This Test – Bahrain One (13/02/2026)
Hello, welcome to a round-up of the first Bahrain Test, the spin has begun with less than a month to go, Mercedes plays down their ‘favourite tag’, pointing the finger at the rest of the top four. But we often know the truth is somewhere in the middle; it hasn’t been without problems with reliability throughout the test.
But despite those issues for Mercedes, as well as Audi and Aston Martin/Honda, the headline continues to be reliability. One of the questions could be whether Ferrari is closer and could Mercedes be fighting one of its customers in McLaren, despite claiming a step back… Ferrari is solid but still refining; Audi best of the new teams; but we won’t get answers until Melbourne
General News
The FIA say they want to keep a dispute between the teams over the sport’s new 2026 power units out of “the courtroom” as they seek to solve the issue before the start of the new season. The row centres on Mercedes and Red Bull/Ford reportedly finding a loophole in the regulations to gain a performance advantage.
The row centres on compression ratio limits amid suggestions from rivals that the two manufacturers may have found a way to deliver a higher limit than what was theoretically imposed by the brand-new regulations for 2026. The ratio has been lowered from 18.0 to 16.0,
Ralf Schumacher is reportedly to marry his boyfriend Etienne Bousquet-Cassagne in May. The six-time Grand Prix winner and broadcaster announced he was in a relationship with a man, becoming the first openly gay driver since Lella Lombardi in 1976.
German outlet Bild reported that Schumacher and Bousquet-Cassagne are planning to tie the knot during a three-day event in Saint-Tropez this May, likely behind closed doors because of his brother’s continued recovery from his 2013 accident. Schumacher and Etienne were rumoured to have been together for two years before revealing their relationship publicly.
Schumacher was previously married to Cora-Caroline Brinkman, a former model. The pair married in 2001 and went on to have a son, David. The pair officially divorced in February 2015 after a period of separation and a bitter custody battle over David, who is also a racing driver.
Recap
Day One saw Lando Norris fastest with a 34.669 to put his McLaren just over a tenth and a quarter faster than Max Verstappen. Verstappen had topped the morning session, but Norris went eight tenths faster during the afternoon session when track temperatures cooled down under the lights. Verstappen was just under two tenths ahead of Charles Leclerc with McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari looking at this early stage of testing to have an advantage.
Day Two, Charles Leclerc was fastest with a 34.279, which put him half a second ahead of Lando Norris. The time was also half a second faster, though set on the soft tyres, from Norris’s best time of the test set on Wednesday afternoon on medium tyres. Norris, meanwhile, put his McLaren six tenths faster than the Haas of Ollie Bearman.
Day Three, Kimi Antonelli led a Mercedes one-two on the final day of the first Bahrain Test; the Italian set a 33.669 to put himself nearly a quarter of a second faster than his teammate George Russell. Mercedes had nearly a three-tenths advantage over Hamilton as the Ferrari driver was nearly three tenths behind his former teammate, having set his best lap in the last hour
McLaren
McLaren unveiled their 2026 livery on Monday, maintaining the papaya colour palette that adorned last season’s championship-winning MCL39. The team traditionally carry over the same design over to the following season if they win the championship, the only change being the small hints of teal.
Their unchanged driver line-up of reigning World Champion Lando Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri spoke alongside Team Principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown at the launch event, while Chief Marketing Officer Lou McEwen and Chief Designer Rob Marshall showcased the new livery.
The team previously ran a black livery during the Catalan Test two weeks ago, Norris has switched to the number one after winning last years championship.
Norris said “It’s good to be back in Bahrain to reveal the livery for this season. The design looks great and I’m excited to continue racing in the colours which were part of our huge success last year.”
“To win the Championship with the team I’ve been with since the beginning was incredible. We’re coming into this year as World Champions and I’m excited to see what we can achieve in this new era of Formula 1.
Brown said during the stream, “We’re delighted to present our 2026 challenger’s livery from our second home, Bahrain. The iconic papaya continues on the MCL40 as we keep our tradition of carrying championship-winning liveries through to the next season.”
“Racing performance is also at the forefront of design when exploring creative routes, and we’ve balanced creative direction with aero considerations to create this striking 2026 competitor.
