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

Leclerc lighting up the timesheets with purple S1 and S2 – and S3! Boom! 1m32.655s.

He's taken half a second out of his previous best of the day, which shows how much has been left on the table.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

Norris was kicking up a fair few sparks on that run, though, so you have to wonder how much fuel he had on board.

Norris now goes faster still – 1m33.373s. With the daylight fading and the track temperature down to 29C (ambient is 26C) it looks like a few people are going to try quali-ish sims.

Purple first sector for Verstappen on new mediums, but the next two are 'only' personal bests. 1m33.607s.

Interesting to note that only one mini-sector in S1 was actually purple, the rest were yellow...

We enter another period of relative lull and torpor on track, with just Bearman and Bortoleto engaging in lappery. The Audi is 14 laps into a race sim, Bearman has just put on a set of used mediums after an 18-lap stint on hards.

Ah, Verstappen and Norris now joining them.

Norris strung together a decent first sector – including a purple mini-sector, then was green all through sector 2 until he reached Turn 11, whereupon he ran wide and seemingly aborted the lap.

I say 'seemingly' because quite a few drivers have been taking selective bites of the cherry at particular corners without trying that hard to string together an overall lap. Heads staying well below the parapet.

Norris has pitted for new mediums after a six-lap run; F1 TV picks him up weaving to generate tyre temperature on the back straight so perhaps a push lap of some sort is in the offing.

Also there are a few dabs of flow-viz paint around the left-rear suspension and 'cake tin'.

Shaping up to be another strong day for Haas in terms of mileage accomplished. 82 laps for Esteban Ocon this morning and 61 so far for Ollie Bearman this afternoon.

Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images

A big lock-up and slither off at Turn 1 for Leclerc there. The loss of control set in just as the active aero closed off, and you could tell by the attitude of the car that it wasn't a conventional lock-up where the front end goes first – there was a twitch at the rear.

There's been a fair bit of chat behind the scenes about the difficulties of modelling the effects of the active aero in the sim – that's in terms of tyre loading and rear ride height when it activates, and how quickly the airflow reattaches when those flaps close again. What we're seeing is evidence of instability when this happens.

Also, ring the bell because Lando Norris has emerged in the last few minutes and has done seven laps so far.

Back to the business at hand, Charles Leclerc has lowered the laptime bar to 1m33.162s after another two-lap burst on scrubbed softs. He's now completed 102 laps today.

Not as many as Arvid Lindblad, though, who has circulated 136 times – well over two Bahrain Grand Prix distances!

Some handbags breaking out in the comments, apropos whether the team principal is the dedicated spokesperson or not.

Firstly – play nicely!

Secondly, there's nothing in the rulebook to say the TP has to be the spokesperson, though of course all teams need one and historically that has been the boss. Why else would it not be?

But Sauber, for instance, had Alessandro Alunni Bravi doing that job until comparatively recently.

So I would say that these days it's something which lies in individual job descriptions. Part and parcel of 21st century F1 where teams are no longer run by the guy whose name is above the factory door. TPs are just employees like anybody else, Toto Wolff being an outlier as a shareholder in the business.

So there are different approaches up and down the grid. It's pretty widely known that Adrian Newey, for instance, abhors 'doing media', which is why that is going to be Mike Krack's bailiwick going forward. Or indeed Pedro de la Rosa if he's hanging around doing nothing.

As a counterpoint, Jonathan Wheatley employed a consultant last year to ensure he got that part of his job right (since he'd never done press duties before). He also scheduled his post-race interviews quite late in the day so he could do them after the debrief and be better able to give detailed, accurate answers.

Actually just this week I was talking to someone who had been fairly senior in the BAR-Honda days in the mid-2000s, and they said the engines then were often overweight and a bit on the thirsty side. When they went to the engineers and pointed that out, the answer was along the lines of "That's your problem – we were told to give you 1000bhp..."

'lotus109' says: "Question for Autosport: Like davidrsamwell below, I've been wondering about the former Honda F1 engineers who were redeployed elsewhere in the company. Is it known if the company made any effort to bring them into the new engine effort or if it literally is a completely different team? If not, can someone ask Honda?"

It is indeed a very different team, and this is the essence of the way Honda goes about F1. It's been that way since the company founder decided the wanted to get involved, way back in the early 1960s: pick the brightest engineering graduates, throw them in at the deep end, and see who thrives in a creatively challenging environment.

It's sort of a more polite, engineering-based version of the Hunger Games. Some of the engineers on the very first Honda Formula 1 car project didn't even know what grand prix racing was.

The same scenario prevailed when Honda came back in the 1980s. When the first turbo engine proved flawed, the team was reshuffled with a new chief engineer – one of the graduates from the 1960s – and he essentially holed up in a hotel with the latest batch of young engineers to thrash out a new concept, right down to the block.

