P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Lewis Hamilton led the way for Ferrari just after the first hour of the opening day of Formula 1’s Bahrain pre-season test.
Lewis Hamilton set the pace for Ferrari during the opening hour of the Bahrain pre-season test in Formula 1. Hamilton’s time of 1m32.621s on the C4 mediums pushed Alex Albon’s Williams to second on the leaderboard for Wednesday. Despite showing strong performance, Hamilton’s time is still 2.7s slower than last year’s record set by Carlos Sainz. The session saw smooth running for all teams, with Hamilton’s only hiccup being a wide moment at Turn 11. Behind Hamilton and Albon, Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin rounded out the top three, while Red Bull’s Liam Lawson and Alpine’s Jack Doohan followed closely. Yuki Tsunoda, Nico Hulkenberg, and Kimi Antonelli complete the top eight, with Ollie Bearman in ninth place. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri had yet to post a representative laptime, highlighting the lack of surprises among the leading teams’ cars’ appearances in the initial testing phase. Interestingly, it seems that Red Bull’s RB21 has maintained a significant similarity to its predecessor, the RB20, which concluded the previous season.