Team Principal Stella added: “It’s fantastic to reveal the livery for our 2026 challenger, the MCL40, as we reach an important milestone in our team’s incredible work and dedication before we begin racing this year.
“2026 marks a new challenge as we take on a new era of Formula 1 regulations. We also go into the season as an independent challenger facing five top manufacturers who all want to beat us.
Norris said on Thursday that he believes that the team currently trails Ferrari and Red Bull on pace. On the second day, he set the most laps by a single driver over two race distances with one hundred and forty-nine laps.
Speaking to Sky Sports after Thursday’s running, his final day in the car this week, Norris said: “We did a good amount of laps, we’re certainly not quick enough. Plenty of work for us to look into and try to improve on. I think today was our first bit of understanding on where we stand in terms of pace, against at least Ferrari, who did a full long run.”
But he says it’s only testing and they have penalty of things they can improve on and work on, but the day he described as productive. Norris also highlighted the strength of Red Bull/Ford, saying, “They have a very good power unit by the looks of things.”
Norris added, “I know we are going to improve, and we’re going to make steps forward, but I’m sure they are as well. So, yeah, we have to wait and see. There’s no point in trying to guess these things.
Mercedes
Kimi Antonelli was uninjured following a car crash in San Marino at the weekend. In a statement, Mercedes said: “We can confirm that Kimi was involved in a traffic accident on Saturday night close to his home in San Marino. The police attended the scene after being called by Kimi. His was the only car involved, and while his vehicle was damaged, Kimi was completely unhurt.”
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has described this year’s regulation changes as the “biggest project we’ve ever done”, with the Briton admitting that work on the new power unit has been ongoing for “years”.
Speaking after the Barcelona test, and asked how much of a project the team had undertaken to prepare for the rules reset, Shovlin conceded: “It’s been an absolutely monumental project, and on the power unit side in Brixworth they’ve been working on it for years – a very difficult and challenging programme.”
“You’ve also got all the complexity that the fuel development throws into that with Petronas, and then on the chassis side, a completely new set of regulations. Coupled with that we’ve got all-new electronics systems, so it’s the biggest project we’ve ever done as a team.”
But Shovlin added they didn’t know where they were in terms of performance, but they were able to learn a lot on track.
Mercedes running on day two was limited to a race distance after Kimi Antonelli’s W17 broke down after just three laps with a power unit issue during his morning stint. This week, the championship favourites have had their running restricted on both Wednesday and Thursday, but they did manage to replace it for Russell’s afternoon stint.
George Russell has hit back at claims of sandbagging by Mercedes by claiming the team has “taken a step back” since the Barcelona shakedown. While they were fastest overall in the times from the test, which might according to Russell be at the expense of reliability.
He told F1.com, “I think this test was needed for us, because Barcelona was very smooth, and probably smoother than we anticipated in terms of reliability, in terms of performance, and we’ve got to Bahrain and, in both regards, we’ve taken a step back.”
“We’ve had some reliability issues. Our competitors have hit the ground running, especially Red Bull; they look very strong with the power unit. It was the same on day one of Barcelona, so kudos to them and the amazing job they’ve done. But we need to focus on ourselves and find some more performance.”
On the reliability problems that dogged Mercedes on day two, he says that what they expected more of during testing, but its till a few weeks until Melbourne and another test before then
Red Bull
Max Verstappen has described this generation of cars as “not a lot of fun” and “like Formula E on steroids”. The Red Bull driver says the increased demands for energy management with new hybrid engines are “just not Formula One”.
The new engines are energy-starved because of the way the rules have been structured and require several kinds of recovery to ensure the battery has sufficient levels of charge for optimum lap times. During the limited running we’ve seen, there has been a lot of lifting and coasting out of the last corner as drivers save energy when trying for ultimate performance, and changing down to lower gears in corners for optimum energy harvesting.
Verstappen, whose team have built their own engine for the first time this season, said: “The right word is management. But on the other hand, I also know how much work has been going on in the background. Also, from the engine side, for the guys. So it’s not always the nicest thing to say.
“But I also want to be realistic. As a driver, the feeling is not very Formula 1-like. It feels a bit more like Formula E on steroids. As a pure driver, I enjoy driving flat out. And at the moment, you cannot drive like that. There’s a lot going on. A lot of what you do as a driver, in terms of inputs, has a massive effect on the energy side of things.
