-season testing James Allison