Max Verstappen confirmed the early indications from Bahrain’s morning session, improving his own times and dominating day 1 of testing. He finished more than a second ahead of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz after eight hours of running.
The first day of testing validates the fears of many experts during the winter. Red Bull and Max Verstappen showed tremendous strength in terms of pure pace and long-run pace.
In terms of one-lap pace, McLaren and Ferrari were the closest challengers to the reigning Champions. With 129 and 133 laps completed, respectively, there were no reliability issues.
Only George Russell took to the track for Mercedes, working on long runs rather than qualifying simulations. This is relatively standard practice for the Brackley-based team.
Bahrain Test, Day 1: Red Bull flex their muscles, rivals keep cards to their chest
In the afternoon, Norris, Sainz, Ricciardo, Gasly, Stroll, Zhou, Sargeant and Magnussen went behind the wheel. All of them replaced their teammates to split the first day of running.
Meanwhile, Max Verstappen and George Russell completed the entire day for their teams. At face value, Red Bull’s times will grab the headlines.
However, the first day of testing is used primarily to confirm correlations and wind-tunnel data. Aside from Williams, the teams enjoyed a very clean session.
Haas completed more laps than anyone else, alternating between Hulkenberg and Magnussen. The American finished with 148 laps, focusing on tyre management – as explained by team principal Ayao Komatsu recently.
On the opposite end, Williams was the team with the lowest number of laps under its belt. This was worsened by Logan Sargeant’s reliability issues, which brought the Grove-based team’s work program to a premature halt.
| Squad | Turns |
| Haas | 148 |
| Red Bull | 142 |
| Ferrari | 133 |
| Aston Martin | 130 |
| F1 Stakes | 130 |
| McLaren | 129 |
| Mercedes | 121 |
| Alpine | 120 |
| Visa Cash App RB | 115 |
| Williams | 61 |
Red Bull certainly wasn’t shy with their first sessions in the RB19 last year. However, today’s results were in a different category of their own.
Max Verstappen’s 1:32.837 on 23 February 2023 is 1.5 seconds slower than today’s 1:31.344 from the afternoon session.
The Three-time World Champion searched for the RB20’s limits as today’s running progressed. It does not take much analysis to see their early promise.
Of course, it is difficult to make any conclusions from timings during testing. This is especially true of long-runs, which are impacted by so many factors.
Pierre Wache, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko met during the day in a complicated climate off the track for the reigning champion team.
In terms of on-track performance, however, there cannot be many complaints.
Author: Andrea Vergani
Translation: Jaden Diaz-Ndisang
