Sergio Perez put Red Bull on top of the times on the final day of testing in Bahrain with a lap over three tenths of a second faster than Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes.
Perez’s fastest time set on C4 tyres was faster than Hamilton’s despite the Mercedes setting its best lap on the softer C5 compound. Neither specification of tyre has been allocated for the season-opening race at the Bahrain International Circuit with weekend.
Valtteri Bottas put Alfa Romeo third at the end of testing, ahead of Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr.
The final session of testing began with Hamilton, Sainz, Esteban Ocon, Lando Norris, Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda and Kevin Magnussen all taking to their cars, joining Sergio Perez, Valtteri Bottas and Alexander Albon who remained at the wheel from the first session.
After lap times had fallen in the earlier running, the new drivers joining the circuit seemed to take things far more steadily over the first hour of the evening session. Bottas had suffered a car problem and stopped on-track earlier in the day and he remained in the garage for the first hour as the team worked on his car. Eventually he was able to rejoin the track with well over three hours of track time still remaining.
Alonso was the last driver to take to the track, putting in 10 laps before returning to the garage. He became the highest-ranked of the evening drivers by posting a time good enough for sixth place on the day, before Hamilton split the Aston Martin driver from his team mate Felipe Drugovich, who stood in for the injured Lance Stroll again in the morning.
As the temperatures began to fall, so did the lap times. Sainz used a set of C4 tyres to set the overall best first sector of the day and almost matched team mate Leclerc’s best time from the early session, lapping just 0.012 slower, to move up to second place.
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With the sun having set, Hamilton took to the track on C4 soft tyres and put in Mercedes’ quickest time of the test. That was two tenths of a second slower than Leclerc’s best from the afternoon but two tenths faster than team mate George Russell’s time from the early session on C5 tyres. With less than 90 minutes remaining, Hamilton stuck a set of the softest, C5 tyres on his car and became the first driver to break under the 1’31 barrier with a 1’30.781.
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