Bahrain testing - Day 1

After a long winter break, Formula One is back, with all-new cars and all-new lineups. Before the season can kick off into full gear under the Australian sun, the teams have three full days of testing to use as they see fit. Each day, they all only get to use one car across two four-hour sessions with an hour-long break in the middle. The sessions will run between 10 in the morning and 7 in the afternoon local time. 

While the teams get to divide the three days among their drivers however they want, for the first one, they all opted to give one session to each of them. In the morning it was Piastri, Hamilton, Lawson, Antonelli, Alonso, Doohan, Bearman, Tsunoda, Albon, and Hulkenberg that we could see on track. 

In general, in late February, Bahrain was not as warm and sunny as some might have expected, with the temperature hovering around 16 degrees Celsius, and the sky rather overcast (with some sources claiming that there might be some rain during tomorrow's running). Still, that did not take away from the grandeur of the morning, which saw Lewis Hamilton driving in red and three of the five rookies participating in their first-ever F1 pre-season testing. 

The first part of the morning session, for the most part, passed with no hiccups, except for a few cars running a bit wide. By the time it was halfway done, four seconds separated the ten drivers. Is that an acurate indicator of performance? Is the difference between the teams truly that big? Not really. While it might be tempting to claim testing times as a beacon of the season ahead, especially if your favourite driver happens to be close to the top, the information usually isn't exactly correct. For one thing, the teams aren't pushing for good times because they are focused on testing the capabilities of their cars and components under different conditions. For another, they are running drastically different setups, tires, and fuel loads. 

And then, of course, there is also sandbagging. Imagine you attach five heavy sandbags to a racing car and send it out onto the track. One could only assume that it would become much slower due to the excess weight, but upon the sandbags being removed, it would revert to its real speed. Of course, no one is placing actual bags of sand on the car, but the teams have different techniques to hide the real pace of their cars. No one wants to show best hand before the season even begins and lose the element of surprise. 

With the first four hours coming to an end, it was the Red Bull that seemed the most "untameable" out of the ten cars. Lawson had a goosebumps-inducing moment when he half-spun, barely avoiding falling from the track. It made some wonder if the trickiness of last year's Red Bull contender trickled onto this one, or is it that Lawson pushed harder than other drivers, maybe already under pressure to prove that he deserves a spot alongside the reigning champion.

It was Antonelli who achieved the fastest time over the first four hours (1:31:428), with Lason and Albon close behind. He, together with Tsunoda, also completed the most laps, totalling at 78. Then, after an hour long break, the stage was given to the remaining drivers, namely Norris,  Leclerc, Verstappen, Russell, Stroll, Gasly, Ocon, Hadjar, Sainz, and Bortoleto. 

For the first two hours, the second session of the day also went off without a hitch, with the biggest moment being the spin of Isaac Hadjar, a rookie from the team who once again changed their name. After spending 2024 as either RB or VCARB, the Red Bull junior team officially rebranded to Racing Bulls. 

Some drivers went out much later than others with Norris, Sainz, and Russell being the last to make an appearance on track. The McLaren driver spent a great part of his session in the garage, a fact which became somewhat problematic halfway through it, when a red flag was brought out by a circuit-wide power failure. By that point, he had only done 9 laps, compared to the 20s and 30s of other drivers. 

The unexpected break in the running lasted for a bit more than an hour, with the cars returning to track with only 50 minutes left on the clock. What also appeared on track around that time was a bit of rain. It wasn't enough to justify switching to the intermediate or wet tires, but enough to give the drivers a bit of a scare. About twenty minutes after the session was resumed, it was extended by an hour to make up for the time lost. Instead of running until 7pm local time, it finished at 8. 

And, as the testing went on, a very interesting development happened off track. It was announced that: "The FIA World Motor Sport Council reviewed a proposal regarding the implementation of a mandatory 2-stop strategy (in both wet and dry conditions) for the Monaco GP. (...) A specific requirement for the Monaco GP has been approved mandating the use of at least three sets of tyres in the Race, with a minimum of two different tyre compounds to be used if it's a dry race" (FIA's official X account). What it means is that, to make the race a better spectacle for the viewers, each driver will have to stop at least two times throughout it, regardless of whether it is to their benefit. While we will not get to see the impact of this decision for a few more months, it was met with quite a lot of negativity from fans all over the world. 

When the long day came to an end, it was Lando Norris who sat at the top of the timing sheets (1:30:430), with Russell and Verstappen making up the rest of the top three. Out of all the drivers, it was Esteban Ocon who completed the most laps, finishing with an astonishing 88.