Carlos Sainz was fastest on day two of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the Spaniard set a 25.921 on the soft tyre during his afternoon stint when he managed eighty-four laps. Sainz was three-quarters of a second faster than the Red Bull of Sergio Perez, the Mexican getting his first taste of the RB20.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard did most of Ferrari\u2019s work on day two after his teammate Charles Leclerc brought the morning session to an early end while he was fastest, after hitting a drain cover bringing out the red flag and forcing Ferrari too change the floor. Sainz was seven-tenths up on Perez, but he was on the softer medium tyre (C4) while Perez was on the harder medium (C3) tyre.<\/p>\n
The data could suggest that Red Bull aren\u2019t as far ahead as some feared on Wednesday evening, but they are still seen as the team to beat going into next weekend\u2019s grand prix. The key question is by how much and Thursday did not provide a clear answer, with one more day of testing remaining before the Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton was fastest of the morning drivers but was a second off Sainz in the final classification, the Mercedes driver was over half a second faster than his 2025 teammate Charles Leclerc at lunch.<\/p>\n
Hamilton’s first proper outing for Mercedes coming three weeks after stunning the sport by announcing his move to Ferrari at the end of the season. Mercedes always under-deliver in testing with teammate George Russell twelfth on day one. The W15, vastly different from its troublesome predecessor, appeared to handle far more favourably and enabled Hamilton to briefly claim the fastest medium tyre time of the week, before it was improved upon by Perez.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris recovered from a lengthy stint in the garage during the afternoon session costing him track time, finishing the day fourth fastest and was three laps short of completing a race distance. The McLaren driver was nearly two-tenths off Hamilton in the full-day running order, and seven-tenths behind Perez at lunch.<\/p>\n
Perez didn\u2019t have the smoothest start to the new year, his first stint during the morning was limited to twenty laps before a brake fire. But he made up for that with over a hundred laps in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
A further concern followed in the second session when Perez dramatically reduced his pace during a lap before limping back to the pits, but he would swiftly be sent back out with no further issue. Ultimately, Red Bull would get through an impressive haul of 129 laps, topped only by Sauber (135) and Ferrari, who between Leclerc and Sainz completed the most tours on day two with 138.<\/p>\n
Leclerc ended the day sixth fastest nearly four-tenths behind the RB of Daniel Ricciardo. Ricciardo waiting until the qualifying hour during next weekend’s Grand Prix to set his fastest time, going a tenth behind Norris. Encouraging for RB after the Australian was fourth on day one.<\/p>\n
Lance Stroll was seventh for Aston Martin, three hundredths faster than the Sauber of Valtteri Bottas and Oscar Piastri. Piastri had ran third fastest of the morning drivers but at lunch he was a second and half behind Leclerc. Logan Sargeant had a full day in the Williams completing just over two race distances, ending the day a quarter of a second off Piastri. He won\u2019t be in action until FP1 next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso, Guanyu Zhou and Pierre Gasly had their running limited because of the red flag in FP3 after the final hour was abandoned because of drain cover issues left them with less than forty laps on the board.<\/p>\n
Haas has gone into this year not expecting much and Kevin Magnussen was nearly a second faster than teammate Nico Hulkenberg, with the second RB of Yuki Tsunoda completing the field.<\/p>\n
World champion Max Verstappen, Alex Albon and George Russell were not on track on Thursday, Verstappen will get half a day and both Albon and Russell a full day on Friday the final day of testing. After tomorrow teams get three hours of practice going into qualifying for the opening Grand Prix in Bahrain next week, Thursday to Saturday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Carlos Sainz was fastest on day two of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the Spaniard set a 25.921 on the soft tyre during his afternoon stint when he managed eighty-four laps. Sainz was three-quarters of a second faster than the Red Bull of Sergio Perez, the Mexican getting his first taste of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2234,241,245,247,369,664,674,709,754,1290,1574,1749,1808,1843,1973],"class_list":["post-13134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2234","tag-bahrain","tag-bahrain-international-circuit","tag-bahrain-testing","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-f1","tag-f1-testing","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-one","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-pre-season-testing","tag-sakhir","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-testing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13135,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13134\/revisions\/13135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}