He says this is not about adapting to it, describing the driving as changing the way of racing. However, senior figures in F1 have cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the new rules at such an early stage when everything about the cars is new. The biggest regulation change in F1 history has this year seen new rules for chassis, engines, tyres and the introduction of sustainable fuels.
Isack Hadjar is confident that he can win races this season despite his predecessors struggling against Verstappen. The Frenchman is the sixth driver in eight years to try to match and be teammates with the four-time champion since Daniel Ricciardo left in 2018.
There were calls for Hadjar to stay with sister squad Racing Bulls after an impressive rookie campaign, but the temptation was obviously too much – and the early signs are actually positive. He said, “The excitement of fighting for wins against top drivers is still going to be here, and that’s what matters the most. But still, you’d like to do it in cars that are super, super fast. It makes it a bit better.”
Red Bull has been one of the standout teams this week, considering they are working with a new engine partner and have built this PU with Ford. But the question will be whether, when get into racing, if that pressure starts to build and if he doesn’t match Verstappen, how will that be handled.
Technical director Pierre Wache dismissed Toto Wolff’s claim that Red Bull is “the benchmark” in 2026, and instead said that three rivals are currently quicker. Through the week, Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren have all been talking down them being the favourites while talking up their rivals.
Wache also rejects the idea that Red Bull is currently the team to beat. He said, “It’s difficult to say [where we are], but we are not the benchmark for sure. We clearly see the top three teams; Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren are in front of us. It looks like, from what our analysis is, that we are behind.”
“That’s where we think we are, but it’s difficult to say about the others because of the run plan of everybody, the level of fuel they run, the level of power they run. It’s difficult to say, but this is currently our analysis – that it could be wrong to be honest. We don’t spend too much time on that; we try to focus on how to improve our runs.”
I think that this is the spin we have spoken about throughout testing that will continue until qualifying in Melbourne. They have been learning a lot about these cars, and that means they aren’t optimal. Red Bull has also had a bigger challenge because they are in their first season building a power unit.
Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton spoke for the first time about the “very difficult decision” to split with his race engineer Riccardo Adami after just a season. 2025 was one of the seven-time champion’s most difficult year of his long career, amid a clear lack of chemistry in his communication with Adami.
Last month, the Scuderia announced Adami was being “moved to a new role as Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy and Test Previous Cars Manager”.
Hamilton commented in Bahrain, “It was obviously a very difficult decision to make. I’m really grateful for all the effort he put in last year, and his patience, and, you know, it was a difficult year for us all.”
During the Barcelona shakedown, Hamilton was engineered by Bryan Bozzi, who normally works with his teammate Charles Leclerc and is continuing alongside the Monacan this year.
From Bahrain onwards, Hamilton will be working with Carlos Santi, formerly Kimi Raikkonen’s race engineer at Ferrari. This is a provisional solution; whether Santi might complete the season is undecided.
Hamilton added, “Early on into the season, it’s going to be switching up again, working with someone new, that’s what you need to look forward to. It would be ideal to start the season with people with whom you have done multiple seasons and that have been through thick and thin. But at the moment, this is the situation we have.”
Leclerc said on Friday he believes Red Bull and Mercedes are leading Ferrari and McLaren in terms of performance. The new power units in particular are a substantial differentiator, requiring numerous energy management tactics such as lift-and-coast and earlier downshifting.
This makes it even more difficult at this stage to know what modes and impact those modes have on the cars. This is partly down to the 50:50 between the ICE and hybrid power unit, there are different modes. He said, “now with the hybrid and especially the electrical engine being so much more powerful, there are so many small tweaks that you can do, and you can hide the real potential of the car in many, many different ways now. So, it’s very, very difficult for us to understand exactly where we stand.”
“What I’m happy of is that we are going through our programme. We didn’t have any reliability issues so far, and this is a good start. Everything stacks up with what we expected. So that’s a good base to then start to work on and to improve.”
We have seen during the running where we have timing the field spread by 2.6 seconds covering the top ten, this is larger than we have got used to but its only testing.
Williams
Team principal James Vowles feels that the “mood has lifted” at Williams as the team hit the track for official pre-season testing in Bahrain, having missed the Barcelona Shakedown just two weeks earlier.
