Lando Norris began Formula 1 pre-season testing in strong fashion by setting the fastest time of an opening day that was hit by a bizarre power outage in Bahrain.
The McLaren driver, who won last year’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, picked up where he left off by leading the way with a 1m30.430s on the first day of the three-day test in the Middle East. Norris was behind the wheel for the afternoon session as all 10 teams ran collectively for the first time this year, and his best lap was just half a second adrift of the quickest time seen in the entirety of pre-season last year.
The lap also came amid unusually chilly conditions in Bahrain as temperatures rarely climbed out of the 50s F, but it wasn’t the weather that stopped proceedings late in the afternoon, despite some light rain.
With two hours remaining in the day, a sudden power outage plunged the garages and paddock into darkness, and saw all of the floodlights switch off just as they had been warming up. Race control was also impacted by the circuit-wide issue, so the session was immediately red flagged.
The Bahrain International Circuit later explained the problem was caused by an external substation failure, and it was more than an hour before all systems were back up and running to allow testing to continue. With the session resuming at 6:10pm local time, the original 7:00 cut-off was extended by an hour to allow teams to make up for the time lost.
It was following the resumption that the fastest three times of the day were set, with Norris — on the C3 tire compound — ending up 0.157s clear of George Russell in second place and a quarter of a second ahead of Max Verstappen in third.
The latter made a solid start to his title defense as he completed 74 laps in the afternoon session, taking over from new Red Bull teammate Liam Lawson. The New Zealander, beginning his first full season in F1, opened pre-season with an early spin at Turn 3 but recovered without damage and ended up eighth on the timesheets.
Charles Leclerc was fourth in a new Ferrari that was described by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner as “standout as probably being the differentiator” compared to the rest of the grid. A new front suspension and longer wheelbase are among the changes on the Ferrari, while the Red Bull retains much of the concept that it ended 2024 with.
Leclerc was 0.448s adrift of Norris, while there were plenty of lenses trained on Lewis Hamilton when he kicked off Ferrari’s running in the morning session. The seven-time world champion completed 70 laps but appeared to be struggling with the rear of the SF-75 through the high-speed Turn 11, with the car often sliding mid-corner in contrast to the others on track at that stage.
A strong tailwind into that corner was at least partly to blame, and there were some off-track moments for Alex Albon and Gabriel Bortoleto at the same corner, but the Ferrari looked particularly unsettled through there prior to the lunch break.
By the end of the opening day, Carlos Sainz found himself in a familiar position as he was largely on terms with Leclerc, although they are no longer Ferrari teammates. Now at Williams, Sainz had an encouraging afternoon, with 68 laps to his name and a best time of 1m30.944s leaving him just 0.077s behind Leclerc.
Two other cars got within a second of Norris’ leading time, and while Pierre Gasly in the Alpine was running the afternoon, it was Kimi Antonelli who had set the pace during the morning session. The Mercedes rookie had a trouble-free outing and was quickest at the lunch break with a 1m31.428s, although he slipped to seventh overall by the checkered flag.
Given so many cars are evolutionary compared to last year — a common trend in the final season of a set of regulations as attentions turn to a new challenge — it was no surprise that there was consistent running from the start and nine of the 10 teams easily exceeded the 100-lap mark despite all changing drivers at the lunch break.
The only team to fail to do so was Aston Martin, with a combined 88 laps across Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, who were 15th and 16th respectively.
Only Haas had both cars below the Aston Martin pair, but it appeared to be due to a different approach to the opening day as Esteban Ocon was over three seconds off the pace and Oliver Bearman five seconds adrift. Haas followed a similar trend last year when it focused solely on longer, high fuel running, and also has multiple new trackside personnel to embed, but it did complete the highest mileage with 160 laps in total.
