The Race F1 Podcast · The Race Media Ltd

Revealing every 2026 F1 car's strength and weakness

April 6, 2026·57 min·4 clips

Scott says it's 'a really bad reflection on the car' that Red Bull's engine — built from scratch in record time — is not the weakest part of the 2026 package.

The calendar break gives this a bit of breathing room. With three races logged, Ed Struer sets up the episode as a first proper stocktake of the 11 cars, what they seem good at, where they look exposed, and what the power units may be doing underneath. Mark and Scott keep the certainty dial low. The opening problem is method: it is hard to isolate anything when chassis behavior and power-unit behavior keep leaning on each other. That caution gives the whole episode its shape. The Red Bull-related engine is treated partly through what has not been said, because drivers at Red Bull Racing and the sister team have not been especially sharp about the engine. Charging and deployment become the main thread. The panel's working read is that the unit looks fairly comfortable with energy-management demands, especially when Australia and Japan made those demands easier to see than China did. Nobody pretends the proof is sitting there. Scott's caveat is the useful bit: an engine can look less bothered by deployment stress if it is not extracting quite as much absolute performance as Mercedes or Ferrari. That is not turned into a verdict. It is held as a small-margin explanation for why the Red Bull package may look decent in energy-starved conditions without being the strongest overall. The technical talk stays measured. Instead of forcing the first three races into a neat ranking, the panel keeps asking what each signal might actually mean. Driver comments matter because there is usually more to criticize than to praise, so the lack of engine complaints counts for something, just not everything. The rule change makes the ground move quickly. The appeal here is the live map: assumptions may need rewriting before Miami. Dry, provisional, and built for listeners who want the machinery and the logic chain more than a simple order.

As heard by us

A sharp early 2026 F1 read on power units, deployment demands and where Red Bull may still be short.

The Race F1 Podcast gets into the early 2026 F1 picture through the stuff that is actually moving the order: power units, charging, deployment and how those demands are starting to show up across the first three races.

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Why you'd press play

Three races in and the 2026 power unit order is still live -- Mark Hughes is working it out.

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