Lando Norris didn’t need long to remind the paddock who’s carrying the No.1 this year.
On day one of Formula 1’s first official pre-season test for 2026 in Bahrain, the reigning world champion put McLaren on top with a 1m34.669s, a late-afternoon effort that nudged Max Verstappen down to second by 0.129s. If the headline looks familiar — Norris and Verstappen trading blows at the sharp end — the context is very new: fresh regulations, new hardware everywhere, and the usual testing caveat that nobody is showing their full hand.
Still, there was something instructive about the shape of the day. The morning had been tight, with Verstappen’s 1m35.433s setting the early reference and the top four covered by roughly a second. Bahrain’s midday driver swaps then brought a more representative spread of programmes — and a bit more noise — as teams divided running between race drivers and new line-ups.
Ferrari, for instance, rotated Charles Leclerc in for Lewis Hamilton after lunch. Mercedes did the same, with Kimi Antonelli taking over from George Russell. Williams swapped Alex Albon into the car Carlos Sainz had been driving. Alpine handed Pierre Gasly the afternoon after Franco Colapinto’s morning was curtailed by an undisclosed issue that limited him to 28 laps. Cadillac continued its own methodical build-up, with Sergio Perez replacing Valtteri Bottas.
Norris and Verstappen were among the first to get back out, quickly re-establishing the day’s rhythm: long runs, occasional performance pushes, and a steady drift towards quicker times as track conditions and confidence improved. For a while Verstappen’s morning marker held, then the Red Bull found another step in the penultimate hour when he fired in a 1m34.830s.
McLaren’s response was immediate and pointed. Norris, already circulating with the sort of calm, repeatable pace engineers love at this time of year, went 0.161s faster with a 1m34.669s to snatch P1 heading into the final hour — and it stayed that way to the flag.
Leclerc ended the day third, 0.521s back, though his afternoon included a scruffy moment at Turn 9 when he pinched the left-front and missed the apex. Oscar Piastri, who’d done his running in the morning session, held fifth, giving McLaren two cars in the top five on a day when teams were still establishing baselines rather than chasing outright numbers.
The more revealing storylines, as ever in testing, were scattered through the run plans and interruptions.
Nico Hulkenberg triggered the second red flag when his Audi stopped on the back straight, though he managed to get going again and return to the pit lane. Aston Martin had a quieter kind of drama: Lance Stroll completed his morning power unit plan, but three laps into the afternoon he parked up and retreated to the hospitality as the team began precautionary checks after detecting what it described as a “data anomaly” on the PU.
Elsewhere, there were the standard early-season rough edges. Lock-ups were common at the high-braking zones: Albon ran wide at Turns 9/10, Perez had a heavy moment into Turn 1, and Gasly locked up hard and drifted off at Turn 10. Antonelli, short on mileage for reasons that weren’t performance-related, eventually rejoined late on — only to become the latest to visit the run-off at Turn 10.
There were also two teams whose day didn’t unfold as neatly as the lap charts might suggest. Racing Bulls called time early with around an hour remaining due to a fluid leak on the VCARB03. Mercedes, meanwhile, had Antonelli limited to a solitary lap at one stage as the team addressed “an issue we found as part of our planned set-up changes” — the kind of sentence that could mean anything from a minor sensor problem to a deeper correlation query, and the kind of thing teams would rather find now than on a Friday in Melbourne.
As for the lap counts, they underlined who managed to keep the car circulating. Verstappen logged a hefty 136 laps, Haas’ Esteban Ocon racked up 115 and ended up an eye-catching fourth, while Leclerc reached 80. Norris’ 58 laps were plenty sufficient given the usual mix of long runs, procedural work and a late time attack.
Day one, then, delivered the usual test-day cocktail: a table-topping lap that will look great in a deck slide, a handful of stoppages that are either nothing or the start of something, and just enough on-track bite between Norris and Verstappen to set the tone. Nobody wins a championship in Bahrain testing, but you can still send a message — and Norris has done that.
Day 1 classification (fastest times):
1. Lando Norris, McLaren – 1:34.669 (58 laps)
2. Max Verstappen, Red Bull – +0.129 (136)
3. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari – +0.521 (80)
4. Esteban Ocon, Haas – +0.909 (115)
5. Oscar Piastri, McLaren – +0.933 (54)
6. George Russell, Mercedes – +1.439 (56)
7. Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari – +1.764 (52)
8. Pierre Gasly, Alpine – +2.096 (49)
9. Nico Hulkenberg, Audi – +2.192 (73)
10. Alexander Albon, Williams – +2.768 (68)
11. Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes – +2.960 (30)
12. Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls – +3.276 (75)
13. Carlos Sainz, Williams – +3.552 (77)
14. Sergio Perez, Cadillac – +4.159 (58)
15. Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi – +4.202 (49)
16. Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac – +4.481 (49)
17. Lance Stroll, Aston Martin – +5.214 (36)
18. Franco Colapinto, Alpine – +5.661 (28)
