The second day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir allowed the ten teams to further understand their new cars in preparation for the first official weekend in Melbourne in three weeks. At the top was Carlos Sainz on the Williams, followed by the two Ferraris, indicating that the top teams haven’t shown their true potential yet. However, if there’s one team that can be truly satisfied with their work, it’s McLaren. The team led by Andrea Stella completed 121 laps, with Lando Norris showing a very competitive race pace in the afternoon, after a morning with some issues for Oscar Piastri. The team principal commented on the day’s performance.
Andrea Stella: “A productive day, especially in the afternoon. The rain hindered Piastri’s work”
Oscar Piastri took to the track in the morning, completing 44 laps, most of them on C3 tires. On this compound, the Australian driver focused mainly on long runs, setting an average pace around 1:33.5. Of course, the fuel loads and power unit mappings are unknown. The difference in laps between him and his teammate Lando Norris (who completed 77 laps) was due to a brief rain interruption on the Bahrain circuit. On the other side of the garage, the vice-world champion finished the day more than a second behind Carlos Sainz. However, the English driver also performed a full race simulation, completing 57 consecutive laps (77 laps in total during the afternoon’s four hours). Team principal Andrea Stella summarized the day: “Another productive test day, despite the changing conditions. The brief moments of rain made the morning challenging, causing some lost track time for Oscar, but the team did a good job adjusting our program accordingly. In the afternoon, we focused more on longer simulations, and overall, we enriched yesterday’s tests with more data as we continue to learn more about the MCL39.”
McLaren Team Principal: “The car seems to behave well, but the conditions here are specific”
The British driver started with the C3, then switched to the C1, and finished with the C2, in contrast to Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli, who used the C2 in the middle stint and the C1 in the final one. The former Ferrari engineer commented on the different tire choices in the last two stints, explaining how each team adopted the best method to understand the new tires: “I think, in terms of tire choice, our long run was simply aimed at testing all three compounds and seeing how they behave. I think everyone, even though they changed the order, wanted the same result: to understand which tires are the best for the race. Considering that Pirelli changed the tire composition compared to last year, we’re testing long runs in very specific conditions. The asphalt is cold, and the air temperature is low. Bahrain is unique for its roughness. So, overall, it was a run full of useful information.”
However, for Andrea Stella, any reference times from the tests must be well contextualized, as they may not reflect the actual values in play: “Every piece of information we receive must be taken with a grain of salt. We have to be careful because, for all the reasons I just mentioned, the conditions are very particular. When we get to the first races of the season, the relationship between the car and the tires will be completely different. Here in Bahrain, at the moment, the car seems to behave well with the tires, but in a very specific, I would say special, context like the one we’ve experienced these days.”
A lot of work in winter on the rear balance: here’s why In recent years, the Woking team hasn’t achieved great results at the Sakhir circuit, which leads one to think that they may struggle more on ‘rear-limited’ tracks. In 2022 and 2023, their best results were a 14th and a 19th place, respectively. Then, last season, McLaren secured a sixth and an eighth place, which is a notable result considering they finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship: “Looking at the layout of the track, we have an explanation for why our car didn’t necessarily work well here. That’s why we’ve worked in the past two years to try to improve those requirements needed for tracks like this, where there are tight corners, for example. With the MCL39, we believe we’ve made progress, while of course trying to maintain some of the strengths we had developed over the years,” commented Stella.
The Bahrain circuit requires excellent rear-end balance to ensure good traction. The McLaren team principal stated that a lot of hard work had been done over the winter on this aspect, but he emphasized that improvements on these types of tracks cannot be drastic, unlike more than ten years ago: “Usually, you always improve by an amount that will never completely eliminate this kind of problem. The only time I’ve seen a drastic change where I thought, ‘Oh, there are no more traction issues, now the car actually pushes’ was with the exhaust effect, which involved the diffuser in 2011-12. But within the current regulations, which are very strict, the limitation will always remain. The only solution is to mitigate it as much as possible.”
Norris shines in race pace, but Andrea Stella calms expectations In any case, the abnormal conditions affected all teams. In these circumstances, however, Lando Norris’s pace was very competitive. In the first two stints, the British driver was about three-tenths of a second faster per lap than his competitors, and in the final part of the simulation, his times were even more impressive: an average of 1:32.9, compared to 1:34.1 and 1:34.0 from Leclerc and Antonelli, although both were on a slightly harder compound. Andrea Stella commented on his driver’s pace, tempering expectations: “Every team usually analyzes the data in relation to their competitors. But actually, in my case, while I do that, the main goal for me and the team is to compare these data and the car’s behavior with what we expected. For example, during the stint, Lando complained, as he did yesterday, about the rear end suffering more than expected. But as I said, in Bahrain, there’s nothing surprising about this. Despite that, focusing only on rear grip is not enough; we also have the ambition to improve the car’s behavior in the mid-corner. From a mechanical standpoint, we’ve introduced some innovative modifications to the car’s layout and wanted to check that it behaves as expected. Therefore, in these first two days, this has been our goal, avoiding being distracted by the data from our competitors.”
Finally, analyzing the circuits most favorable to the MCL39, Andrea Stella identified Melbourne and Suzuka as tracks that better suit the car’s characteristics, though he didn’t rule out Bahrain as a potential testing ground for the progress made: “In terms of pure performance, I think Melbourne and Suzuka have more corners suited to our car’s strengths. Bahrain, on the other hand, is a challenge, but also a useful reference for assessing our progress in our weaknesses based on what we’ve seen in previous years.
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