Formula 1 is finally back for the joy of all the fans. In the hot desert of Bahrain, the new 2024 cars hit the track for the first time.
There was a lot of excitement to see how the new challengers would perform, as it is every year. Everyone wants to understand the pecking order as soon as possible, but it’s also true that until the first few races, it’s difficult to understand the real potential of the cars.
Everybody went out immediately to get a feeling of the new car and to give the engineers the first data to work with.
After 30 minutes, Fernando Alonso was the fastest on track with a lap time of 1:33.882 (M).
Max Verstappen remained on track for quite some time and his car seemed to be a bit nervous and not as precise under breaking as he missed the apex a couple of times in turn 8. Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc got closer to Alonso, 0.498s behind (M). The Monégasque immediately improved and went fastest, with a time of 1:33.658 (M).
McLaren seemed to struggle at the beginning of the first day of testing. Oscar Piastri didn’t complete many laps, just 9, after one hour and a half, and the mechanics were checking the rear of the MCL38.
Alonso apparently couldn’t wait to jump in the car and drive as fast as he could. The Spaniard overtook Leclerc back and went fastest setting a time of 1:33.385 (M). However, Verstappen immediately responded with a 1:33.065 (M). Leclerc got closer to the Red Bull driver, just 0.182 seconds behind.
With one hour and a half to go, Verstappen and Alonso were the ones with the highest number of laps, 39 each. Yuki Tsunoda had 38, Alexander Albon36, Valtteri Bottas 35, Esteban Ocon 33, Kevin Magnussen 32, Leclerc 30, Piastri 24, and George Russell 19.
Verstappen went even faster, with 1:32.548 (M). Meanwhile, Mercedes was still working on Russell’s car as the Briton was the one with the least number of laps completed.
As Tsunoda said on the radio, there was some wind, and driving was affected by it. The latter was also on a race simulation, apparently, and his times were consistent and promising.
Toward the end of the morning session, everybody was focusing on race pace simulations. However, it was difficult to understand and compare the timings as the fuel load was unknown.
With 20 minutes to go, Albon stopped the can on track due to mechanical issues, and that brought out a short yellow flag. Speaking of problems, it seemed that Mercedes’ lack of laps was due to troubles with the hybrid system.
With just 10 minutes to go, Russell improved his lap time and set a 1:34.230 to go sixth fastest. Piastri improved as well, he remained P4 but reduced the gap to +1.110 seconds.
