Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli topped the times after the first four hours of Formula 1’s three-day test in Bahrain.
F1 2025 began with a low-key first test session that ran almost without incident for driver or car.
Liam Lawson came closest to peril as he lost control of his RB21 while coming through the Turn 2 left-hander, spinning and nudging the gravel trap at Turn 3 just after the one-hour mark.
🔄 Moment for Lawson! He keep it out of the barriers and gravel and manages to get going again. pic.twitter.com/g5Ru4yAShm
— The Race (@wearetherace) February 26, 2025
Lawson briefly stopped but was able to recover to the track, returning his car to his Red Bull garage before rejoining the circuit shortly afterwards.
Antonelli topped the first four-hour session on a 1m31.428s, albeit still 1.5s slower than Carlos Sainz’s 2024 testing benchmark.
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The 18-year-old also topped the lap total charts with 78 laps clocked.
Antonelli was 0.132s faster than Lawson in an RB21 that appears surprisingly similar to the Red Bull the team finished the 2024 season with.
Alex Albon was third for Williams, 0.145s slower than Antonelli, with Yuki Tsunoda fourth for Racing Bulls.
Lewis Hamilton was fifth after his first day of official pre-season testing with Ferrari. He’ll hand the SF-25 to team-mate Charles Leclerc for the afternoon session, before returning to the cockpit on Thursday.
Hamilton was 0.406s off Antonelli’s benchmark, marginally quicker than Jack Doohan’s Alpine and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin who was quicker than anybody else in the middle sector.
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With 46 laps on the board, Alonso set fewer laps than any other driver - a total 11 laps short of a Bahrain Grand Prix race distance.
Oscar Piastri was eighth fastest ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in the new Sauber.
The top nine drivers were separated by seven and a half tenths with Ollie Bearman’s Haas the outlier.
Bearman’s fastest lap was 4.094s off the pace with the team clearly uninterested in setting a fast single lap.
Results
1 Antonelli 1m31.428s (78 laps)
2 Lawson +0.132s (58 laps)
3 Albon +0.145s (63 laps)
4 Tsunoda +0.182s (77 laps)
5 Hamilton +0.406s (70 laps)
6 Doohan +0.413s (68 laps)
7 Alonso +0.446s (46 laps)
8 Piastri +0.656s (65 laps)
9 Hulkenberg +0.741s (55 laps)
10 Bearman +4.094s (72 laps)
