F1 Bahrain 2021 pre-season testing - Day 1

To take you through the next stage of F1 pre-season testing it is time to hand over to Jake Boxall-Legge, who is to blame for making Sando Norris a thing earlier.

Darkness is starting to descend at the track as the floodlights take over in the battle against the dust to provide visibility. Testing will finish in night-time conditions, so F1 really will have its own four seasons in one day, if that's even a thing with visibility.

We have our first lap centurion, with Esteban Ocon breaking through the 100-lap barrier for Alpine. Impressive running on the first day and still with two hours to go for the rebranded team.

Hamilton pits and as he is wheeled back into the garage a few Mercedes personnel take a good look at his left-hand mirror and give it a wobble before moving away satisfied with what they were looking at.

Despite the lack of running, Hamilton puts in an impressive first two sectors on his first push lap of this stint, but goes wide at Turn 11 to lose a chunk of time. The lap is still good enough to move up to P13 with a 1m34.875s.

Lance Stroll makes a belated start to his afternoon test for Aston Martin, meaning we've had 17 different drivers on the track today. He's currently 17th as he feels his way around the dusty track.

You can barely see the F1 cars at the top of the straights in these conditions. Anyone got any fog lights? Or some flow-vis paint?

Rewinding the clock to a more normal time there was a big sandstorm the day after the 2019 Bahrain GP but it cleared in time for the two-day test that started the day after. Far from ideal conditions but the weather can clear quickly.

Thanks very much, this transition is as smooth as Hamilton sliding around on the sandy surface. He gets it squirrely coming out of Turn 1. Looks fun but scary.