The Latest Breaking News from Charles Leclerc

RB and McLaren were only joined by Sauber in running the softs in FP1, which ended with Yuki Tsunoda fourth ahead of Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen in fifth and sixth for Aston Martin and Red Bull respectively.

Red Bull’s RB20 showed some impressive pace throughout the three days at Sakhir, but the team spent much of its time focusing on shorter stints rather than proper race simulations as many other teams did.

F1 is officially underway for 2024 which means the return of its popular fantasy game, where participants can manage their own racing team.

Sporting a bold, new design for its RB20, F1's dominant force Red Bull impressed at Sakhir with its consistently-rapid long runs. Ferrari also caught the eye with a much more balanced and stable SF-24, which appears to have gone some way towards addressing its 2023 race pace struggles, while Charles…

It is why Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc coming out on top of the overall timing sheets over the course of this week’s Bahrain test has barely registered in conversations.

As the teams go over the data, there is little time before they are back on track in six days’ time. But what have they learned – and what we learned?

Sainz set the quickest time on the second of the three days of testing, before the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit on 2 March.

Leclerc's team-mate Carlos Sainz had led the final morning session from Red Bull's Sergio Perez before running was interrupted by a broken drain cover for the second day in a row.

Are drainage covers becoming a problem in the Venturi-tunnel ground effect era of Formula 1? Has Red Bull found some mechanical issues with their RB20?