11/04/2025
NEWS STORY
The Zak Brown and Andrea Stella-run McLaren team topped the time sheet at the end of the first day of free practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were clearly quickest in FP2, the most significant session of the day, as it took place in similar temperatures to those the drivers will face tomorrow in qualifying and on Sunday in the race. Norris was also quickest in FP1 in 1'33"204. In the second hour, the papaya pair were the only ones to get under the 1'31" barrier, with Piastri posting a 1'30"505 and Norris a 1'30"659.
During last year's two hours of Friday free practice there was no sign of the C1 compound, but today it was a completely different situation. Seven teams sent both their drivers out on one of their available sets of Hard tyres, the exceptions being Red Bull, Williams and Haas.
The breakdown of laps per compound today is as follows: 184 laps (19.41%) for the C1, 355 with the C2 (37. 45%) and 409 with the C3 (43.14%).
Simone Berra: "As is always the case at Grands Prix where part of the programme is run under artificial lighting, there are some free practice sessions that are more useful than others when it comes to drawing conclusions for the rest of the weekend. We saw that today with only FP2 providing useful insights for tomorrow and Sunday.
"Of course, all the teams had a huge quantity of data to work from, as they and all the drivers completed three days of pre-season testing here. However, the conditions are very different now, with much higher temperatures, if you think that at 18.00 the track temperature got has high as 38° C, whereas during testing it never got above 19 °C.
"The most important point to take away from today is that we won't see a repeat of what we witnessed in Suzuka a week ago, even though the tyre compounds are the same. The track and weather conditions are very different and we saw from today's long runs that the level of thermal degradation on the tyres, not just on the rear axle but in some cases also on the front, was very high. It is therefore easy to imagine a two-stop race, with all three compounds potentially playing their part. It's no coincidence that, unlike last year, seven teams have already run a set of Hard tyres.
"We didn't see any particular issues in terms of tyre wear, with a very low level of surface abrasion."
Check out our Friday gallery from Manama here.