Whenever Honda comes back, you might get the odd senior guy who was in a previous project but most of the people are new, because the corporate philosophy is that they're there to prove themselves, be challenged and invent stuff.

Funnily enough I wrote a feature about this in the latest issue of Autosport mag and it will probably be going up on the site in the next few days.

LES JEUX SONT FAITS

Message to the Aston Martin media WA group: "We have completed our programme for today."

That's it. 6 laps and no time at all for Lance Stroll. Nice work if you can get it!

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

Bortoleto out and I very briefly got excited by the number of green mini-sectors he was racking up before I remembered he's only done three timed laps so far.

Kemal also had a poke around the outside of the Red Bull garage before Max Verstappen went back out. Some nice insight here into the cooling architecture and some of the intricate aerodynamic elements around the leading edge of the floor. Some fairly fancy ink on the Red Bull bolter, too.

Photo by: Kemal Sengul

Russell is back out; he's just done an interesting lap which had a Leclerc-esque smattering of purple mini-sectors among the yellows, then the car didn't want to bite at the final corner and he had to back off rather than take 'the Aitken line' into the run-off.

A swift return to the pits, a front-wing asjustment, and he's back out again.

NORRISWATCH

If you're wondering what's going on at McLaren, we've got you. Kemal Sengul has been wandering the pitlane...

Photo by: Kemal Sungul

Actually Bearman is deeper into his race sim than that because he'd done 16 laps on a scrubbed set of mediums before then. After 23 laps on those hards he pulls into the pits for another set.

Just Lindblad and Bearman on track at the moment; Bearman is 22 laps into a race sim on hards, his last lap being a 1m41.740s. Lindblad just three laps into a stint on hards – last time around he did a 1m39.299s.

'larry' says: "All I have to say is thank goodness for Cadillac. Otherwise, we wouldn't have 20 cars on the grid for Melbourne!"

Boom and indeed boom!

Russell, by the way, called time on his stint after 10 laps while I was prattling about clipping.

Leclerc briefly back out again for two laps, and once again it was a a funny old deal in which at various corners he was clearly giving it the beans, but at others less so, thereby keeping those sector times yellow.

Interestingly, Russell just came up behind Gasly on the main straight at grand vitesse and then had nothing once he was almost alongside the Alpine in the braking area. Tricky to decode whether that was a serious attempt to overtake or not without dialling through the onboards.

Reading races is going to be quite challenging without some graphic indication of deployment/charge status. This before we get into the business of 'superclipping', a phenomenon which sounds like a service which might be offered by one of those provincial crimpers whom the ghastly Nigel Farage reckons has a Lamborghini parked out the back of their establishment. 

Russell still racking up the laps in that fixed Mercedes – he's up to 23 now, and is nine laps into a long run on scrubbed mediums.

But no sign of a McLaren on track this afternoon.

Red Bull modelling some new aero parts today, let's see if our image-artist chums have posted some pictures of the car...

Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

That was a short run for Leclerc, just two timed laps before he returned to the garage.

Well in the interregnum between these live commentary stints I've had the joy of jumping through all the hoops for an Australian visa, having failed to get the email with all the deets. Readers, they wanted to know everything down to the cats' names...

The Ferrari, noticeably, is running without some of the rear-end aero innovations which have been remarked on in recent days, including the Wah-Watusi top plane on the rear wing.

Russell nudges his personal best to a 1m34.999s to go seventh quickest for Mercedes on the C3 tyres. The lap time in isolation means little, but we wouldn't be doing our job without bringing you these improvements as and when they come. All part of the service.

By our count there's still no sign of Audi or McLaren so far this afternoon. In the McLaren garage the team is preparing the car but there's no driver in sight, while we've had no reports of issues at Audi. All part of the run plan, given both teams did over 60 laps this morning.

F1's newest driver is the first to break the century mark of laps for today: Lindblad for Racing Bulls. Those young people with all their energy and eagerness.

Verstappen is out again after Red Bull made some set-up tweaks in the garage, so the circuit is starting to get busier with the bulk of the afternoon's programme under way - seven out of 11 teams are running at the moment.

One car we have seen a lot of today is the Ferrari, as Leclerc returns to the circuit for the first time this afternoon. The Monegasque still heads the times with his 1m33.689s set pretty early this morning. Leclerc isn't hunting top times for now as he circulates on the C3s for a long run and we expect Ferrari to be gearing up for a race sim later.

Over team radio Bottas asks Cadillac to check the wind direction as he was struggling to get a feel for it. The team states a light headwind down the main straight and a quick check to the weather monitor backs that up. If in doubt, pick up some sand and throw it in the air to see which way it drifts.

Russell is out on the track for Mercedes while Bottas is in action for Cadillac to give us two names to add to the timing screen.

Verstappen has pitted after 13 laps to digest what we learned from that run. 

Alpine is gearing up for a race simulation later on with Gasly - and we suspect they won't be the only ones.