Norris is already at the top and McLaren warns: “We didn’t focus on mileage or lap times”

Norris ahead of everyone The year changes, the technical regulations change, but he’s still in front: Lando Norris. The 2025 world champion finished the first day of pre-season testing at the Sakhir track in Bahrain in first position. The Englishman from McLaren stopped the clock at a time of 1:34.669, taking just over a tenth from Max Verstappen and over half a second from Charles Leclerc. Norris also completed 58 laps, in addition to the 54 completed by Oscar Piastri in the morning. “It was nice to be back on track today, we completed a lot of testing which gave us a lot of data to analyze and a better understanding of the car – commented Norris once he got out of the car – obviously, being in Bahrain under the sun, the conditions are very different to those in Barcelona: it’s very hot and quite windy and it was interesting to see how the car behaves differently. It was a positive day, we learned a lot and we can’t wait to get back on track tomorrow.” What McLaren was looking for The most interesting statements, however, are perhaps those released by Chief Designer Rob Marshall, who underlined how today’s intent of the world champion team was not to focus on pure performance nor on reliability and mileage: “We approached this week by giving priority to our learning – explained the British engineer – and therefore we chose a test plan designed to optimize the work which ultimately accelerates the development of our package”. “As can be seen from the performances of Oscar and Lando – continued Marshall – both completed very demanding aerodynamic tests today in very different conditions to those we experienced in Barcelona last month. With this in mind, we have prioritized data collection over mileage on this first day of testing. Everyone is pushing in the same direction and the time invested by the drivers in testing provides a solid learning base that we can build on as we progress with pre-season testing.” Piastri’s words Finally, Oscar Piastri also spoke, who only lapped in the morning, closing day-1 with the fifth overall time of the day: “I had a good first morning back on the track – commented the Australian – everything went smoothly and I seem to have better understood how the car behaves and what it needs. The conditions here are very different compared to Barcelona, so it was positive to be able to lap in a different environment. We will analyze the data, see what we can get from it and how we can improve before returning to the track,” he concluded.