Day 1 hint over Piastri title chances; surprise answer to pre-season rumour: F1 Talking Pts

The 2025 Formula 1 pre-season testing campaign got off to a remarkably smooth start in Bahrain overnight, with all 10 teams ending the day with reasons to be satisfied with their work.

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Cars easily ate up the kilometres over eight hours of track action. There were no reliability niggles, never mind full-scale failures, to speak of. The messiest the day got was two harmless spins, by Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar.

In fact it was the Bahrain International Circuit itself that proved least reliable, with a power failure in the evening session forcing an hour-long suspension. Teams got an extra 60 minutes of running at the end of the day to make up for it.

This is the fourth season of this set of regulations, and it shows. Most teams have evolved their 2024 cars this season, meaning there was very little installation work to be done early on Wednesday. Most teams just got on with honing set-up.

There were a few exceptions, most notably McLaren, which has brought a meaningfully different design into this season to defend its first constructors championship in a quarter of a century.

But even those significant changes were of little consequence on the first day of running. Mileage was relatively low, but by the end of the evening Lando Norris had clocked the fastest time. Clearly the title-winning team has confidence in its package.

Of course the first rule of testing is to never take the timing sheet too seriously, especially not after the first day, and for good reason.

Teams run extremely varied programs during testing that make individual laps and even long runs far more difficult to compare relative to practice on a grand prix weekend.

No-team will also want to show their full hand during testing, especially this early.

The time of day any given lap is completed can also have a significant effect on performance, especially given the Bahrain test is run from day into night.

Sakhir was also unusually chilly on Wednesday, with the mercury struggling to crack 20°C in the desert. Teams have extensive data at this track in warmer conditions, but the wintry cool complicates historical comparisons.

Then there’s the way this dusty circuit rubbers in and speeds up over not just the first day but the full three days of testing.

With all that said, let’s look at the leaderboard. Times are attributed to teams first given teammates shared a single car and therefore were never running on track at the same time — and you’ll note with few exceptions that the fastest times were set by drivers running in the evening.

Pre-season testing times, day 1

1. McLaren (Lando Norris): 1 minute 30.430 seconds

2. Mercedes (George Russell): +0.157 seconds

3. Red Bull Racing (Max Verstappen): +0.244 seconds

4. Ferrari (Charles Leclerc): +0.448 seconds

5. Williams (Carlos Sainz): +0.525 seconds

6. Alpine (Pierre Gasly): +0.923 seconds

7. Racing Bulls (Yuki Tsunoda): +1.180 seconds

8. Sauber (Gabriel Bortoleto): +1.260 seconds

9. Aston Martin (Fernando Alonso): +1.444 seconds

10. Haas (Esteban Ocon): +3.170 seconds

THE TOP FOUR IS STILL THE TOP FOUR

With regulatory continuity, it’s unsurprising to see the top four teams still contending for the top four spots on the time sheet.

Trackside observers also regarded these four cars as the standout picks — again unsurprising given the gulf between the top four and the rest of the field last season.

“It was a good, fun day on track, and we progressed through a lot of the tests that we wanted to do,” Norris said, per the F1 website, after topping the times. “I’m looking forward to pushing the car a bit more over the next couple of days.”

Piastri hinted at the fundamental set-up work he undertook at the start of the day in his all-new car.

“It was a productive morning for me, as we tried quite a few different things,” he said. “We still have many more areas to cover in the coming days to keep putting the car through its paces and to see how it works, but overall a solid day.”

There was considerable interest in Mercedes’s attempt to get a ground-effect car right at the fourth time of asking. George Russell was second in the order after new teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli topped the morning session, and the appraisal seems to be that the W16 is a much happier, more predictable machine than its predecessor.

“It’s only the first day, and the cool conditions are unusual for Bahrain, so we can’t read too much into performance at the moment,” Russell cautioned, however. “We can pleased with our work today though, and we’re looking forward to getting back on circuit tomorrow.”

There was a suspicion ahead of testing that Red Bull Racing was poised to spring a surprise on the paddock with a dramatically different car after its 2024 struggles and after its launch imagery deliberately obscured key details of its new challenger.

But when the RB21 rolled out of pit lane, it bore a striking resemblance to last year’s troubled machine.

“While it doesn’t look a huge amount visually different to last year’s car, it’s subtly different in many different areas, and particularly in the areas you can’t see,” team boss Christian Horner said, though he admitted the car was designed with the same philosophy as its predecessors.

He argued, however, that this philosophy won the team nine races last year — more than any other — and comfortably powered Max Verstappen to the drivers championship.

While there’s no doubt the team lost its way in the middle of the campaign, had Sergio Pérez been a more consistent scorer, Red Bull Racing would have been at least in with a shout at the constructors championship — something to remember when looking ahead to this season.

HAMILTON HAPPY AT FERRARI

Lewis Hamilton has barely been able to keep the grin off his face since starting his new life at Ferrari.

He’s so happy, in fact, that he’s even finding the monotony of testing exciting.

“Testing is always exciting,” he insisted, per the F1 website. “It’s the first time you get to see what everyone has been developing and can start to get a feel for your own car and the year ahead.

“Being here with Scuderia Ferrari and in the SF-25 for the first time is an incredible feeling.

“Our focus right now is on experimenting with different things, gathering as much data as possible and getting familiar with the car, and we’ve already learned a lot.

“I’m looking forward to getting out there again tomorrow.”

Trackside observers reported that the Ferrari was the liveliest looking car of the frontrunners. Both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have similar driving styles in that they prefer a car with a tendency to oversteer, though it remains to be seen whether this is a tameable trait or the sign of a fundamental instability.

“It feels good to be back on track,” Leclerc said. “Of course it’s still too early to come to any conclusions about our performance.

“We’re going to analyse our data from today and make use of what we learn tonight when we start work again tomorrow.”

IS ANYONE IN TROUBLE?

While the above times can’t be read as definitive, it’s impossible not to see Haas way, way down the bottom of the time sheet.

Esteban Ocon was the team’s quickest driver but was 3.170 seconds off the pace. Oliver Bearman, who ran in the morning, was 5.092 seconds adrift of Norris’s time.

Of course Haas isn’t this slow.

The American-owned team has an outlying run plan that focuses almost exclusively on high-fuel running.

You might remember this was exactly the same approach the team took to pre-season testing last season in a bid to address the chronic race-pace problems experienced over the first two seasons of this rule set.

It certainly paid dividends in 2024, the team’s most competitive since 2018. Given it accumulated the most laps of any team, it would seem things are so far going exactly to plan.

Instead it was Aston Martin that had the most troubled day at the track, something given away by the lap count.

Pre-season testing laps, day 1

1. Haas: 160 laps (865.9 km)

2. Racing Bulls: 154 laps (833.4 km)

3. Mercedes: 148 laps (801.0 km)

4. Ferrari: 141 laps (763.1 km)

5. Alpine: 140 laps (757.7 km)

6. Red Bull Racing: 132 laps (714.4 km)

7. Williams: 131 laps (709.0 km)

8. McLaren: 118 laps (638.6 km)

9. Sauber: 114 laps (617.0 km)

10. Aston Martin: 87 laps (470.8 km)

The team reported no particular problem; instead it seemed that it was busy adjusting components and set-up for extended periods of time throughout both sessions, leaving it as the only team not to crack 100 laps of the track.

It’s not an ideal return from the first day, but it’s hardly disastrous, with two days remaining to make up for lost time.

Testing continues tonight from 6pm (AEDT).