McLaren joined the Barcelona Shakedown on Day 3 to start its F1 2026 preparations, as Mercedes led the way as per unofficial lap times.
After Ferrari made its debut on Day 2, it was the turn of McLaren to unleash its MCL40 on Day 3 with the #1 aboard Lando Norris’ car in all-black stealth livery. The Italian manufacturer skipped the day and will now have to run on both the days on Thursday and Friday to complete its three-day quota.
McLaren will have to run on both the days as well, but Mercedes can skip one more day after completing two days. The two drivers completed 90+ laps each, with George Russell doing 92 in the morning hours and Andrea Kimi Antonelli undertaking 91 as per the official data from the team.
The two ran a lot of laps on the C1 tyre as unofficial times put them in the Top 2, with Antonelli (1m17.362s) ahead of Russell (1m17.580s). It was Mercedes 1-2-3-4-5 as per unofficial times, as McLaren’s Norris (1m18.307s) was third from the Alpine pair.
Franco Colapinto (1m19.150s) finished ahead of teammate Pierre Gasly (1m19.297s), with the Frenchman getting his first taste of Barcelona Shakedown in the afternoon. Their lap counts sit at 77, 58 and 67 respectively in the order they finished.
Haas returned to action on Day 3, with Oliver Bearman in the car – post his Fiorano run. The team encountered a problem early on but they managed to fix it before lunch. He ran a bit more but his day ended early due to a second reliability issue – which was dubbed as a more serious one. He did 42 laps in all, to finish P6 (1m19.314s).
Like Haas, even Visa Cash App RB returned to action on Day 3 with F1 2026 rookie Arvid Lindblad in the car for his first run of Barcelona Shakedown. He completed the most number of laps from the eight runners, which stood at 119, to be seventh with a best time of 1m19.240s.
Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg was eighth with 68 laps and a best time of 1m21.010s. Much like teammate Gabriel Bortoleto on Day 1, the German also had issues during his run, causing red flag. The likes of Cadillac joined Ferrari in the miss list, with Red Bull forced to sit out of the day.
After the crash for Isack Hadjar to end Day 2, Red Bull did not have enough parts to get the car ready to run. At this juncture, it is unclear if they will complete their quote of three days. They still have a day at hand to prepare the car for Friday when Max Verstappen will get a full day’s run.
Here’s unofficial times: https://x.com/MsportXtra/status/2016562652017791441?s=20
Here’s photos: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/the-best-social-media-from-day-3-of-the-barcelona-shakedown.55Vb1MsSVz7Ib0N45gbOqS
Here’s videos: https://www.formula1.com/en/video
F1 Drivers/team say –
Russell (Mercedes): “Everything went relatively smoothly from a reliability perspective today so that is good for our overall programme. This test is all about getting mileage on the car and making sure everything functions as it should. That was the case today as Kimi and myself were able to put a large number of laps in once again. The track temperature was in the low single-digits this morning, one of the coldest circuits I’ve ever driven on, so there’s little-to-nothing you can read into the times.
“The excitement lies ahead once we head to Melbourne and get a sense of where we stack up against our competitors. For now, we are putting in the hard work and enjoying the process of getting ready for the season ahead. We’ve still got one more day of running we can accomplish, which may be tomorrow but will depend on the weather. We’ve got more work we want to do, and we are in a good place to run on Thursday, but we will only do so if we are confident it will be dry.”
Antonelli (Mercedes): “It was a better day on my side than Monday, where the wet track in the morning limited my running. We were able to run a full race distance this afternoon, building our mileage and getting lots of data for the team to work with. This car is completely new and a big difference to last year’s so I’m getting more used to it with every lap we complete. It’s constant learning for me as a driver and the team too so accumulating as much mileage as we can is very useful.
“We have completed our programme on both days so far. That is the only real goal of this shakedown and hopefully our third and final day of running goes smoothly. That may be tomorrow if the weather looks to be dry; whatever the conditions we face either tomorrow or Friday though, we are focused on adding to our mileage and putting ourselves in the best possible position before we head to Bahrain.”
