Three days of F1 testing and a competitive pattern did emerge, but it’s not one that anyone is confident will remain stable, even between now and the first race in Melbourne in two weeks’ time.

The problem was the weather! Bahrain is the F1 venue of choice specifically because of its dry warm conditions. But the first two days were untypically cool (occasionally even with a light drizzle of rain), one of them very gusty, followed by a more traditional warm final day which placed its usual heavy demands upon the rear tyres. But even in that final day the wind was strong and gusty in the morning, less so in the afternoon.

Two things which a current F1 car is extremely sensitive to are track temperatures and wind speed. Bahrain delivered a completely new combination of those each day. So as everyone sought to experiment and measure through their various running states, trying to establish correlation with their simulation, so the baseline was very different from one day to the next and not everyone was keeping up. Several teams never got to the point where they could even consider trying for a race simulation run, still trying to understand their cars and the way they reacted to changes. This included even Red Bull.

But the message on those gusty and sometimes cool winds spelt out McLaren. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were insisting they were still not satisfied with the new MCL39’s balance – and its rear end did look quite lively on occasion – and the car spent a long time in the garage between runs, having alternative new floors and bodywork specs fitted. But every time it made a serious run it was the class of the field. On day 2 McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all made race simulation runs, using a combination of the C1, C2 and C3 tyre. Norris won this simulated ‘race’ by a comfortable margin, from a very closely-matched George Russell and Charles Leclerc who were separated by around 1sec after 50-odd laps.

On the slower, hotter track of the final day these three teams repeated that simulation. The tyre deg of all of them was far higher than the day before but Piastri’s advantage over Russell (around 0.3-0.4sec) was very similar to that of Norris the day before. Unfortunately Lewis Hamilton was pulled out of this comparison as the Ferrari developed a ‘technical’ part way through his opening stint.

Generally Hamilton seemed much happier with the way the Ferrari was allowing him to drive than has been the case for most of the previous three years at Mercedes. The SF25 appears to have retained its predecessor’s nice compliance and driveability but with greater high-speed downforce.

With the track conditions varying so wildly even between mornings and afternoons, it was difficult to make any definitive comparisons between him and team-mate Leclerc. But Hamilton’s pace comparison with Russell’s Merc on the afternoon of the final day looked much as Leclerc’s had compared to Kimi Antonelli that morning. The Mercedes rookie was immediately fast and aggressive and though his initial brake locking into the Turn 10 hairpin was put down to over-enthusiasm, it later became apparent that Russell was experiencing much the same. The Mercedes looked stiff across the front, making the braking into slow corners a little tricky, but it generally was getting into the corners quicker than the Ferrari, with the red car then exiting better for a very similar overall lap time.

Russell actually set the best time in the dying moments of the final day but not only was that slower than the time set by Carlos Sainz’s Williams on Day 2, but it was set to have been eclipsed by Piastri’s final lap – until he ran the McLaren wide at the last corner of its last lap. Max Verstappen had minutes earlier gone P1 after finally finding a combination of floor, bodywork and set up with which he could work. But the Red Bull was not proving an easy car to balance and there were still wild swings in its competitiveness between runs. It currently looks quick but edgy in the tradition of Red Bulls.

Sainz’s fastest time of the whole test, set on that second day, came as Williams gave him plenty of power unit mode and a lighter than typical testing fuel load. As it was his final day in the car before handing over to Alex Albon, the team wanted him to get a feel for how it felt when pushed. Albon went third-quickest in the car on the final day, using a C4 tyre reckoned to be around 0.4s faster than the C3s used by McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. Realistically, that puts the Williams maybe around 0.5-0.6sec off a front-running pace and vying for best of the rest after the big four teams with Alpine. Pierre Gasly’s long run on the final day was notably quick and consistent and the car looks set to take up from its strong end-of-season performance. Both Williams and Alpine – retaining their ’24 monocoques –  looked very well prepared and well out of reach of the varying states of imbalance and woe of the remaining teams.

Yuki Tsunoda finally made some progress with the RB in the second half of the final day, but up until then the car had looked as badly balanced as the Sauber. Neither Aston Martin nor Haas showed any indication of potential. But that could be just the bewildering impact of the changing conditions.

That’s how the new season is poised.