Charles Leclerc signed off the final morning of Bahrain pre-season running by putting Ferrari on top — and doing it in a way that will catch the eye up and down the pitlane.
Leclerc’s best, a 1:33.689, was set on medium tyres and with Ferrari opting to keep him on an older-spec rear wing rather than leaning into the headline-grabbing rotating active rear wing hardware. In other words: no obvious “look at us” configuration, no desperate glory run. Just a clean, representative lap that left the Monegasque 0.227s clear of Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli.
It’s only testing, but the texture of it matters. Ferrari looked comfortable in its own plan, and Leclerc’s long-ish stint work backed up the impression: he was first to 60 laps and ended the session on 80, with the SF-26 ticking along without the sort of hiccup that forces engineers into that familiar, tight-lipped huddle behind the monitors.
Behind him, Antonelli’s morning had the kind of interruption that keeps a young driver’s head down. He brought out the session’s only red flag when his Mercedes cut out and rolled to a halt between Turns 10 and 11. The car was recovered and Antonelli returned to the pits in the Safety Car, but he didn’t head back out afterwards — leaving him on 49 laps and, more importantly, leaving Mercedes with questions it would much rather have answered before the freight leaves for Melbourne.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri slotted into third with a 1:34.352 and 66 laps, while Haas continued to look like a team that’s decided the stopwatch can wait. Esteban Ocon logged 82 laps — the most of anyone — and ended up fourth on a 1:34.494. It’s not glamorous, but it’s exactly how you bank a useful test when everyone’s still learning these 2026 cars.
Red Bull’s new face, Isack Hadjar, was right in the mix early on before settling into his programme and finishing fifth. That’s a respectable morning on 59 laps, even if the broader message from the other side of the garage remains “work in progress”. Max Verstappen had admitted the team still has “a lot to understand”, and the RB22 didn’t do anything in this session to quieten that theme. Not slow, not troubled — just not yet carrying that air of inevitability Red Bull used to wear.
Further down, the midfield remained its usual blur: Pierre Gasly sixth for Alpine, Arvid Lindblad seventh for Racing Bulls after a hefty 77-lap haul, Carlos Sainz eighth in the Williams and Nico Hulkenberg ninth for Audi.
The real sour note, though, belonged to Aston Martin — and it wasn’t subtle.
The Silverstone team essentially lost the morning as Honda confirmed a battery-related issue and, crucially, a shortage of power unit parts that forced a heavily restricted run plan. Fernando Alonso’s running the previous day had flagged the problem, and Honda said it had been working through simulations on the test bench back in Sakura since then.
Aston Martin didn’t leave the garage in the first two hours. Lance Stroll eventually emerged with around 20 minutes left, completed an installation lap, and returned straight to the garage. He ventured out again only in the closing minutes, ending the session with two laps and no representative time.
For a works-style partnership still bedding in on the world stage, this is the kind of week you can’t really afford. Pre-season testing is as much about validating the boring stuff — procedures, reliability, the rhythm between factory and track — as it is about chasing lap time. When the manufacturer is already talking about limited parts, the paddock inevitably starts doing what it always does: reading between the lines.
As the morning wound down, teams ran practice starts on the grid — the kind of simple, repetitive work that rarely makes headlines but can save you a position on Sunday. Leclerc’s Ferrari remained the reference at the top, Antonelli’s session remained defined by that stoppage, and Aston Martin left Bahrain with a hole in its programme that it now has to patch with engineering hours rather than track mileage.
Morning times (Day 6, Bahrain testing):
1. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari – 1:33.689 (80 laps)
2. Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes – 1:33.916 (49 laps)
3. Oscar Piastri, McLaren – 1:34.352 (66 laps)
4. Esteban Ocon, Haas – 1:34.494 (82 laps)
5. Isack Hadjar, Red Bull – 1:34.511 (59 laps)
6. Pierre Gasly, Alpine – 1:34.846 (57 laps)
7. Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls – 1:35.238 (77 laps)
8. Carlos Sainz, Williams – 1:35.252 (66 laps)
9. Nico Hulkenberg, Audi – 1:36.019 (64 laps)
10. Sergio Perez, Cadillac – 1:40.842 (61 laps)
11. Lance Stroll, Aston Martin – no time (2 laps)
