It’s impossible to not read into testing. Teams all do it, drivers too to a greater or lesser extent, and while it’s a group event it offers the first opportunity to identify some form of competitive order.
This week’s test in Bahrain made it even more tricky than normal, with much cooler than usual conditions, strong wind and even the odd sprinkling of rain. That meant there were temperatures that generally are not seen for the majority of the season, with cars and tires designed for much warmer days this year.
And that meant the competitive picture that formed was based on extremely unusual conditions, with very little carryover to Melbourne. But there was still a picture. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella could not escape the questions of his team’s performance on Thursday night as the defending constructors’ champions delivered a strong race simulation courtesy of Lando Norris. Oscar Piastri then did similar on Friday and, even if there were still areas the team wanted to improve the car, it showed good progress through the team’s program to achieve both runs.
That’s an important point given what was seen at Red Bull. The team ended up with just 304 laps to its name — well adrift of Mercedes’ benchmark of 458, and only Aston Martin’s 306 was in a similar ballpark. But a lack of mileage doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of progress.
Liam Lawson and Red Bull found cause for optimism in Bahrain, although also enough to conclude more work was needed. Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images
Liam Lawson had his Thursday running interrupted by a loss of engine water pressure, but was still positive about the car he has at his disposal when his test came to an end. And that was before an updated car ran on Friday at the hands of Max Verstappen.
Red Bull didn’t do a race simulation, but team advisor Helmut Marko told German media he felt it had pace potential on a par with McLaren, even if technical director Pierre Wache was a little more cautious.
“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car,” Wache said. “The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track, but we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different setups, and I think we more or less achieved that.
“I think it’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now. You see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams — we tried to focus on our program.
“I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction — just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected. It’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development.”
Charles Leclerc found lots for himself and Ferrari to chew on before the first race. Clive Mason/Getty Images
While Ferrari had looked to be in the mix on the opening day, it drifted slightly from that front pairing as the week wore on, with Charles Leclerc admitting there are solutions to be searched for at Maranello, even if he was not speaking in concerned tones.
“As much as testing is all about focusing on ourselves, whenever there is obviously a race run, we always look a little bit at what the others are doing, but we don’t know in which conditions they are running,” Leclerc said. “It’s a first glimpse of what we can expect but there are lots of unknowns still, so we need to take this with a pinch of salt.
“However, it was a really, really important run to understand where we were lacking compared to them [McLaren], but also compared to my own feelings. We still have quite a bit of work to be done to be ready for Melbourne, so that’s what we are trying to find and work for.”
The new Mercedes W16, here in the hands of Andrea Kimi Antonelli, appears more well-rounded than its predecessor, but is that necessarily a good thing? Clive Mason/Getty Images
It was getting the Ferrari into the right window that Leclerc was focused on, and that’s where the conditions again play a role. Ferrari was not particularly strong when it was cold last year, so could perhaps find performance just through higher temperatures in Melbourne. Mercedes, meanwhile, loved cooler weather in 2024, so its comparable pace to Ferrari still carries question marks.
“I’m a bit worried at the moment because that should be conditions where we should be two seconds quicker than everybody else — which was the only highlight last year in terms of performance in Las Vegas — and we are not,” Toto Wolff half-joked when the weather was at its worst. “So either we’ve remedied the problem and we are more balanced through all the climate conditions, or not. We’ve had a laugh about it. Whether we lost some of that [advantage in cold temps], we shall see. I don’t know.”
If I had to put an order down on paper, I’d go with: McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes — and despite the midfield potentially getting closer, it still appears to be a top four. The Mercedes had a better final day but there was a confidence within Ferrari there should be more to unlock, so in that order I’m backing it to find some over the next two weeks. But the biggest takeaway is there was no one team appearing to be a long way clear of the other, and the signs were of such small margins that the order has every chance of evolving from track to track as it did last year. That couldn’t be said leaving testing 12 months ago, even if there was added comfort of the opening race taking place at the same venue as testing.
Individual team members in the paddock are even more wary than in the past of making a firm prediction of the order heading to the first race, and with major fluctuations in form for different teams through 2024 still fresh in the mind, it’s not hard to see why. Bahrain has seen a first picture form, but it’s blurry, and Melbourne will likely paint a different one. And it’ll change again in China. And probably again in Japan.
How great is that prospect?
