Haas first F1 team to reveal images of 2026 car

For a season in which the sport’s biggest rule change has been made for decades, Haas has become the first team to reveal the look of their new Formula 1 car.

On Monday, digital renders of the new Haas VF26 were made available that included a number of features from the 2026 models.

These are less compact and narrow than the previous designs, and they were built according to customs that had a different aerodynamic philosophy.

The narrower front wing and the engine cover have the most obvious changes.

An engine-cover fin was present in the new Cadillac team’s vehicle, which ran for the first time at Silverstone on Friday in a private test.

The cars and power-units (PU) are both changed by the new 2026 regulations. The engines remain 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrids, but overall performance has significantly increased as a result. Additionally, the engines must run on fully sustainable fuel produced by either industrial synthetic or waste biomass.

Before Bahrain’s first public pre-season test starts on February 11 through to February 20 through a second test on February 18 through to February 20 through a series of online launches, the teams will reveal their vehicles for each vehicle over the course of three weeks.

The final week of January’s test in Barcelona is private and does not permit any independent media.

The Australian Grand Prix will take place in Melbourne on March 6 and 8 for the first race of the season.

Ayao Komatsu, the team’s principal, said Haas’s small, in-flight team faced a significant challenge because of how much of the regulations changed.

No team, even the biggest, would likely say they are fully prepared to deal with this, in my opinion. The challenge is bigger, he said, but for us, it is more significant.

Because of two factors, there will be significant variation between teams.

First is the PU, with the teams likely sharing the same provider, with Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, and Audi each providing one, respectively.

It’s completely open, and development will start right away, according to the engineer.

Although the first four races may have a pecking order, I believe the season will be very dynamic. When the final races of the year are in full swing, what you see in races one and two should be completely different.

The electrical components account for 50% of the engine’s total power, three times more than they did last year. However, the teams will have to work out how to generate enough energy to power the battery, which will eventually wear out and recharge once every lap.

What’s possible for drivers to manage around a single lap and for a racing scenario over multiple laps, Komatsu said, is what’s going to be a lot of what we’re doing in Barcelona.

We are currently working on our energy management plan, which includes preparing for all those different scenarios before racing and even testing.

We don’t know what we don’t know, so I don’t know if we all fully comprehend the difficulty.

“As with aero development, we’re reasonably satisfied with what we’ve done so far, but as with all new regulations, the question will be: Is the goal we’ve set reasonable enough? I’m sure we’ll encounter a variety of concepts when testing, and if there is a mistake, we must fix it right away.

The updated appearance of the car is a rehash of Haas’ improved relationship with Toyota, whose corporate colors are predominantly white and red.

Oliver Bearman, the British driver who will compete with Esteban Ocon in his second season of Formula 1, said: “I think these changes are the biggest in the history of Formula 1, so I’m very excited about it.

It’s impossible to predict our future. We don’t know how well we stack up, and that won’t be until we qualify in Australia, despite everything I’m seeing from the team.