Reigning Formula 1 champion Lando Norris and his McLaren team set the fastest time of the opening day of F1 testing in Bahrain – but Red Bull and Max Verstappen stole the limelight.<\/p>\n
Norris, who took over the MCL40 from team-mate and 2025 title rival Oscar Piastri in the midday break, jumped ahead of Verstappen with a 1m34.669s set on medium tyres in the penultimate hour of running.<\/p>\n
That time – though four seconds off the best time of the opening day in the sole Bahrain test last year – went unmatched for the rest of the day, Verstappen coming up over a tenth short despite a couple of tries on softer rubber.<\/p>\n
However, Verstappen – who had the RB22 all to himself through the day – caught the eye with a series of impressive and consistent long runs, amid Mercedes boss Toto Wolff having claimed the new bespoke Red Bull-Ford power unit is currently enjoying a massive energy deployment advantage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Charles Leclerc, who shared the Ferrari with team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the day, clocked in at just over half a second back from Norris, followed by Esteban Ocon in the Haas and morning session runners Piastri, George Russell and Hamilton.<\/p>\n The only other cars making it below the 1m37s laptime mark were Alpine (driven by Pierre Gasly) and Audi (driven by Nico Hulkenberg).<\/p>\n The Audi, showing off a dramatically different sidepod design<\/a> here, had caused a red flag with a stoppage early in the afternoon, but returned quickly after that and ran extensively.<\/p>\n