All Ferrari-powered teams lap slower in Bahrain, by up to 1.3 seconds. All Ferrari-powered teams lap slower in Bahrain, by up to 1.3 seconds.

A year and a half since Formula 1 last raced in Bahrain, all three Ferrari-powered teams are lapping slower around the track than they did in 2019.

Ferrari swept the front row of the grid at this race last year. Today they couldn’t reach Q3 and their best time was over a second slower than Charles Leclerc’s pole position time for the last Bahrain Grand Prix.

Haas, whose VF-20 has seen little to no development during the season, made an even bigger step backwards. Last year Kevin Magnussen put their leading car sixth on the grid, just five-thousandths of a second slower than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. This year he and team mate Romain Grosjean both dropped out in Q3. They lapped 1.3 seconds slower than they managed in 2019.

Fellow Ferrari users Alfa Romeo have also lost performance compared to last year, though not as much. Ferrari has admitted their power unit is not as competitive as last year’s. On this power-sensitive circuit, all their rivals using different engines were quicker compared to F1’s last race in Bahrain.

Having missed out on pole position for the first time this year at the last race in Turkey, Mercedes were back on top again today. Lewis Hamilton broke the track record Leclerc last year by six-tenths of a second.

While Mercedes were almost a second quicker than last year, half the field found more than a second. Williams are the most improved team, almost two-and-a-half seconds quicker than in 2019.