Leclerc and Vettel 1-2 in opening Bahrain practice

Charles Leclerc

Are Mercedes sandbagging or did Ferrari find its speed it lost between preseason testing and the opening F1 race in Australia?

Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel ran 1-2 in opening practice for the Bahrain GP but the margin to the third quickest, Valtteri Bottas' Mercedes, was almost a full second leaving many to assume that Mercedes has a lot more in hand. That plus the fact this session was run in the heat of the day and the night session (practice 2) is where the track temps will be more indicative of qualifying and race conditions.

Leclerc's time of 1m30.354s topped Vettel by 0.263s and Bottas by 0.974s with Lewis Hamilton in 4th 1.247s off the pace.

Max Verstappen rounded out the top-5 for Red Bull.

Pierre Gasly was 6th, less than two tenths down on Verstappen.

The McLaren of Carlos Sainz Jr, which has taken a new Renault engine for this weekend following a fiery MGU-K failure in the Australian GP, was an impressive seventh fastest, just 0.137s down on Gasly.

Nico Hulkenberg's Renault – which collided with Antonio Giovinazzi's Alfa Romeo in the closing minutes of the session – was eighth, ahead of Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso-Honda and Kimi Raikkonen's Alfa.

Practice 1 Results