McLaren v Ferrari v Red Bull v Mercedes: the final scramble to lead F1 pack

Pre-season testing did us dirty this year. Bahrain was supposed to be the venue where almost guaranteed good weather and a relatable track layout — that has more recently been used to start the season — would allow a pretty clear picture to build of who would sit where at the opening round.

Yet, this year, it would have been almost as productive to have been at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya or the Circuit de Jerez in Spain, such were the weather conditions. Both of those European tracks would have seen colder mornings and no chance of running after sunset, but they also would have provided a dry surface and sunshine throughout.

Bahrain, as it would have it, was grey, cold (courtesy of the wind chill more than anything) and for the first two days, damp at times as well.

Given the fact the season-opener will be in Melbourne, Pirelli also was unable to simply bring its race weekend tyre allocation a week early to allow teams a chance of running wet weather tyres, either. For this pre-season, if teams wanted wets, they had to select them as part of their testing allocation back in December. Only Aston Martin and Haas did so.

It all created a very unique set of conditions.

“It’s been overall a very, very different Bahrain test compared to every other year,” Charles Leclerc admitted. “The conditions have been so inconsistent which makes testing a lot more difficult to take anything out of, because winds have changed a lot.

“[On Thursday] we even had rain and the temperature was very low on the first day. So very different conditions day after day, so it was very difficult to have a lap-time reference, which is quite important sometimes for the team. But at least I got the feeling, and I think we’ve learned a huge amount.

“But it’s difficult to compare it with the past and to see the strengths or weaknesses compared to the year before. So that makes this whole testing a lot more difficult and probably going into the first race with a bit more unknown than other years.”

But those are the conditions that teams still might face on occasion this season, and they also will highlight how a car might have certain strengths that could translate into weaknesses in higher temperatures. And having caveated how the conditions won’t necessarily translate into Australia performance, we can still identify which of the top four teams have had the most encouraging pre-season.

McLaren

That title very much goes to McLaren.

As defending constructors’ champions, it shouldn’t exactly be a surprise that McLaren has started the year strongly. But the crucial aspect here is that last season — and in the previous years of this era — the team was playing catch-up in the early rounds. That’s not the case this time around.

McLaren’s new car has kept it firmly towards the front of the top four pack, and the race simulations on Day 2 saw Lando Norris deliver a particularly impressive final stint, and hold a clear advantage over Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli who ran simulations at similar times for Ferrari and Mercedes respectively.

That’s on a track where McLaren has historically struggled, however (perhaps itself a byproduct of how it has started each season), and team principal Andrea Stella suggests the cool conditions could well have suited its car far more than its rivals on such a rear-limited layout.

And it was still that rear limitation that Norris was flagging as an area McLaren needs to do further work, but it appears set to address that within the context of being the early team to beat.

Ferrari vs Mercedes

Those race simulations did give an opportunity to compare Ferrari and Mercedes with a little more clarity as well, and the two teams were closely matched on Day 2, while the final day painted a slightly different picture.

To be close to Ferrari with rookie Antonelli behind the wheel, against the far more settled-in Leclerc, was encouraging for Mercedes – the team with the highest mileage of the week – and it feels it has improved upon a number of the weaknesses from last year’s car.

One such area was a variation in performance across weather conditions, and an apparent step forward in performance on the final day – when temperatures were higher but the wind still an issue – suggests gains in that region.

It was George Russell completing Day 3’s race simulation, and the virtual gap to McLaren – this time with Oscar Piastri driving – had all but halved, with the majority of the difference coming in a first stint that was on the softest of the three compounds used. The degradation on the Mercedes appeared better than for Piastri in the middle of the run, too, raising the question of whether Russell’s greater experience makes up for a significant chunk of the step forward.

The data certainly suggests Mercedes would give Ferrari a run for its money if it was racing in Bahrain in cool conditions, but it was more competitive relative to Ferrari and McLaren at that circuit last year than it was at Albert Park, too.

While the mood at Mercedes was positive come the end of testing, at Ferrari there was a clear message that there is work to do. No panic, but Leclerc felt the car was quite a long way off a comfortable balance and would require plenty of time in the simulator prior to Melbourne. Lewis Hamilton then didn’t get the benefit of a race simulation on the final day, as an anomaly on the data ended running early.

Hamilton had started his race simulation averaging nearly half a second per lap slower than Russell across the first ten laps, but the issue that surfaced may have had a hand in that.

Where there’s encouragement for Ferrari is in the wider picture. The team made front suspension changes this year to open up greater development potential as it felt it had maximised its previous concept, and that could lead to further steps early in the season. It wasn’t quite on McLaren’s level of car development success over the past two years, but it has been strong.

Red Bull

The same can’t be said for Red Bull, however, and this is where the real uncertainty lies after testing.

Max Verstappen very quickly stated the car was an improvement on last year’s, but that was more a dig at the RB20 as he said “It can’t be worse than last year, so I think the direction that we’re working into is good”.

At times it looked a handful, but at others it appeared solid. The challenge to decipher there is in the lack of a race simulation that means there can’t be a direct comparison made against the other three teams. Verstappen did some long stints – a 10-lap run in the morning being a whole second a lap faster than the first 10 laps of Russell and Hamilton’s race simulation attempts – but none that appeared to be on race fuel loads.

Red Bull was testing a new nose and front wing on the final day that it wanted to gain understanding of, and while the past tendency would be that the different approach was due to confidence in its machinery, the lowest lap total of any team and comments of Pierre Wache suggest otherwise.

“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car,” the technical director said.

“I think it’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now, you see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams, we tried to focus on our programme.