Wiliams announced just before the last test that they would not take part due to “delays in the FW48 programme” as they continued to “push for maximum car performance” However, they later confirmed that they would be ready to join the first pre-season test in Bahrain, while the car took to the track for the first time during a shakedown at Silverstone on February 4.
Asked on Wednesday whether the mood had improved, considering the previous challenges. Vowles said, “Yeah, definitely. It was a tough winter, there’s no doubt about it. But what’s great is if we took yesterday, for example, the car ran faultlessly just from start to finish, and actually no major vices, which is what we’re hoping for here, good correlation, so absolutely, to your point, the mood has lifted.”
“I would say we still have a huge amount to do before Melbourne. The facts are, we did miss three days of testing in Barcelona – the good news is the weather’s good here! But we did miss that and, whilst we had other plans, we just need to make sure now that we forge a good, sensible plan across these six days to catch back up.”
But confirmed that the team wouldn’t be able to catch up, and they would still be on the back foot in Melbourne. However, says that the things they were expecting were there in terms of a baseline and correlation.
Carlos Sainz believes that the Red Bull-Ford power unit is the “clear” benchmark going into this season. On the opening day of the test, Max Verstappen completed the most mileage and set the fastest lap. The performance of the brand-new Red Bull, and their first in-house engine caught attention in the F1 paddock and led to some pretty bold claims from the Mercedes camp.
But Sainz, who drives a Mercedes-powered Williams, insists GPS data suggests that Red Bull appears to be a “clear step ahead” of the rest. He told Crash.net, “9t’s still extremely early days, but if I would have to judge by the GPS data of yesterday, right now it is true that whatever Red Bull Ford Powertrains were doing yesterday was a clear step ahead of anyone else.”
“Not only a small step, but a clear step and it was mighty impressive. If they manage to turn up to race one with a completely new set of regulations, with a completely new engine, new people, and turn up to be the fastest and most reliable engine, you will have to take your hat off to them and say what they’ve come up with, because at least what they were showing yesterday was very impressive.”
Whether this is spin from Mercedes and its customers because they have been talked up for eighteen months, as well as having high expectations given their previous performance when the PU regulations changed, they have been on top, winning the championship.
Sainz says they are seeing consistent performance in terms of straight-line deployment with the caveat being that it was only the first day of running.
Racing Bulls
Ahead of the test, team principal Alan Permane was impressed with rookie driver Arvid Lindblad during the Barcelona Test, revealing that he saw many similarities between the British-Swedish driver and Isack Hadjar.
Following a strong rookie season last year, Hadjar earned himself promotion to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen, with Lindblad replacing him at Racing Bulls alongside Liam Lawson.
Permane told F1.com, “Very impressed with both. He’s very calm, he’s very cool – nothing seems to faze him. He’s a little bit like I described Isack last year – he just wants to learn, he just wants to take in as much information as he can. He’s asking lots and lots of questions, he’s asking lots of advice – how should he do this, how should he do that?”
He says that the team are helping him, but the most important thing was the pace was there.
Chief technical officer Tim Goss added: “He’s really calm, really professional, feedback is really straightforward. For someone so young, it’s really, really impressive. His session in the car has really just been about getting to grips with this breed of car.
Aston Martin
Aston Martin team principal and chief technical officer Adrian Newey says the team’s car is “one of the more extreme interpretations” of this year’s new rules. The team launched the car on Tuesday just over the border in Saudi Arabia.
in a lavish event afflicted by technical problems and revealed only the colour scheme on a generic 2026 car, not the team’s new design. That was waiting across the King Fahd Causeway at the Bahrain International Circuit, where the second pre-season test begins on Wednesday.
Newey, who joined Aston Martin as managing technical partner in March last year, told BBC News, “It seems to be a bit different to some of the other solutions out there. A bit like 2022, there’s a new set of aerodynamic regulations, there’s been lots of different interpretations. Whether it’s the right one or the wrong one, only time will tell.”
Rivals have expressed admiration for the new Aston Martin, which tested in an all-black livery for just one of the permitted three days in the so-called ‘shakedown’ test in Barcelona last month. Their car was one of the most striking, earning praise from its rivals, but that was no surprise give Newey’s reputation for usually being at the leading edge of innovation when new rules are introduced.
