Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took the bragging rights with the quickest time at the final Formula One test before the season proper begins in Australia in just two weeks, while Aston Martin endured a horror show.
At the end of the final day of the third test, some of the cars were let off the leash to put in some runs on soft tyres with lower fuel loads and Leclerc looked very much at home as he hurled his Ferrari around the circuit in Bahrain. He set a time of 1min 31.992sec, eight-tenths clear of the second-placed McLaren of Lando Norris and a second up on Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ George Russell.
Nonetheless, Russell and Mercedes will head to Australia with no little confidence, having been consistently quick across all three tests, and Russell remains the early favourite. He felt there was more to come but remained wary of the threat from Red Bull, McLaren and in particular the blistering pace Ferrari have demonstrated in practice starts.
“The car’s feeling good. The new power units are feeling fast,” he said. “We’re making improvements every single day. However, we need to keep on improving the reliability. I think we’ve got a lot of potential beneath us.”
What was striking by the close of the last test was how quick the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc were off the line as the FIA trialled a new race start procedure. Russell by comparison has been sluggish and he said it was an area he and Mercedes would have to address.
“To win a race, you’ve also got to get off the line quite well,” he said. “Two starts I’ve made this week were worse than my worst ever start in Formula One. And Lewis down in P11 got into P1. So at this stage I don’t think it matters how quick you are. The thing that’s going to trip you up is going to be that tallest hurdle. And that’s what we’re trying to get our heads around right now. We’re stumbling on some at the moment.”
Aston Martin ended what has been a hugely disappointing pre-season at a low point. With the designer Adrian Newey at the helm this season, optimism was high but the team have endured a harsh wake-up call. They were late completing their car, missing the opening of the first test, and have struggled with a litany of problems restricting their running time.
On Thursday Fernando Alonso lost three hours of running after a battery problem and on the final day in Bahrain there were more difficulties. Their engine manufacturer, Honda, was forced to concede it had worked through so many parts it had in effect run out by Friday and the team could run only very short stints with half-hour breaks in between. They completed just six laps and called a halt over two hours before the end of the final session.
