Formula 1: Pre-season testing begins in Bahrain with Lewis Hamilton the star of the show aboard the Ferrari

In two weeks, the teams will land in Australia, where the Formula 1 season will contest the first of 24 grands prix in another demanding year, the last before the regulatory changes that promise a new revolution. But now the time has come to test on the Bahrain track - where the fourth race of the season will be held - what has been tested in the simulator for months: this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the pre-season tests will take place in which Franco Colapinto will not participate , who after his debut at Williams - where there was no seat for him in 2025 - moved to Alpine in a reserve driver role.

In the early hours of the morning in Argentina (4 a.m. on Disney+), ten of the 20 drivers will hit the asphalt of the Sakhir circuit, which first appeared on the calendar in 2004 and has hosted these tests six times since 2009. And all eyes will be on one: Lewis Hamilton . The Englishman will start with the new Ferrari SF-25 and will share the morning session (which will run from 4 to 8 in Argentina) with the reigning four-time champion Max Verstappen , Oscar Piastri representing the team that won the last Constructors' World Championship, McLaren, Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), Yuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls), Alex Albon (Williams), Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) and the rookies Kimi Antonelli , his replacement at Mercedes, Oliver Bearman (Haas) and Jack Doohan , the big target to be replaced by Colapinto after the start of the championship.

This will not be the first time that the seven-time F1 champion in active service will get into the SF-25, having already done so last week at Fiorano in front of a crowd of fans lined up in front of the fence of the team's private track. But it was on a filming day, with show tyres. So this will be his first opportunity to thoroughly test the new car and continue to adapt to the working methodology of his new team, an experience he has only had once before in F1, and that was 12 years ago, when he moved from McLaren to Mercedes.

The man who has even chosen to live in his motorhome at the team’s factory these days, striving to learn and understand the Prancing Horse culture, said the challenges he faces are adapting to different working methodologies, cultivating new relationships (such as with race engineer Riccardo Adami after his long relationship with Bono at Mercedes) and acclimatising to the peculiarities of driving a different car and power unit – he has always driven Mercedes-powered cars. As the F1 website highlights, the test will be the first on-track opportunity to see Hamilton and Ferrari working together , providing an insight into how the driver-team dynamic is adapting ahead of the first round.

In the afternoon session, of course, the comparison with Charles Leclerc will begin, who will turn between 9 and 13, when Fox Sports will broadcast the tests live on its Telemétrico program. There, the highlights will be seeing Liam Lawson at the wheel of the Red Bull and Carlos Sainz in the Williams, in addition to the presence of George Russell as the new leader of Mercedes, Lando Norris with the champion McLaren, Pierre Gasly in the Alpine, Esteban Ocon in his new Haas team, Lance Stroll with the Aston Martin and the performance of the rookies Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) and Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber).

The circuit which made its F1 debut on the 2004 calendar has a useful mix of high and low speed corners linked by two long straights, typical features of the circuits which drivers will be looking to maximise throughout the year.

Compared to other locations, the weather tends to be reliable and consistent, offering a useful baseline for teams because it offers generally representative conditions. Currently, the forecast is meeting expectations, with cloudy weather, around 17°C, and rain unlikely.

The three days - 26, 27 and 28 February - will last eight hours and will be divided into two days: one in the morning (from 4 to 8 in Argentina) and one in the afternoon (from 9 to 13). Thus, the teams will have 24 net hours of testing before the first race. But they will only be able to put one car on the track, so they have the option of deciding whether both drivers race each day or just one of them gets in, as will happen at Red Bull, where Verstappen will do so on Thursday and Lawson on Friday.

F1 TV Pro offers subscribers in selected territories live access to every angle of pre-season testing, plus detailed analysis. In Argentina, Disney+ has the rights and will put the eight hours of daily testing on its app, while Fox Sports will have a special broadcast of its Telemétrico program on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The idea is for drivers, engineers and mechanics to familiarise themselves with their 2025 car on an F1 circuit: it is the first real test to see if everything works as it should and as it was shown in the simulator.

Each team can try out different set-ups on the car, gain valuable insights into the impact of their latest parts and start to get an idea of ​​what developments they might want to introduce later on. It is also common for cars to look different at the first race of the year, as teams can make important adjustments based on their testing findings.

Flow-vis paint and aerodynamic vents are commonly applied to the car. The former is a fluorescent paint that may look like it has been splashed randomly, but is applied by engineers to specific areas of the car to gain insight into how the airflow varies, which then helps them better understand aerodynamics.

In the same vein, aero vents are metal, scaffold-like structures that are covered in sensors and can help confirm that the car’s actual performance matches what they found in wind tunnel simulations. Like flow-vis paint, aero vents provide valuable data on airflow, giving teams an additional opportunity to see exactly where turbulent air might be affecting their performance.

It is also common for screens to be placed around the car on their return to the pits so that the rest of the teams cannot see what the flow-vis paint reveals as it spreads and dries, which can reveal a lot about how the air interacts with the various components, from the wings to the underbody of the car.

No. Pirelli will bring 35 compounds per team and they will be able to use a maximum of 30 over the three days. The good thing is that they were allowed to specify which tyre compounds they wanted to have available. Although the full range is available, from the C1 (hardest) to the new C6 (softest), most opted for medium and hard.

The final results should be taken with a grain of salt: in 2024, for example, Norris was 14th on the final day of testing and then McLaren was champion, while Zhou Guanyu finished third, a position Sauber was nowhere near this year. Setting fast laps is not the priority, because the goal is to collect data, test different tyre compounds and configurations every day.

One of the things competitors could be accused of is sandbagging – this is when drivers deliberately hold back from pushing the car to the limit in order to hide their true pace, which is another reason not to blindly trust timesheet results. Or there could be a glory run , when a driver who is normally further back in the standings sets a fastest lap on soft compound tyres and low fuel, which isn’t really representative as his competitors won’t be running in the same conditions.