George Russell left it late, which is usually the point of the exercise in Bahrain, but the timing still felt pointed.
On the opening day of the second and final pre-season test for 2026, Russell put Mercedes on top with a 1:33.459 in the closing stages of the afternoon session — just 0.010s quicker than Oscar Piastri’s earlier benchmark for McLaren. Nobody in the pitlane is pretending that a ten-thousandth in February will decide anything in March, but it did underline how tightly the leading group is bunching as the new era approaches.
The familiar Bahrain rhythm played out again: most teams split running either side of lunch, with only Red Bull sticking to a full-day programme for Isack Hadjar. Russell took over the W17 from Kimi Antonelli, while Piastri replaced Lando Norris at McLaren. At Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton jumped in after Charles Leclerc’s morning turn; elsewhere Carlos Sainz swapped with Alex Albon at Williams, Liam Lawson took over from Arvid Lindblad at Racing Bulls, Lance Stroll replaced Fernando Alonso at Aston Martin, and Oliver Bearman stepped in for Esteban Ocon at Haas. Audi rotated Nico Hulkenberg out for Gabriel Bortoleto, Alpine handed the car to Franco Colapinto after Pierre Gasly, and Cadillac gave Valtteri Bottas the afternoon after Sergio Perez ran in the morning.
Russell’s day wasn’t entirely clean, even before the headline time arrived. Early in the session he flagged a change in feel through the wheel — “a bit heavier at the apexes now compared to last week” — and Mercedes confirmed it was the result of a steering adjustment rather than a sudden problem. Even so, it was a reminder that the W17 is still in that sensitive phase where small set-up swings can change the driver’s confidence corner-to-corner.
Aston Martin, meanwhile, had a slightly twitchier narrative running in the background. Alonso’s morning was blunted by a power unit issue that limited him to 28 laps, and when Stroll’s turn began there was a brief garage pause with mechanics clustered around the engine cover area. He did get out — 45 minutes into the afternoon — but it wasn’t long before Aston’s day acquired an on-track blemish too.
Piastri was first to post something representative in the afternoon, a 1:35.560 on C2s, before Stroll brought out the session’s first red flag with a strange spin under braking at Turn 11 that left him beached in the gravel. After the reset, Hamilton’s Ferrari moved ahead of Piastri with a 1:34.576, Russell tucked in 0.012s behind that on the same C3 tyre, and then Piastri responded to climb back up to third — still narrowly shy of Norris’s best from the morning.
The times began to look more like the ones teams actually care about once the track improved and fuel loads inevitably dropped. With two hours to go, Piastri lit up the first two sectors and delivered a 1:33.469 to go quickest, comfortably bettering Leclerc’s morning effort by 0.270s. Russell improved soon after but remained a couple of tenths back, Mercedes seemingly more interested in ticking through longer runs than hunting the headline.
There were interruptions and imperfections everywhere, as you’d expect at this stage of a regulation reset. Hamilton lost a hefty chunk of track time with an issue that appeared to involve the screens outside Ferrari’s garage, returning only later with a front wing heavily coated in flow-vis paint — a small visual tell that Ferrari’s engineers were still in data-harvesting mode rather than chasing a neat-looking timesheet.
Red Bull’s day was stop-start too. Hadjar had already missed the final two hours of the morning session after completing just 13 laps, and the interruptions continued in the afternoon before he managed to climb into the top 10 and then higher. He eventually ended the day sixth, 0.801s off Russell, but with enough flashes — including a purple first sector late on — to suggest there’s pace there when the programme allows it.
The new Cadillac operation had a scrappier afternoon. Bottas didn’t appear until deep into the session after delays, initially circulating more than eight seconds off the pace and repeatedly locking up into the Turn 8 hairpin. He also ran straight on at Turn 1 later, though by day’s end he had at least edged ahead of Perez’s morning time — faint consolation, but the test is about stitching systems together as much as lap time.
As the light faded and the track cooled, the fight for P1 on paper became a two-car story. Russell had one lap ruined by running wide at Turn 10 — the kind of small error that speaks to how knife-edge these cars can be when the driver’s reaching for the limit — but he came again. With 32 minutes left he went purple in sector one and finally nudged ahead of Piastri, 1:33.459 to 1:33.469, both on C3.
McLaren didn’t bite back. The team pivoted towards long running as the session wound down, leaving Russell’s time to stand and Mercedes to enjoy the optics, even if everyone in the paddock knows the important information is buried in the run plans rather than the top line.
The final moments offered a glimpse of what’s quietly becoming one of the bigger undercurrents of this winter: how the sport intends to manage the start phase with the 2026 cars. With 10 minutes remaining, the FIA threw a red flag as part of an evaluation of a potential new start sequence. The field returned to the pit lane, headed back out for a formation lap, lined up again after another formation lap, and then — crucially — all grid panels flashed blue for five seconds before the usual start light routine began. It’s a procedural tweak aimed at easing worries that the new generation of cars could make the run off the line more treacherous than usual.
Day one of the final test won’t settle anything, but it did sharpen the picture: Mercedes and McLaren look close enough to trade blows even when they’re not trying particularly hard, Ferrari’s day was more about instrumentation and recovery than fireworks, and Red Bull’s rookie-led programme still managed to keep itself in the conversation.
For now, Russell’s tiny advantage is just that — tiny. But in a winter where margins are expected to compress, even the smallest sliver on the timing screen can feel like a message.
Russell led the day from Piastri, with Leclerc third, Norris fourth, Antonelli fifth and Hadjar sixth. Hamilton ended seventh after his disrupted afternoon, followed by Sainz, Colapinto and Bortoleto rounding out the top 10.