Bearman (Haas): “It was great to get back into the car. We’d obviously had a bit of running at Fiorano at the weekend where we managed to do the maximum 200 kilometers, but today was my first experience of the car in the dry. That meant it was the first time I was able to push it on its limits, at least for what they were for the set-up being run today. Honestly, I was quite impressed – it’s been such a big overhaul of regulations, and this track is quite a tough one for these 2026 cars given the energy harvesting that we have to do.
“The car definitely felt powerful with the full battery power, the amount of harvesting we had to do was not too bad. You can definitely feel the car is a bit more agile and more nimble with the extra weight loss from the previous regulations. I’m excited to see the car go through its paces more. We had a bit of an interrupted day but we still got through some important items and learned some big things about this car. It’s a shame on one hand, it’s the nature of these tests, but it’s good to get these things out of the way now as opposed to later.”
Gasly (Alpine): “It was good to be back driving this afternoon and getting to grips in the new car. As a team, we completed 125 laps today, which is a solid day’s work between me and Franco as we all continue to work hard together and continue to understand our new package. On my side, we did 67 laps in the afternoon under some nice, dry conditions, which certainly makes a big difference to driving in the wet at Silverstone last week! This generation of car will take time for all of us to adapt, they are certainly very different.
“It’s a good challenge and one I look forward to continuing when we are next in the car. It is weather dependent whether we choose to run tomorrow or Friday. It is important to keep adding laps to our tally as every lap you learn something and maximising that track time is so important. We will see what comes and I am happy with the team’s efforts so far at this shakedown.”
Andrew Shovlin (Mercedes): “We are pleased with the mileage we achieved today and have ticked off most of the objectives we set ourselves for the first two days of running here in Barcelona. The car has been reliable, and we’ve been able to put together multiple race distances today. That is encouraging as an initial step, and I know both drivers will be feeling the number of laps they put in today! The drivers have commented favourably on the feeling these smaller, lighter cars give them compared to the previous generation.
“However, they will only be truly happy once we see the relative performance compared to our competitors and that is something we won’t see until Bahrain at the earliest. We have one more day of running where we will get into a little bit more set-up work than we have so far. That may come tomorrow and will give us more useful information we can analyse before we head to Bahrain. If that final day goes as well as these first two days have then we will be happy with how this shakedown in Barcelona has gone.”
Ayao Komatsu (Haas): “We had Ollie in the car today and obviously we’d taken lots of learnings from our first day of running here in Spain. We’d sorted out so many issues from Monday, so when we were running on track today, I could see a huge step forward compared to day one – that’s a big positive for us. Unfortunately, in both the morning and afternoon sessions, we had two reliability issues. I’m not worried about the one we had this morning, the one in the afternoon was a bit more serious and it’s obviously something we’re looking into and analyzing exactly what happened – and of course, how to solve it.
“We’ll aim to get on top of it as quickly as possible but at least it’s happened relatively early in our overall pre-season program. We’ll need to decide when we run again, whether that’s Thursday or Friday now – it’s still TBC. I’m continuing to take the positives we’ve seen though – particularly how we’ve improved operational performance from day one to day two of running.”
David Sanchez (Alpine): “What is unique about this week’s shakedown is the ability to choose the three days you want to run on track. This is dependent on a range of factors, notably the weather, and today we remained on plan with a productive day’s work. Franco continued in the car this morning after his first day in the A526 on Monday. This was to give Franco some consistency after some of his running was curtailed earlier in the week, so it was good for him to have a solid morning session with plenty of laps.
“Pierre was then in the car in the afternoon as he continues to get to grips with the new car. After a wet day at Silverstone last week, it was beneficial for Pierre to have some dry running in good conditions and he now has a decent feel for the new package, which should be useful as he prepares for a full day in the car next time out. With an eye on the weather radar, we will make a decision tomorrow morning on when our next outing will be and we look forward to continuing the hard work and development of this 2026 project.”
Here’s how Day 1 panned out in F1 2026
Here’s how Day 2 panned out in F1 2026
Here’s latest from James Vowles on Williams