Red Bull had only "good surprises", claims Verstappen after opening day in Bahrain
Having ended up the opening day of the pre-season testing in Bahrain in third place, reigning champion Max Verstappen sounded a positive note, claiming that he only experienced "good surprises".
McLaren driver Lando Norris ended up quickest on the opening day of F1 pre-season testing in Bahrain, narrowly beating George Russell, reigning champion Max Verstappen and Ferrari racer Charles Leclerc.
The first day of running was bizarrely halted by a power cut midway through the afternoon session, with the circuit-wide power outage having caused the session to be red-flagged for over an hour as the paddock and garages descended into darkness. Once power was restored, the session was extended by an extra hour to compensate for the lost running.
Having sat out the opening part of the day, Lando Norris quickly found his way to the sharp end of the field, posting a time of 1m30.430s. It was 0.157s quicker than what Mercedes’ George Russell managed.
Reigning world champion Max Verstappen was a couple of tenths adrift in third for Red Bull, but his long-run pace looked impressive. The Dutchman sounded a positive note after the opening day, claiming that the car behaved as expected.
"From the driving I did today everything felt good. Only good surprises which was good. We don’t know pace yet but everything is working well and the car is doing what I want it to do. It is all in control and that is what we can hope for really to start of my testing.
"We are constantly learning and trying different things and will continue to do so. It is not about hitting the perfect lap but it is about working on our testing programme and learning what direction we need to push the car forwards to get it under control.”
His new team-mate Liam Lawson completed a total of 58 laps on the opening day, ending up eighth quickest with a time of 1m31.560s.
"I had so much fun out there today and it was so good to finally drive the new car properly and do some laps. It feels okay but obviously it is very early days, so it’s very much about learning at the moment.
"For me, there is a lot more to come because I need to learn a lot moving teams but from a Team side we are just trying to learn about the new car, and optimise these testing days. We had a plan of test items, and we managed to go through the whole plan, which is always good. We go into tomorrow with a lot more running and a better idea of where to improve the car.
"It’s hard to tell where we are in terms of pace but the car feels good to drive and comfortable. Testing is just as important to me, as it is for the Team to learn about the car. It’s crucial to maximise these days before Melbourne.”
Reflecting on the day, Red Bull's technical director Pierre Wache said: "Today was a good working day with both drivers. With Liam in the morning, we tried to make some set-up changes to see how the car reacted to it and then in the afternoon when we changed to Max, we continued the programme with a different set-up change to see how we can understand the car for the next couple of days of Testing.
"We used two compounds, the C2 and C3, for both drivers, mainly to be able to do a consistent run and not focussed on extracting the most of the lap time but to understand how the car reacts.”
