Welcome to our live coverage of day of Formula One pre-season testing in Bahrain. Day one of testing is always interesting in some regard as we get to see the “proper” cars for the first time, away from the launch-spec models with things that the teams try to hide or with updates that merely have not been created yet.
It was certainly worth watching to see in closer in detail Red Bull and Mercedes, in any case. Despite winning all but one of the races last season, Red Bull’s RB20 has taken a pretty big step when it comes to design. And their performance yesterday was rightly labelled ‘ominous’.
Of course, there is a limited amount we can learn from outright lap times in testing but there is not nothing. Max Verstappen topped the timesheets by 1.1sec from McLaren’s Lando Norris and clocked in an enormous 143 laps over the day. That time will not be due to low-fuel glory runs, that is for sure. And for most of the day the car looked glued to the track, which is more than can be said for the Ferrari.
Still, I don’t necessarily think it changes expectations too much. Most teams would have expected, I believe, Red Bull to have a fairly sizeable advantage still come the first race. Even if they would have clearly hoped that it would have diminished. It would be a shame if 2024 ended up being a repeat of 2023 but we have to have the hope that even if Red Bull start off like a rocket, then in-season development from the other teams will pull them in somewhat.
Anyway, as with day one there will be a mix of drivers for both teams with only Red Bull and Mercedes putting one driver in their car for the whole day. Today it is the turn of Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton respectively.
The green light at the end of the pit lane is about to come on, so let’s get to the action.