McLaren: Ferrari and Mercedes are top of early F1 2026 pecking order

McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella admitted Mercedes and Ferrari "were quicker than us" in race simulations at the first pre-season test in Bahrain, and also believes Red Bull will be in the mix.

As teams dug into long runs on Thursday and Friday, the fog of war surrounding pre-season testing was lifted little by little. While there are still a lot of question marks over the exact pecking order, what has been a common observation is that there is a clear lead group featuring the traditional four top teams – Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren.

Mercedes and Red Bull both traded turns grabbing headlines – Mercedes with its early reliability in Barcelona's shakedown and Red Bull with its impressive-looking energy deployment from 2026's more powerful electric motor, a particularly commendable achievement given it is a first-time power unit manufacturer.

But while initially flying under the radar, Ferrari has now also become the talk of the paddock. With Mercedes hitting trouble over the second half of the Bahrain test, the Scuderia overtook its rival in terms of distance completed. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton also proved rapid over long runs on Thursday and Friday respectively, and McLaren's team boss Stella says both his former employer and Mercedes seem like a step ahead at this stage.

"In terms of race pace, I can confirm that the race pace of Ferrari looks pretty competitive," Stella said. "In the simulation that Hamilton did, and then there was at the same time one from [Andrea Kimi] Antonelli and one from Oscar [Piastri]. I think Antonelli and Hamilton were quicker than us in the race simulation. I would say that the one from Charles [on Thursday's] was quite competitive and at the same level as today's simulations.

"I just invite everyone to just be careful looking too much into what we see in testing. However, in terms of early indications from a competitiveness point of view, I think definitely [you can] put Ferrari and Mercedes at the top of the list."

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Stella also feels Red Bull was "very well equipped", so he doesn't believe any of the traditional big four teams have missed the mark. And while Stella urged the FIA to make three tweaks to improve both safety and the on-track spectacle ahead of Melbourne's season opener, he still believes the Australian Grand Prix will be won by the team with the best overall car and not just dictated by the radically different requirements from the hybrid power units.

"At times you have to do some counterintuitive things from a driving point of view to maximise the exploitation of the power unit and therefore achieve the fastest lap time," he explained.

"Sometimes drivers will have to lift and coast in qualifying before braking, which is not necessarily how they've been driving so far in their motorsport career. Or in some high-speed corners you may want to harvest a bit rather than trying to do the corner flat out.

"However, this doesn't change much in terms of chassis requirements. You still want to have a chassis that delivers as much downforce as possible because you still want to go as fast as possible in the corners. This doesn't change the fact that the fastest car in Melbourne will be the car that will have the best aerodynamic efficiency.

"The fastest car in Melbourne will be the one that has the best downforce, will be fastest in the corners, and has a power unit that is obviously competitive from an internal combustion engine power and also from a harvesting and power deployment point of view. So it goes back to the fact that this is a complex Formula 1, but I think we will get used to it."