Norris has had "good feelings so far" in Bahrain pre-season testing
Although Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished in the second half of the leaderboard, McLaren's MCL39 looked good for the second successive day, as both drivers were able to rack up the miles with aplomb.
Oscar Piastri was the first to drive the MCL39, with Lando Norris taking over the car in the afternoon. The Australian's time from Thursday morning put him in P13, ahead of McLaren team mate Norris in P14.
Commenting on his day in Bahrain, Piastri said: “A trickier day due to the weather. The temperature and rain made it harder to maximise our testing time in my session, but we were still able to work through a lot and achieve a decent amount.
"I’m looking forward to getting back on track tomorrow afternoon and hopefully pushing the car further to see what we can get out of it before we head to Australia. Overall, it was a productive day.”
His team-mate Norris completed a total of 77 laps, setting a benchmark of 1m30.882s. The British driver attempted multiple push laps in the closing stages of the session, setting purple in the middle part of the track, but he aborted all his flying laps.
“Another productive day on track with good learnings. We were able to get a decent number of laps in with a long run, and I got the feeling of using some different tyre compounds.
"I think we’ve learned a lot from that, and getting the experience of doing the full race run was very valuable. Good feelings so far, we’ve now got one more day to go to make sure we end the week strongly.”
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella commented: “Another productive day of testing, despite the changing conditions. The brief periods of rain made it challenging at times this morning, which cost some track time for Oscar, but the team did a good job adapting our run plan accordingly.
"This afternoon, we focused a little more on longer runs, and overall, we have consolidated yesterday’s testing with further data as we learn more about the MCL39.”
