F1 Bahrain pre-season testing live commentary and updates - day 6

'mattpallot' speaks their brains: "If the gap between the top 4 and the midfield has closed as much as it has in the last two days (from 1.5 to 2 secs down to around, and sometimes under a second), does that mean that the midfield were sandbagging for the last 2 weeks and the frontrunners weren't? Seems like an odd way around, or it means there's tonnes more to come from the top 4..."

This is testing, so it's very much a case of reading the tea leaves. And, given the state of affairs with the new regs, like reading a mixture of tea leaves from various different brands. Some like the posh stuff I got from Ocado the other week, some like the ghastly ersatz sawdust you might procure in a bargain supermarket.

Life is too short to drink cheap tea, of course.

COMING UP SMELLING OF ROSAS

Well – the cheek of it! Aston Martin might have cancelled Pedro de la Rosa's press call, but the poor lamb was obviously itching to speak to someone, and he was intercepted while in this mode by the industrious Lawrence Barretto of F1 TV.

"Yes, yesterday we had some battery issues on Fernando's car, and therefore, you know, Honda is carrying out test simulations in the test bench in Sakura.

"Due to this fact, and also the fact that we have a shortage of parts, we will be doing very limited runs today. They will be short, and they will be separated by a minimum of half an hour, so that will allow us to really look into the data and be able to test some things in these few runs.

"But yeah, we won't be doing long runs today, for sure."

So just a couple of crumbs more information than Honda shared on X-formerly-known-as-Twitter earlier.

It seems to be my day for catty WA messages from sundry acquaintances.

"You have outed yourself as a ponce, not just for buying posh tea, but also for buying posh loose-leaf tea rather than teabags..."

Well, loose-leaf tea can go in the wormery, you fool, whereas most teabags actually have enough plastic in to make them non-biodegradable. You don't want the worms to choke on plastic, do you?

Returning to the subject at hand, Carlos Sainz did a 14-lap long run on scrubbed mediums earlier. He's currently 12 laps into another run on used mediums. 1m43.180s last time around.

Oscar Piastri spent a while in the garage after the red flag, amid much twiddling of tools around the rear of his McLaren, but he's getting stuck into a long run now – seven laps into a stint on scrubbed mediums, last lap 1m39.963s.

'Mood Mondo' has a gloomy prognostication, although – *spoiler alert* – they are not really going out on a limb:

"Both Astons to retire in Australia and the first drivetrain components will be changed. How long before the engine and gearbox pool are empty? How often will Aston take a grid penalty this season? Which member of the so-called management team will be the first sacrificial lamb?"

In terms of denudation of the pool, it's looking like mid-season for some components. Remember the dog days of McLaren when Honda was going through an MGU-H every week?

That and the PU supposedly being overweight as well, with all the knock-on effects on car performance that entails.

As to when the next game of 'Spin The P45' begins, I would imagine Lawrence Stroll has started thumping his desk already.

We've been remiss in not sharing ambient and track temps thus far. FOM data screen says 46C track temp, 26C ambient.

Enough to make even Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor break into a sweat.

Meanwhile Perez now on 30 laps, five laps into a stint on hards. He's been using the prototype Pirellis for most of his running thus far – 24 laps on those.

Sainz ended his long run after 14 laps. Ocon is still circulating on hards, 10 laps on those now. At 51 laps total for the day he's equal with Piastri.

All appears well on the track thus far, beyond the depression developing at Aston Martin given their current no-show and confirmation of short runs only due to a shortage of parts.

If Leclerc keeps up his rate of lappery, he'll reach a century of laps before the lunch break, which would be almost unheard of - even in modern testing standards with stable regs. The Ferrari driver is already up to 74 laps today, and what's more he is in the car for the entire day so he could be on for an all-time record if he has the tyres left available.

Just to clear up why Pedro de La Rosa is speaking to the media on behalf of Aston Martin. He is a 'team representative' and has held a media-facing role for a while, but over the past two weeks he's been doing a lot more speaking than usual. Aston Martin's chief trackside officer Mike Krack has also faced the media in the official press conferences so far this year, but we're yet to hear from new team principal Adrian Newey apart from the stage-managed chat at the team's launch.

Aston Martin must have heard our grumbling as the garage screens are pulled back to reveal Stroll sitting in the car preparing for a first run of the morning.

While we wait for Stroll to head out, let's focus on other teams for a change. Perez is pounding around on the C1 tyres for Cadillac so despite setting his new personal best for the day, a 1m41.102s, he is getting nowhere near pushing outright performance.

Still no Stroll in the Aston, and it looks like an early lunch at Mercedes following Antonelli's on-track stoppage, but fastest driver of the day Leclerc nips out again to take his tally to 77 laps.

'mbcbriand' asks what is the record for most laps on a single day of testing.

It is a hard one to be confident on given the days of private testing and unlimited tyres, but in the modern era with a limited allocation of tyres and so on, Kimi Raikkonen did 157 laps of Barcelona during 2018 pre-season testing for Ferrari. That was equal to two-and-a-half race distances.

Obviously different tracks, but Leclerc is approaching close to one-and-a-half grand prix distances today in Bahrain, so if he gets a race sim in this afternoon he'll match that.

Good morning/afternoon to Stroll who is on track for Aston for the first time today.

All that gushing over Leclerc's mileage and quietly Ocon in the Haas has overtaken the Ferrari driver as he starts his 81st lap of the day. All encouraging signs for Ferrari-powered cars though, given Perez is also north of 60 laps for Cadillac too.

Stroll gets back out for a second lap just before the red flag is shown to start the race control systems test - but not before the Canadian driver goes off-track at Turn 13, which was pretty odd. He seemed to miss the corner and go wide.

No Ferrari but we do have Ocon for Haas, Piastri for McLaren and Hadjar for Red Bull for this test.

The trio go around again as the aborted start is completed and the extra formation lap is called for. Just the proper standing start to come before this three join the rest for a well-earned lunch.

'Camsti' asks for the fastest lap times from Audi and Cadillac and if they appear competitive.

Audi's best lap time is Hulkenberg's 1m33.987s set yesterday.
Cadillac's best lap time is Perez's 1m35.369s set yesterday.

The outright best lap time in testing is Mercedes' 1m32.803s by Antonelli also set yesterday.

Audi around a second off is where we'd expect them to be, Cadillac being a further 1.5s behind isn't. But I don't think we've seen any quali-style runs from the US squad so far in testing.

Also keep your questions coming in about F1 pre-season testing and what you want to know as we head into the final four-hour session.

The second and final driver press conference is just wrapping up as the green flag is readied to start the afternoon session. Race simulations and then quali-style laps will be the order of proceedings for most teams over the final four hours of testing.

No early takers, as is customary for the start of the afternoon. Mercedes is still completing a power unit change after Antonelli's earlier mechanical issue but as far as we know all other teams are preparing for action.

A lot of chatter in the lunch break was again about how impressive Ferrari-powered drivers are at starts, while Mercedes-pedaling drivers appeared to be the ones struggling the most - we'll take Honda-powered cars out of the equation for now. Just another fascinating plot point to understand how the early races will unfold.

Bearman breaks the track silence to venture out for Haas having taken over from Ocon. Stroll is the next to head out of the pits, aiming to collect as much data and mileage as possible for Aston Martin after being limited to two laps in the morning.