Meanwhile, mixed results continue at Mercedes and ‘disappointing’ describes the situation at Aston Martin.
SAKHIR, Bahrain—With Sunday’s performance, Max Verstappen reinforced what we know already: he’ll be a driver to watch this season in Formula 1. Verstappen clocked the fastest time in Sunday’s final day for pre-season Formula One testing.
Alpha Tauri rookie Yuki Tsunoda was up in the front most of the evening until Verstappen beat his time with half an hour to go, finishing with a time of 1:28:960.
With a last-minute surge, Carlos Sainz put his Ferrari into third fastest for the day. The Spaniard just beat Kimi Raikkonen by a tenth of a second. The two cars touched at turn 10 late in the test, but neither car sustained damage.
At Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton finally had a good run but could only manage fifth place. Teammate Valtteri Bottas was absent from the evening test and ended up in 16th place, three seconds behind Verstappen’s time.
George Russell continued to improve on his Williams, placing an impressive sixth. Daniel Ricciardo placed his McLaren next in seventh with a clean-running car that didn’t experience reliability issues all weekend long. Red Bull’s second driver Sergio Perez, who was fastest in the morning, took eighth ahead of Fernando Alonso in the Alpine. Charles Leclerc rounded out the top ten in his Ferrari, over a second and a half from Verstappen.
Without question, the team that suffered the worst in this three-day test was the Aston Martin team, which finished the last day at the bottom of the timesheets.
How do the teams stack up? Red Bull is strong and should give Mercedes a run for its money. But it’s unclear if Ferrari will be able to move into the first-tier of teams, especially with challenges coming from McLaren and Alpha Tauri. Williams could also place well and do so regularly, especially with Russell driving, while Alpine should be up there with Alonso and possibility Esteban Ocon. Finally, Alfa Romeo could secure good results from time to time, and Haas should get more points than last season.
It should make for a lot of excitement when the season begins on Sunday, March 28, at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sahhir.
