Max Verstappen narrowly edged ahead on the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain as the Red Bull driver matched the best time of Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
Verstappen, the only driver to drive all day while all other F1 teams split their programs, put in a 1m32.837s in the afternoon to improve on his performance, which led the morning session.
It looked like it would put Red Bull on top until a number of teams started focusing on performance runs on the softer compound tires.
Alonso, on fresh C3 tyres, duly jumped 0.029s off Verstappen’s benchmark to cap a solid comeback from Aston Martin after the team’s day suffered a false start when Felipe Drugovich – filling in for the injured Lance Stroll – experienced a sensor problem on his had first outlap which triggered the only red flag of the day.
The Spaniard also lost part of the afternoon session due to floor damage but recovered enough to complete 60 laps to match Drugovich’s 40 laps from the morning.
But Verstappen stayed on top until the end of the opening day, having completed a total of 157 laps to show strong pace and reliability from Red Bull’s RB19 in his first public outing.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Ferrari also got off to a decent start in pre-season testing, with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc in third and fourth respectively, as the Italian team comfortably pushed over a century of laps with the SF-23 F1 car.
But one of the teams that struggled on opening day was McLaren, as Lando Norris lost time and was stuck in the garage while the team repaired a wheel spat issue. But the British driver recovered well to finish fifth on the combined timesheets, six tenths off Verstappen’s leader.
Lewis Hamilton led a solid day for Mercedes in sixth place last timesheets as the German manufacturer stuck to its zero-pod design with the W14, while teammate George Russell dropped to ninth after participating in the morning session.
Alex Albon finished seventh for Williams after debuting the FW45 before handing it off to F1 rookie Logan Sargeant for the afternoon session, with the US youngster sitting 10th.
With Zhou Guanyu in eighth for Alfa Romeo ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas in 12th, F1 returnee Nico Hulkenberg made an impressive start to his full-time comeback with 11th for Haas and 51 laps – with Kevin Magnussen supporting the timesheets of a field that covered by 2.2 seconds.
Nyck de Vries was 13th ahead of his F1 rookie season for AlphaTauri when Drugovich separated him from teammate Yuki Tsunoda while Alpine calmly went about his business and completed 113 laps with Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon in 16th and 17th respectively drove.