Twenty-four Formula 1 Grand Prix for a very long season that will see the first verdict on the balance of power between the various teams this Friday, with the first official tests of the season in Bahrain. Saturday, March 2, with the Sakhir Grand Prix brought forward by a day to respect Ramadan in the Islamic country, it will be possible to assess the actual race pace of the various single-seaters and find out if it will be the usual championship dominated by Red Bull's Max Verstappen or if Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Aston Martin will have a chance to fight for the win. In such a long World Championship, as highlighted by Charles Leclerc, 'time management will be important, because 24 races are really a lot'. In addition to the traditional races, there will again be six sprint races which will extend the commitment of teams and drivers to a full 30 events. 'It will be challenging for all those involved and also for us who have to be at 100% in the car - explained the Monegasque Ferrari driver - But I do what I love most in the world. I am always excited at this time of the season, because there are so many question marks. We will know more on Friday'.
The fight for the pole at Sakhir on March 1 will reveal what could not be accurately understood during the three days of winter tests on the same track last week: 'Adrian Newey has overturned his car and caught the other teams off guard - explains former driver and now Sky pundit, Ivan Capelli - the Red Bull technical director has suddenly aged all the other cars. It's true that Ferrari has approached and Red Bull has hidden - continues Capelli - and there will certainly be a great battle. Max Verstappen has raised the bar on driving and on mental and physical preparation, like Senna and Schumacher did. Max is the prototype of the future driver and manages to take a further step in the mental preparation of the 24 GPs that will have to be faced. We will have to understand what the effect of Horner on the team will be, because this could be the only weakness of Red Bull'. Apart from the Horner affair, for the future there is talk of a crackdown on respect for the budget cap, another issue that has not failed to cause controversy for the measures taken regarding the overspending of Red Bull and Aston Martin. According to the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, the big news is that from 2026 the cards will be radically changed as far as the budget cap is concerned.
From that season, in fact, every employee of a team who is employed on F1, even not at 100%, would be included in the budget cap with full salary. This decision is due to the fact that it is too complicated and brainy for the Federation delegates to untangle between sometimes four-figure staff to be scanned between full-time, part-time employees and what percentage of employment on F1-related projects. From 2026, therefore, teams will no longer be able to rely on 'acrobatics' related to part-time to lower the wage bill to be included in the budget cap.
This article is automatically translated