Lando Norris tops the timesheets as pre-season testing gets underway.

The first day of pre-season testing saw 18 drivers in action, completing 1,143 laps between them.

There were two red flags over the course of the day but nothing serious, Franco Colapinto stopping on track ninety minutes into the morning session and Nico Hulkenberg ninety minutes into the afternoon.

Though there were only the two reds, there were plenty of offs, with Turns 1 and 10 proving particularly difficult, some incidents put down to the wind others to the differing levels of battery deployment.

"The wind direction has been tailwind, so that explains many of the things," said Valtteri Bottas. "But one point to note is everyone is still getting grips on their deployment.

"We're trying different things in different laps," he admitted, "and that brings quite a bit of variability on the braking points. So actually what had me over there was I had quite a lot more deployment on that lap into the corner, so I arrived there much faster, which is not something we had before.

"We would always arrive more or less with the same speed. But now it can vary like 10 to 20 kph, which makes a difference in the braking points. So these are the things that we're now learning with these new cars and power units."

Max Verstappen was the pace-setter for much of the day, but around an hour before the end Lando Norris went quicker. The Dutchman improved in the cooler conditions of night, but never eclipsed the world champion's time.

While Arvid Lindblad's day was brought to an early end due to a fuel leak, Kimi Antonelli, who didn't appear until over an hour into the afternoon, suffered an issue which cost him valuable track time.

Over the course of the day drivers could be seen trying the new modes, Lewis Hamilton experimenting in Lindblad and Carlos Sainz hunting down Esteban Ocon.

Of great interest were the sidepods on the Audi, radically different to what was witnessed in Barcelona, and no doubt set to change again by Melbourne.

Lance Stroll was another driver who had only limited running, Honda explaining: "Our power unit test plan today with Lance went as planned in the morning, however, we detected a data anomaly this afternoon. We are now proceeding with precautionary checks on the PU to understand the exact root cause before we can resume testing."

Williams was one of several teams with both drivers on duty, the Grove outfit keen to make up lost track time after missing last week's Shakedown.

"There's no doubt we're behind, just simply because others have done three days on track," admitted James Vowles, "but not to the extent, in mixed conditions in Barcelona, where I don't feel we can catch up across these six days.

"We have to remember that in most seasons now, we do three days of testing," he continued, "we've doubled that this year and the power units are, for the most part, performing very well.

"Again, yesterday it ran flawlessly," he added, referring to a permitted 200km filming day, "so that's why across these six days you can do some quite high mileage numbers that get you back to where you want to be."

As part of their frustrating stage managing of the new season, the powers that be have deemed that the fastest tyre compounds will not appear until next week, consequently today's best times were set on the C3. However, the usual caveats about fuel loads and the rest apply.

Overall a good opening day, the top five covered by less than a second and no major failures, certainly nothing like the scale of 2014.

Ignoring the times, it is good to see Audi, Haas, Cadillac, Ferrari, Red Bull and Williams comfortably exceeding 100 laps.

McLaren split their planned running across the day, with Oscar Piastri taking to the track during the morning session and completing 54 laps. Lando Norris then drove the MCL40 in the afternoon, adding a further 58 laps.

Both drivers focused heavily on collecting aerodynamic data, rather than traditional continuous runs often seen during pre-season testing. This approach is designed with the objective of maximising learning across a range of aerodynamic setups and providing a broader understanding of the car's operating window rather than focusing on mileage or lap time. This has been useful and allows us to better understand the car and explore further performance opportunities as the test continues.

Sakhir's high track temperatures and strong winds provide the team with valuable opportunities to gather important data under conditions significantly different to those experienced at Formula 1's Barcelona Shakedown last month. The team continues to grow its understanding of the MCL40 as each run provides further understanding on areas such as evaluating straight and corner mode while also continuing to extract greater performance from the power unit.

Norris will return to the MCL40's cockpit tomorrow as the team continues its preparations for the 2026 season.

"It was good to be back in the car today," said Norris, "we completed a lot of test items which gave us a lot of data to look over, as well as a better understanding of the car. Of course, being in Bahrain in the sun, the conditions are very different to Barcelona, very hot and quite windy, and that was interesting to see how differently the car behaves. Positive day, lots learned, and looking forward to getting back in the car tomorrow."

"A good first morning back in the car," added Piastri. "It all ran smoothly and I feel like I got a better handle of what the car's doing and what it needs. The conditions are very different here compared to Barcelona, so it was good to get some running in a different environment. We'll go through the data, see what we can pull out from it and how we can improve ahead of getting back on track."

"A productive first day in Bahrain as we continue our early on-track learning and developments for the MCL40," said chief designer, Rob Marshall. "We have approached this week by prioritising our learning and therefore chosen a deliberate run plan to optimise work that ultimately accelerates the development of our package.

"You can see from Oscar and Lando's running that they have both completed heavy aerodynamic testing today in conditions that are very different to the ones we experienced in Barcelona last month. With this in mind, we have prioritised data gathering runs over out and out mileage on this first day of the test.

"Everyone is pushing in the same direction, and the drivers' time invested in test items provides a solid foundation of learning, from which we can build on as we progress through pre-season testing."

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