With the track temperature on the final day much more typically Bahrain than the bizarrely chilly Wednesday and Thursday, the behaviour of the tyres changed, the cars were slower than yesterday but… the competitive picture remained essentially unaltered.
Even as everyone grappled with a trickier balance and greater rear tyre deg, the long runs – this time conducted at McLaren by Oscar Piastri- suggested MCL39’s small but significant advantage remained. Team boss Andrea Stella had cautioned against reading too much into Lando Norris’ great race simulation yesterday, saying, “We know our car enjoys cool temperatures and not much change from the wind and today we don’t have that, but yesterday we did.”
Yet regardless, Piastri delivered the best race simulation, averaging around 0.5s faster than George Russell’s Mercedes in their first stint. They were much more closely-matched in their second and third stints – but that was with Piastri on the slower C1 tyre vs Russell’s C2 in the second stint.
Regardless of the time of day or of who was driving them, whenever the Mercedes and Ferrari were running together they appeared incredibly evenly-matched. Unfortunately Lewis Hamilton’s race simulation in the Ferrari was interrupted and ultimately curtailed for an undisclosed technical reason.
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Their similar laptimes are being delivered in very different ways, the Ferrari quicker on the straights and with better exits off the turns, the Merc with better speed into the corners, although prone to front brake locking. Hamilton appears much more at ease with the car than with the Mercs he has driven for the last couple of years. He was matching Russell’s pace in the afternoon just as surely as Charles Leclerc had matched Kimi Antonelli’s in the morning.
Red Bull remains an enigma. It was nowhere near being ready to put together a race run as Max Verstappen tried a variety of set-ups, wing and floor combinations, losing a lot of track time in the process.
Read: Fastest laps of testing + full mileage
Eventually, near the end of the day, he found a combination which worked and set what was ultimately the second-fastest time of the day, eclipsed only by Russell’s Mercedes.
Piastri was set to have bested them, both but suffered a moment at the final turn which ruined the lap. But even Russell failed to match the time of Carlos Sainz’s Williams from yesterday, just underlining how much slower the track was when not untypically cool.
Williams in fact emerged as probably the strongest surprise of the tests, with Alex Albon following up Sainz’s starring performance from yesterday with the third-fastest time of today.
This however was set using the C4 tyre, which in these conditions worked much better than the day before when it was too difficult to bring it up to temperature for the start of the lap.
Today it was worth around 0.4s over the more commonplace C3 on which the McLaren, Merc and Ferrari drivers set their best times. Williams was however not being shy about giving its drivers a bit of engine mode – and possibly a slightly lower fuel load. Realistically, the FW47 is perhaps around 0.5s off the ultimate pace. But that’s good enough to put it in direct head-to-head competition with Alpine, for which Pierre Gasly was fifth quickest and put together a very consistent long run.
Williams and Alpine in fact appear to have lifted themselves well clear of the rest of the field. Yuki Tsunoda finally made progress with the Racing Bull in the last couple of hours but for all of the first two days and much of the third it was an ill-balanced drive.
Haas got in plenty of laps but none of them particularly quick and during the three days of the test didn’t achieve last year’s level of competitiveness.
Aston Martin had a torrid final day amid driver illnesses and lack of grip and looks set for a very difficult start to the season.
Neither Nico Hulkenberg nor Gabriel Bortoletto found a balance in the Sauber which would allow them to attack the track and for the moment it looks like a Q1-level car again.
