Lewis Hamilton led the way for Ferrari just after the first hour of the opening day of Formula 1’s Bahrain pre-season test.
Hamilton set a 1m32.621s on the C4 mediums, displacing Alex Albon’s Williams at the top of the Wednesday leaderboard.
Hamilton’s benchmark is still 2.7s slower than the fastest time from last year’s Bahrain test - set by the man he replaced at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz.
But it’s been a smooth start for Hamilton and the rest of the field - with every team already completing some running.
The only blip for Hamilton was a wide moment on the kerbs at the Turn 11 left-hander as he starts to test the limits of the SF-25.
Albon was 0.241s slower than Hamilton - with Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin completing the top three.
Liam Lawson’s Red Bull sat fourth ahead of Jack Doohan (Alpine), Yuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls), Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) and Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes).
Ollie Bearman was ninth, 2.9s off the pace, with McLaren's Oscar Piastri the only driver without a representative laptime.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the first hour of testing was the lack of surprises when the frontrunning teams’ cars rolled out of the pitlane.
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It appears for now that Red Bull’s RB21 is very much a carryover of the RB20 that finished the season.
