SAKHIR, Bahrain \u2014 Mercedes drivers Kimi Antonelli and George Russell were the fastest at the end of three days of\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0pre-season\u00a0testing\u00a0in Bahrain on Friday.<\/p>\n
Antonelli topped the afternoon session, replacing Russell behind the wheel. Russell led the way in the morning as the teams can run only one\u00a0car\u00a0on track in the test.<\/p>\n
Three more days of\u00a0testing\u00a0are scheduled next week in Bahrain, after a\u00a0secretive \u201cshakedown\u201d test\u00a0in Spain last month.<\/p>\n
Russell said Mercedes still has work to do before the first race of the season, the Australian Grand Prix on March 8.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarcelona was very smooth, and probably smoother than we actually anticipated, in terms of reliability, in terms of performance,” he said. “We\u2019ve got to Bahrain and in both regards we\u2019ve taken a step back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got another test, a month until Melbourne. We\u2019re obviously very focused on the performance but you\u2019ve also got to finish the race if you want to fight for the result. Being a driver, you\u2019re always focused on the performance, and a number of the team members are really focused on reliability and working hard on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton tested for the entire day and was second to Antonelli by more than half a second.<\/p>\n
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri also participated in both sessions and placed fourth. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar followed.<\/p>\n
The drivers are\u00a0testing\u00a0new cars amid\u00a0sweeping changes\u00a0for 2026 that have made cars smaller and lighter and highlighted the strategy of charging an on-board battery and using electrical energy to boost speed.<\/p>\n
Hadjar praised team\u2019s new power unit, saying it “seems so far reliable, powerful, so I\u2019m very happy so far. Very surprised already from the Barcelona shakedown to here, like how many laps we managed to achieve.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems easier to push to the limit compared to last year\u2019s\u00a0car. It\u2019s a bit slower in general, and also lighter, smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc led the way for Ferrari on Thursday, going fastest by half a second from champion Lando Norris. On Wednesday, Norris topped the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAKHIR, Bahrain \u2014 Mercedes drivers Kimi Antonelli and George Russell were the fastest at the end of three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-473043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}