Key figures from pre-season testing · RaceFans

For the second 12 months in a row, Carlos Sainz Jnr set the quickest lap time of any driver in pre-season testing.

He’s modified groups since then, so the bragging rights for quickest general time go to Williams. However as everyone knows, headline testing instances don’t reveal who’s quick and who isn’t. For a similar motive, constructors’ champions McLaren are unlikely to be alarmed they solely set the fifth-fastest time.

Three days of operating in Bahrain have yielded some noteworthy information, nonetheless.

2025 pre-season lap instances

Essentially the most hanging function of the groups’ lap instances this 12 months is how shut they’re. This seems to assist the view that the sector would proceed to tighten up within the fourth 12 months underneath largely unchanged technical laws.

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2025 pre-season lap instances in comparison with final 12 months’s check and grand prix

Three groups stand out when evaluating their lap instances from this week to the check and grand prix on the similar monitor final 12 months.

Williams and Alpine are the one groups whose lap instances this week have been faster than they managed within the Bahrain check and race final 12 months. That’s an excellent indication of actual progress, a few of which was seen through the course of final season.

Each these groups have indicated the chance supplied by subsequent 12 months’s guidelines change is a specific precedence for them. They seem to have begun this 12 months with vehicles intently based mostly on these they’d on the finish of final season. They need to subsequently be capable of exploit their accessible efficiency extra simply, which can be mirrored within the instances, nevertheless it stays to be seen what improvement potential they may have over the 12 months forward.

Sauber’s instances additionally stand out for 2 causes. They’re the one staff who lapped slower this week than they did in each the grand prix and the check final 12 months, which is a discouraging signal. This was memorably the case for Ferrari in pre-season testing five years ago, and that staff went on to endure a tricky season.

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2025 pre-season mileages in comparison with final 12 months’s check

Regardless of a number of weird interruptions – together with an influence lower, a smashed pane of glass and a wayward bus – the 10-team discipline bought extra testing performed than final 12 months. Collectively they racked up 3,896 – virtually 200 greater than in 2024.

Nevertheless there was a big hole between those that did essentially the most and the least. Mercedes, the busiest staff of all, coated 50% extra operating than rivals Pink Bull. That 833-kilometre distinction is identical as greater than two grands prix.

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Drivers summaries

The timings of the varied disruptions affected some drivers greater than others. Esteban Ocon was the busiest driver in Bahrain, masking 260 laps, over four-and-a-half grand prix distances.

Any driver like Ocon who was adjusting to new groups would have welcomed that type of mileage. Lewis Hamilton, nonetheless, did virtually 100 fewer laps in his Ferrari, after his last day within the automobile got here to an early finish on account of an obvious technical downside.

The one drivers who coated fewer laps than he did have been the Pink Bull pair and Lance Stroll. The latter needed to sit out many of the last day as he was unwell.

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