P2 and 72 laps for Carlos Sainz and Ferrari on morning session of Day 1 | 2023 F1 pre-season testing. Carlos was on track in the morning session of Day 1.

After months of hard work, today was the day that teams began to find out whether their new cars are everything they had hoped, as the morning session of the first day of pre-season testing took place at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.

George Russell led his Mercedes out of the pit-lane and finally, after a long winter, we had Formula 1 cars on track! Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda were also out immediately. The milestones kept on coming this morning and we then had some first times on the board. Max Verstappen led with a 1:37.7, a second ahead of George Russell and the SF-23 of Carlos Sainz. That time will drop by about 10 seconds as we progress through these three days.

Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Oscar Piastri were the other drivers we saw on track in the early stages of the morning session. But it was not the start any team wants to pre-season testing for Aston Martin: just a few laps into his programme, stand-in Felipe Drugovich ground to a halt on track. That was definitely a reliability issue. Aston Martin, arguably the darlings of the winter with high hopes for the 2023 season, had the worst possible start here.

We then had cars back on track and, once again, it was George Russell who was the first to exit the pits for Mercedes. It was looking like a solid start for Red Bull, with Max Verstappen improved to a 1:34.895. Pierre Gasly was more than a second off that time in second as the French driver got to grips with his new Alpine. Meanwhile, Nico Hulkenberg moved up to third for Haas.

There was a bit of extra colour on the Ferrari, with Carlos Sainz being sent out on track with his front suspension coated in flow-vis paint, which helps teams visualise air flow over the body of the car. They might like what they saw in the Ferrari garage, as the Spaniard set a 1:33.767 to go more than a second quicker than Max Verstappen at the top of the timesheet.

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There was good news for Aston Martin with Felipe Drugovich back on track one hour after that early mishap. Meanwhile, Nico Hulkenberg improved to second for Haas, just behind Carlos Sainz, going a tenth faster than Max Verstappen with a 1:34.787.

The number one car retook the number one spot on the timesheet: Max Verstappen delivered a 1:33.593 to go almost a tenth faster than Alex Albon. But he was not there for long, as Carlos Sainz goes a further three tenths quicker for the Maranello team. His SF-12 car was seen with a slight bending of the nose, which Ferrari confirmed was not intentional. But it was no major issue, just a specific defective cover that has quickly replaced.

We then finally had a full set of 10 laps from all the drivers in this session. Almost two hours after we began, Felipe Drugovich put in a 1:37.719, which put him narrowly behind Oscar Piastri at the bottom of the timesheet. No change at the top, but there were plenty of laps and important work being done, with Carlos Sainz collecting as much data as possible for the Maranello technicians to analyze.

We had some change to the timesheet midway through the morning session: George Russell moved up to fifth and was now within a second of Carlos Sainz’s leading time. Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri briefly jumped above Yuki Tsunoda, but the AlphaTauri driver then retook eighth.

Not many green sectors being put in at this stage of the morning session of the first day, but the cars were looking faster than this time last year, while they have also been reliable. There was only one red flag – for Aston Martin – but that may have been down to all the sensors on the car causing an electronics issue, and a lot of drivers were edging towards the half-century lap mark already.

Meanwhile Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft confirmed the news of a new hire on the Ferrari pit wall, as Ravin Jain is going to take the race strategist role to relieve some of the pressure that had been building on Inaki Rueda.

Oscar Piastri put in his and McLaren’s best time of the day, moving up from ninth to eighth with a 1:34.888. He was still 1.5s off the early benchmark from Carlos Sainz. Speaking of the Spaniard, on-board footage has just shown the Ferrari bouncing away along the straight.

That may be more because of a bumpy Bahrain circuit but Anthony Davidson pointed out that “because of the ground effect on the cars, bouncing and porpoising is not going away this year.”

With one hour to go, there was a show of strength from the reigning world champion: Max Verstappen delivered a 1:32.59 to go almost three tenths clear of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. On the other hand, Mercedes weren’t up there at the top of the timesheet with Red Bull and the Maranello team, but George Russell got a very solid amount of laps in. He was actually up to 66 with 30 minutes until the end of the morning session, which is around the same mark as Mercedes’ two big rivals managed.

We also had a yellow flag in sector 2 and the virtual safety car has been deployed: during the last 15 minutes of the morning session, yellow flags are put out followed by the VSC to double check to see if the procedures work.

The chequered flag waved and Formula 1 in 2023 began in the same way in which the previous year finished, with Max Verstappen and Red Bull at the front. All of the teams got a solid amount of work done, with Aston Martin’s early electrical issue the only major blemish. Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz ended the morning session in second place, +0.294 behind the best lap time of the Dutchman, but most importantly collected a lot of useful data for the Ferrari engineers and technicians to analyze at the end of the day.

After a short break, the afternoon session will begin with Charles Leclerc replacing Carlos Sainz behind the wheel of the SF-23 car in Bahrain.

Final timesheet