Fred Vasseur convinced rivals will bring ‘huge upgrades’ to second Bahrain test as he makes prediction for early development race

Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur is “convinced” that most teams will “bring huge upgrades” to the second pre-season test in Bahrain, with the Frenchman also setting out his expectations for how the development race could initially unfold.

Prior to the 2026 season getting underway – in which a wave of new technical regulations have been introduced – Vasseur suggested that the Scuderia would bring a “spec A” version of their challenger to the Barcelona Shakedown and pre-season testing in order to gain mileage before later focusing on performance.

With the first of two tests at the Bahrain International Circuit now complete, Ferrari completed a solid lap number of laps across the three days of action – with only McLaren and Williams holding higher lap counts – and Vasseur was left feeling positive about what the squad achieved.

Pushed on whether he felt that the “spec A” plan had worked well, the team boss responded: “Yeah, on this side I would say so far so good, that we did something like 4,500km so far.

“It went pretty well on the reliability side, and it’s 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.

“We can’t make any comparison, but so far it went well on our side to build up the knowledge of the car step by step. It’s still a long way to go.”

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 takes place from February 18-20.

“I’m really convinced that everybody will bring huge upgrades next week and perhaps again in Melbourne,” he explained.

“And it will be like this at the beginning of the season because the rate of development is very, very high and it makes sense to speed up the new parts and the lead time on the new parts, but I’m focused on myself.”

In terms of how happy he is with where Ferrari are currently at with their pre-season programme, Vasseur added: “You always want to do more – you always want to do more laps, but overall I think it went pretty well, that we didn’t have any big issue on the reliability, that we didn’t stop the car so far.

“This is good – we have a good correlation, it’s positive. But it’s nothing about performance – it’s about the quality of work that we are doing in the development.”