David Croft hints that Australian Grand Prix fans won’t see every F1 car on the starting grid

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Multiple F1 teams are already experiencing delays with their 2026 cars. Williams announced last week that they would miss the Barcelona shakedown after missing key deadlines.

Williams won’t be on track until the first Bahrain test at the earliest, and it later emerged that Aston Martin are behind schedule too. They plan to leave the Barcelona pits on Thursday, but that will limit them to two days of running rather than the permitted three.

Newcomers Cadillac and Audi both made it to Spain on time, but they have encountered issues on track. Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas were restricted to 44 laps combined on day one, while Gabriel Bortoleto only managed 27 for Sauber.

What impact will Williams missing the Barcelona shakedown test have on their 2026 season?

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These issues aren’t a surprise given the scale of the regulation changes for 2026, with both the engine and chassis overhauled.

David Croft would be ‘amazed’ if every F1 team has two cars on the Australian Grand Prix grid

Speaking on the F1 Show podcast last week, Sky Sports commentator David Croft suggested reliability would become a major factor during the 2026 season.

Last season, only one of the top six drivers in the world championship suffered a race-ending mechanical failure – McLaren driver Lando Norris at the Dutch GP.

Croft is expecting the start of the season to be particularly messy. He highly doubts that all 22 cars will make it to the grid for the opening round in Australia.

“Reliability wasn’t the thing back in the day,” Croft recalled. “It has very much become the thing.

“Once again, there’s another reset in the way that we’ve got to understand what Formula 1 is. I’m sure, by the end of the year, reliability will be back, and the teams will be finishing more races than not.

“I’m not thinking of going to Australia with 22 cars on the grid and 22 cars finishing the race. I’d be amazed if it does.”

How many cars retired at the first race after F1’s last major rule change?

In 2014, the first year of the turbo/hybrid era, there were a total of 119 DNFs, an average of 6.26 per race.

By 2025, that figure had more than halved to 58 (2.42 per race) despite the expansion of the calendar from 19 events to 24.

At the 2014 season opener in Melbourne, only 13 out of 22 cars made it to the chequered flag. Seven of the nine retirements were due to failures.

Perhaps a similar DNF rate can be expected this year, potentially opening the door for a sturdy midfield team to score a significant haul of points at the outset.