F1’s testing battle: The workforce in pole place to race clear underneath new guidelines, offended Max Verstappen’s ‘steroids’ barb and why it may very well be ‘chaos’ in Melbourne – as insiders inform me what’s actually occurring within the paddock

It’s paradise for brainboxes in Bahrain. And it is also smokescreens and mirrors right along the pit lane, in keeping with the oldest of Formula One traditions. That’s how it is as the biggest overhaul in the sport’s regulations enters Friday’s last day of pre-season testing.

The smokescreens? Well, one senior driver sent a private WhatsApp to me claiming his team were fractionally off the pace. A leading team principal, in another exchange, countered the unnamed driver’s verdict as ‘totally full of s***’.

Nobody, it seems, wants to talk up his own team’s chances going into the first race in Melbourne on March 8; cards close to chests, keeping the opposition guessing, premature to count chickens.

The usual caveats apply, of course – who is running what fuel load?; what are they holding back?; what will be rates of development in the next few frantic weeks? – but it seems there is convincing evidence that four teams lead the way.

Max Verstappen thinks Mercedes are No 1, and that seems the most realistic assessment – they bolted out of the blocks in Barcelona, scene of the first behind-closed-doors test, and clearly have a good car as well as a smart loophole-assisted engine advantage.

But Verstappen’s Red Bull team (using their first in-house engine, its immediate competitiveness a tribute to the man who orchestrated the project, Christian Horner, remember him?) are super quick, and so are Ferrari (a major boost to a rejuvenated Lewis Hamilton), followed by McLaren. That makes up the quartet most likely to provide the winner in Melbourne.

The running in Bahrain has been intriguing because of how dramatic the reconfiguration is. Hamilton called the new, energy-saving era ‘ridiculously complex’. Nobody is arguing with the seven-time champ.

Chassis and engine have been radically changed. The cars are smaller, lighter and the wheels thinner. They look good; middleweight boxers rather than the heavyweights of recent years, with less grip and downforce. As for power, it is derived almost 50-50 between an internal combustion engine and electric propulsion, powered by a battery that needs recharging each lap.

If the brief engineering seminar of this paragraph is too much, jump a few lines. But it is important. The battery charge is achieved in several ways. During braking. By running the engine at high revs (so low gears) in corners. By coasting at the end of straights.

Several cars locked up in Bahrain as drivers came to terms with the new requirements, black tyre marks etched on the track. Which is OK in Bahrain, one of the more forgiving of tracks with its big run-off areas, but lock up-inspired excursions in Melbourne might betoken a race-scuppering trip into the gravel. The other day Lando Norris predicted ‘chaotic’ racing. Again, few argued.

These new demands will all take time to grow accustomed to. Verstappen, raising questions about how much longer he will stay in the sport, was scathing. With typical heart-on-his-sleeve honesty, he called the race ‘management’ necessities ‘anti-racing’ and ‘Formula E on steroids’, referring to the all-electric series that places an emphasis on power recovery.

He added: ‘I just want normal driving without having to think, “Oh, if I brake a bit longer or less or more, or go one gear up or down,” and it so heavily impacts the performance on the straights.’

The jury is out on the 2026 ingredients but it is worth noting that this move to greater electrics may be out of step with what is occurring outside the sport and its twitchy cars. Only this week Stellantis, parent company of Fiat, Vauxhall, Citroen and Peugeot, announced they will return to diesel engines, having taken a £19billion nosebleed from their rush to EVs.

A return to the banshee screams of the V8s or V10s, and a spectacular show, rather than posturing to the green market, would win many fans’ votes. It would represent ‘bread and circuses’, as the latter-day boffin Juvenal wrote all those years ago.

What else? The start procedure is under review for fear of the Melbourne grid being a stalled mess. The removal of the MGU-H – which converted exhaust gas into electrical energy – means drivers must rev their engines for some 10 seconds to whip the turbo up to operational level before the launch. Will some be left stationary when the lights go out?

Elsewhere, Haas and Alpine look strong among the midfielders. As for Aston Martin, a disaster. They are way off the pace. Adrian Newey, their design guru, arrived too late, March 1 last year, to come straight out with perfection, and their Honda engine is inexcusably deficient.

Mercedes, meanwhile, have dodged the one bullet that might have ripped through an ear lobe, having feared a trick over their engine might have been closed down under opposition from competitors. They have increased the compression ratio in their engine cylinders beyond the 16:1 ratio to 18:1 on track. It gifts them 0.4sec a lap by the most lavish accusatorial analysis, though Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims it is worth less. ‘Bull****,’ he said of the complaints on Thursday.

Indeed. Compression is measured when the car is stationary; not on track. The governing FIA said this week that any modifications in this sphere will not be countenanced until August. Sighs of relief in Mercedes mouths.

Fair enough. The ingenious trick they have pulled off, fully in the spirit of Formula One sorcery, has potential to give them a slight edge heading Down Under.