The world champion edged out Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and new Mercedes signing George Russell, with most of the field going for performance runs late in the final session.
Remarkably, Verstappen completed what was the second fastest lap of the Bahrain test overall on the same set of tyres he had been running during a wild spin out of the final corner.
After Sergio Perez topped the first session of the final day for Red Bull, Verstappen did not take to the track during the later running for nearly a full hour.
But after spending the first 30 minutes of the next hour building up to speed on the harder compounds, Verstappen moved ahead of his teammate’s effort by 0.4s with a 1m32.645s set on the C3 medium tyres.
An hour later, just before 5.30 local time, Leclerc edged Ferrari ahead with a 1m34.415s on the C4 soft rubber.
He then switched to the C5 softs for a subsequent flying run, but despite setting a then purple middle sector, Leclerc ended up…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Motorsport.com – All – Stories…