He added: “Overall, it’s been very stimulating and invigorating, exhausting at times as well, of course. But what I found was a lot of individually very talented people who weren’t necessarily working that well together. And so that’s what we’ve tried to really concentrate on.”
Fernando Alonso added, “The past few years were not easy, but we’ve learned a lot, and that experience always makes you stronger. Everybody in this team shares the same hunger to be competitive, and I have seen how much effort is happening behind the scenes to give us a car we can develop across the season.”
On Thursday, Lance Stroll appeared downbeat as he claimed they were “four seconds off.” Stroll completed just thirty-six laps on day one of this week’s Bahrain test – only Franco Colapinto had fewer. His best time on day one was a 39.883, which was over five seconds off Norris.
That was the result of Aston Martin detecting “a data anomaly” from the new Honda power unit, thus forcing Stroll out for much of the action after just completing half a race distance.
Stroll said, “Right now, we look like we’re four seconds off the top team, four and a half seconds. Impossible to know what fuel loads and everything people are running. But, yeah, now we need to try and find four seconds of performance.”
His father, Lawerence who owns the team, invested heavily in the team and with that investment brought high expectations but they could be learning that you cant buy success in this sport and that doesn’t necessarily translate into a fast car, particularly one which started its wind tunnel programme four months late – per Newey.
Audi
Audi was the first to catch the with a heavily revised sidepod, “replacing the more conventional design from Barcelona
Audi’s R26 has been augmented with a very different sidepod design for the start of Bahrain testing ahead of the 2026 season, following the team’s conventional approach to the Barcelona running.
First seen with an inlet with a minor overbite in the Barcelona shakedown, the sidepods used there took more of an in-wash approach – the rear edge of the sidepods had been tucked in, with a smoother upper surface. Firstly, the inlets have had their geometry changed to a narrower, taller intake alongside the flanks of the chassis.
This then flares out, with a ramped undercut to bring the airflow towards the edges of the floor. Furthermore, the top surface has had a channel introduced to ease the passage of airflow to the rear of the car. Reducing the length of this pathway ensures that the flow loses less energy as it transitions to the top of the diffuser surface.
The sidepods have been shrink-wrapped around the two side impact structures, with a small blister seen next to the mirror mounting for the upper crash structure, and the aforementioned undercut ramp for the lower structure.
Nico Hulkenberg believes that the team is “not a million miles away.” Despite teething issues continuing it has managed to complete roughly around the same number of laps as you would expect during testing. Following Thursday’s running at the Bahrain test, Hulkenberg feels “a good step forward” has been made with the Audi since the Barcelona shakedown.
He told F1.com, “Different. Quite different. I think it’s a good step forward, in terms of performance, in terms of reliability, just to be able to get laps in, kilometres on the car. We’ve made some big steps forward there, from Barcelona to here. Then, Bahrain is a very, very different circuit to Barcelona, a lot more stop-and-go.”
“It’s a very hard and unforgiving track, it really exposes a lot of weaknesses historically from any car because of the rough tarmac, low grip, very windy, hot track temps. So, there aren’t many tracks where you find harder conditions. So, it’s a true good test.”
Hulkenberg added that they were “constantly” working on the power unit, and they were not far away from the midfield.
Cadillac
Cadillac unveiled its livery in an advert during Sunday’s Super Bowl as the new American outfit made a high-profile splash during the country’s biggest sporting event.
Showing off their first colours in a prime advertising spot during the NFL’s championship showpiece in which the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in California, Cadillac’s debut livery was unveiled as a unique split arrangement for the 2026 grid with black on one side of the car and white on the other.
The team say the dual livery design uses “asymmetry as a deliberate design philosophy: a yin-and-yang balance expressed through stark black and white, where grit, determination, and performance meet aspiration, optimism and ambition”.
The US manufacturer owned by General Motors will become the eleventh team on the grid and the first new entry in a decade.
Chief executive Dan Towriss said: “This livery represents far more than a paint scheme; it represents who we are and what we bring to Formula 1. Every detail is intentional: bold, modern, and unmistakably American, while respecting the heritage and precision that define this sport.”
