After three days, 3,695 laps and almost 20,000 kilometres, the sole pre-season test ahead of Formula 1’s longest ever season has come to a close in Bahrain.
Once again, teams’ final opportunity to prepare their new cars ahead of the upcoming season came at the same venue as the opening round of the championship. That also means it provides a chance to compare each teams’ times and mileage to their pre-season performance from last year.
Naturally, none of the 10 teams were pushing their cars to their absolute limits over the course of the three days. There will be plenty of performance left in the tank ready to be unleashed next week, when it actually matters. But that is not to say there are not some observations to make now that the pre-season is officially over and a 24-round championship finally gets underway.
Lap times: Driver
Carlos Sainz Jnr has participated in five pre-season tests over his four years as a Ferrari driver, but he has never been the fastest overall until his final one. The man who will leave the Scuderia at the conclusion of the 2024 season set the quickest time of all over the three days; a 1’29.921, making him the only driver to break under the 90-second mark.
Last year, Sainz’s time would have been good enough to earn third position on the Bahrain Grand Prix grid. However, he set this fastest lap on the C4 compound tyres – a step softer than he will have available to him during next weekend’s event.
Sainz’s best lap of testing came in the second day, not the final one when most teams set their best times. But his Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc was the fastest on Friday with a 1’30.322 – also set on a compound he will not be running next weekend. The closest to the Ferrari duo was Mercedes, with George Russell posting a 1’30.368 in the final hour of testing, also on the C4s, while Sauber ended testing in the top four on the time sheets for the second straight year as Zhou Guanyu’s final lap of the test saw him go just slightly quicker than the two Red Bulls of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen.
At the other end of the time sheet, Kevin Magnussen had the slowest best time of any driver for Haas. However, given that his best time of a 1’33.053 was slower than his quickest time of last year’s pre-season test, it’s fair to say it’s probably not worth reading too much into single-lap performance.
Lap times: Team
With Sainz quickest and his Ferrari team mate…
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