Russell quickest on day three, but Sainz takes ‘pole’: F1 test 2025
Sakhir, 28 February 2025: The curtain has come down on the only official test session prior to the start of the 2025 season. Three busy days saw all 20 race drivers on track, able to work on development of their new cars more or less uninterrupted. In total there were 25 hours of track time, with 3,896 laps completed, equivalent to 21,090,564 kilometres.
Quickest today was George Russell, the Englishman stopping the clocks in 1’29”545. Next up was Max Verstappen who, on the same C3 compound as the Mercedes driver was just 21 thousandths slower. Alex Albon was third on a set of C4s with which he lapped in 1’29”650. It’s worth noting that today’s top eight drivers represented eight different teams. Behind the top three came the McLaren of Oscar Piastri (1’29”940), Pierre Gasly in the Alpine (1’30”040), the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton (1’30”345), Yuki Tsunoda for Racing Bulls (1’30”497) and Esteban Ocon in the Haas (1’30”728).
Russell’s time today was not enough to give him the nominal pole position for the test, that honour going to Carlos Sainz with his time of 1’29”348 set yesterday in the Williams. He thus repeats his performance of last year when at the wheel of a Ferrari. Further confirmation of how closely matched were the top teams at this test, three different drivers from three different teams topped the time sheet each day, the only one not mentioned so far being Lando Norris on the first day.
“We’ve had three rather unusual testing days here in Bahrain,” commented Pirelli’s Director of Motorsport, Mario Isola. “For years now, Formula 1 has chosen this circuit for the only pre-season test because the weather is usually very favourable, but that was not the case this week, especially the first two days. Low temperatures, considerably lower than at this time of year in previous years, and strong wind affected the teams’ work and made it even harder than usual to interpret the results, with no previous reference points on this track at such low temperatures.
“From our side, the most data came from the C3 and the C2 and, slightly less so from the C1: that was entirely to be expected, given that these are the compounds usually chosen for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Only a few laps were completed with the C4, while the C5 and C6 never appeared on track, to be expected as only Ferrari and Williams had opted to include these in their allocation. From what we could see, the C2 behaved as expected, confirming that it was further from the C1 than last year and therefore closer to the C3. The hardest compound struggled a bit in these temperatures, while the C3 proved to be the most versatile of the range.
We did not see any real performance runs, which would have allowed us to fully evaluate the performance difference between the compounds. As for degradation of the three hardest compounds, it’s clear that because of the low temperatures, it was minimal, even if it increased slightly today when it was a bit warmer, but not in any significant fashion. Now we head home with plenty of data to study as we prepare for the opening round of the season, the Australian Grand Prix. In Melbourne, we will bring the same compounds in terms of nomenclature, as last year, namely the C3 as Hard, the C4 as Medium and the C5 as Soft, so we will have a first meaningful look at the softer compounds.”
With testing of the 2025 cars now complete, Pirelli stays at the Sakhir track for a further two days of testing on Sunday 2nd and Monday 3rd March. On the agenda, development of the 2026 tyres, working with Alpine and Williams. The French team will run its two test drivers, Paul Aron and Ryo Hirakawa, while the English squad is giving its race drivers Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz more time on track.