“Choosing to reveal our first race livery during the Super Bowl and in the heart of Times Square is a way to introduce our identity to the world at the intersection of performance, culture, and entertainment, and to connect with fans in places far beyond the paddock.”
During the first test in Barcelona, they ran a black livery.
Team principal Graeme Lowdon said: “I’m incredibly proud to reveal the colours of our 2026 Formula 1 challenger. We are a team built on bold ambition and leadership in innovation, values which we exhibited today by tapping into one of the most culturally significant sporting events in the world in a manner that has never been done by a Formula 1 team before.”
Marc Haynes, who managed Lewis Hamilton between 2015 – 21 and 2025, has joined the team as chief racing officer. Hynes, a former British F3 champion, returned as the seven-time world champion’s race director’ last year.
Cadillac announced Hynes’ appointment on Tuesday, explaining that his role would be “to ensure peak performance throughout the team’s racing operations” as he manages a driver line-up led by Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez.
Hynes said: “Building a new team in Formula 1 is a rare challenge, and I’m excited to help shape the culture, processes, and performance standards from the very beginning. We have a strong and diverse driver line-up, and my focus will be on creating the clarity, alignment, and discipline needed to allow everyone – drivers and engineers alike – to perform at their very best.”
On the opening day of the test, Lowdon says that their positive start has not xchanged there expectations for Melbourne.
When asked if the start of testing had changed his hopes, he confirmed he would not get carried away with early positive signs.. ” Lowdon joked “No, it’s the hope that always gets you in the end, isn’t it? I’m a Newcastle fan, I know it. Perfect combination for the task at hand. I guess like every team in the paddock, we’re just ploughing on through our individual programmes.
“Barcelona was very much a shakedown, and in particular for a new team that was very useful because we’re not just shaking down the car but every single item in the garage, everything from jacks to toolboxes to whatever, there’s not a single thing there that’s been used before.”
He says that Barcelona was about getting a platform, where as the Sakhir test was about building a platform for the season ahead. Cadilac are being realistic in their aims in the short to medium term, while balancing that with ambitions to challenge for championships.
What did we learned?
As we did in Barcelona, we have learned these cars are, on the whole, reliable, given the changes in regulations. They look to still be able to follow closely, and they do still, however, have a few gremlins, particularly the favourites Mercedes, as this test has been full of technical issues for the works team, but look back to 2014, Lewis Hamilton retired from Melbourne, then went on that run of six championships in seven years.
They will remain a favourite going into this season; however, I don’t think that these regulations allow a team to go on a run like that. We are also seeing, I think, a similar performance from McLaren, but it’s only testing, and there are, as we know, various caveats. It’s way too early to make solid predictions for the season, but could this maybe be a Mercedes v McLaren championship fight?
Ferrari looks good, but not quite there. The drivers seem positive, but have racked up a decent number of laps and are sounding happy they appear not to have big problems, as they might need to resolve a few problems and refine a few things, but I think they have potential to be in the mix. They need to resolve their biggest challenge, themselves, if they want to be winning championships again, hopefully they have resolved the issues which have held them back since 2009.
Audi has to be the best of the new teams or partnerships, I think, from what we have seen, those issues which hindered them in Barcelona have been resolved, improving reliability and performance issues. Cadillac, meanwhile, have put in a solid performance, but they are still in the learning stages of these regulations and being a team.
We don’t know how these regulations will play out, and we probably won’t know until we come back to Sakhir for the Grand Prix in April how effective these regulations have been. I don’t think we are in a 2014 or 2022 position, at least at this stage, but we are still in ‘spin season’ up until qualifying in Melbourne.
Fastest Lap Times
- Mercedes 01:33.669 282 laps
- Ferrari 01:34.209 +0.540 421 laps
- McLaren 01:34.549 +0.880 422 laps
- Red Bull 01:34.798 +1.129 343 laps
- Haas 01:35.394 +1.752 390 laps
- Alpine 01:35.806 +2.137 318 laps
- Audi 01:36.291 +2.622 354 laps
- Williams 01:36.793 +3.124 422 laps
- Racing Bulls 01:36.808 +3.139 327 laps
- Cadillac 01:36.824 +3.155 320 laps
- Aston Martin 38.248 +4.579 206 laps
These are the fastest times set across the three days; caveat track conditions would have improved throughout the week.