Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur is \u201cconvinced\u201d that most teams will \u201cbring huge upgrades\u201d to the second pre-season test in Bahrain, with the Frenchman also setting out his expectations for how the development race could initially unfold.<\/p>\n
Prior to the 2026 season getting underway \u2013 in which a wave of new technical regulations<\/a> have been introduced \u2013 Vasseur<\/a> suggested that the Scuderia would bring a \u201cspec A\u201d version of their challenger to the Barcelona Shakedown and pre-season testing in order to gain mileage before later focusing on performance.<\/p>\n With the first of two tests at the Bahrain International Circuit now complete, Ferrari<\/a> completed a solid lap number of laps across the three days of action \u2013 with only McLaren<\/a> and Williams<\/a> holding higher lap counts<\/a> \u2013 and Vasseur was left feeling positive about what the squad achieved.<\/p>\n Pushed on whether he felt that the \u201cspec A\u201d plan had worked well, the team boss responded: \u201cYeah, on this side I would say so far so good, that we did something like 4,500km so far.<\/p>\n \u201cIt went pretty well on the reliability side, and it\u2019s the best way to collect data and to try to understand what are the options and how we can improve the car step by step. We are not speaking at all about performance so far, but everybody is focused on themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t make any comparison, but so far it went well on our side to build up the knowledge of the car step by step. It\u2019s still a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n After bringing new parts to the SF-26 during the opening Bahrain test, Vasseur believes that most of the field will continue to do this when the second test<\/a> takes place from February 18-20.<\/p>\n