What we learned in Friday practice for the 2025 Bahrain GP

Andrea Stella attempted to downplay any suppositions of McLaren's expected advantage ahead of the second free practice session in Bahrain. When addressing media in his appearance in the team representatives' press conference between FP1 and FP2, the Italian suggested that the Sakhir circuit "is the most difficult venue for McLaren of the first part of the season" and pointed to both China and Japan in stating that the team needed to take its chances in qualifying.

"The only thing that we saw [that could give McLaren an advantage] is that the car is gentle on the tyres," Stella countered, "which is a feature we couldn't exploit very much in Suzuka, which was a very low-degradation circuit. This one is a high-degradation circuit so, if anything, that could be our strength. But to capitalise on this strength, you have to qualify well."

Per FP2's results, that qualifying pace at the moment looks impressive. Oscar Piastri headlined the session with a 1m30.505s, 0.154s clear of team-mate Lando Norris, and 0.527s clear of George Russell in third; a hefty advantage over everyone else on soft tyres. "The McLarens look like they have a few tenths on the rest of the field," Christian Horner mused, voice tinged with the expectation that Red Bull was going to struggle to match its pole-to-victory achievements from Suzuka.

But here's the thing about reading FP2 times: Norris reckoned none of his rival outfits had turned up their engines on their hot laps – the insinuation being that McLaren had dialled up its own powertrain a bit more for their quali lap simulations. "Turning up [the engine] is like three and a half, four tenths around here so that puts us immediately back in the same position as the Mercedes. So at the minute, I wouldn't say we're any quicker."

In any case, unlike Suzuka, qualifying isn't the be-all-and-end-all in Bahrain. It would obviously suit McLaren to make the most of its chances; sticking both drivers on the front row (largely) removes the variable of getting stuck behind other cars on the Sunday evening, but the levels of expected degradation and trio of DRS zones mean that Bahrain essentially offers the opposite challenge to Suzuka. Drivers will have a bit more to manage over the course of the race, juggling tyre deg and track position over the 57 laps.

And there's a bit of variation with race pace, as drivers carried a handful of different tyre compounds through longer stints over the course of the afternoon. Most teams tried a long run on softs, mainly to determine if they could balance a race stint with the high levels of thermal degradation seen throughout the sessions. Track temperature was considerably higher than that seen in pre-season testing, thus making the data gathered in February's prelude to 2025 incredibly limited.

McLaren has the advantage, but can it make it count after losing to Verstappen at Suzuka?

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FP2 soft tyre run averages

*no representative runs from Alpine, Racing Bulls, or Sauber (Hulkenberg did a very short soft stint)

Firstly, it's clear that McLaren's long run on the soft tyre was arguably the most successful during FP2, particularly more damning given the length of Norris' stint relative to everyone else who attempted a long-run time with the red-walled compound. Albon's stint, registered as the second-best over a soft-tyre run, does have caveats in that the run succeeded a short stint on the mediums, then with a pitlane switch to the softs, suggesting that the Williams was running light by that stage.

Russell was about 0.3s per lap short on Norris, the Mercedes driver's long run marginally better than the hard-shod long run of Piastri. Max Verstappen was just over a tenth shy of Russell, although the Red Bull's engine does bear the hallmarks of being turned down; the Honda powertrain was giving away around 7kph at the end of straights versus the Mercedes powertrain in Norris' car.

"The main problem is tyre temperature, which we can’t keep under control. And as soon as the temperature rises, we start sliding" Helmut Marko

Ferrari did not have a representative soft stint, as Leclerc preferred to do his run on the medium compound – although neither driver did particularly long stints on either tyre. Much of the team's practice running was spent attempting to gather data on its new floor package, which Leclerc believes has largely worked, although the gap to McLaren still remains too large for the team to consider palatable.

"[The upgrades] are positive, but unfortunately the gap to McLaren is still big," the Monegasque said. "We've got to maximise the car potential that we have for now. If that means finishing third, fourth, fifth, I don't know what that will be, but we'll have to take it."

The long-run exploration on the soft tyre might only offer an extreme view of the degradation present at Bahrain, but it is nonetheless a good opportunity to gauge the relative wear profiles of the suite of Pirellis for each team. McLaren, as expected, is largely leading the way here – across a stint. But it's not likely that it'll be able to weave the sort of magic that turns two stops into one.

Is Red Bull hiding Verstappen's true pace?

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Kevin Hermann: Red Bull bluffing, and Ferrari struggling with degradation

Verstappen ranked fourth in the long runs, but it seems Red Bull might still have untapped reserves. Already in the qualifying simulations, which saw the world champion only in seventh, a small driving error crept in during the final sector. In the long runs, however, Red Bull seems to be deliberately bluffing on top speed.

Looking at the speed trap data without DRS, Verstappen averaged 290.8kph. For comparison Norris reached an average of 300.2kph, Russell 302.4kph, and even Red Bull team-mate Yuki Tsunoda managed 298.4kph. This suggests there could be around 10kph of top speed potential in reserve – though it’s likely not that simple.

“We’re too slow, and the tyres are overheating way too much,” summarised Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko. He remained vague on the topic of top speed: “It doesn’t make much of a difference. The main problem is tyre temperature, which we can’t keep under control. And as soon as the temperature rises, we start sliding.”

A look at the tyre degradation data from the long runs shows Ferrari is in a similar situation to Red Bull. Both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton struggled massively with tyre wear – even though both ran shorter stints than their competitors. The result: a hefty gap of nearly eight-tenths of a second per lap to Norris. Even on a single fast lap, Ferrari failed to impress – trailing McLaren by over half a second. Although neither driver put his best sector times together, Leclerc could have been third with a gap of 0.471s, and Hamilton would have slotted in directly behind.

The weak long-run pace raises more significant questions, especially since Ferrari brought a comprehensive upgrade package to the track for the Bahrain weekend. So far, there seems to be no tangible impact on track. In Japan, Ferrari’s race pace was 0.29s per lap off the lead, even though the McLarens could likely have gone faster. In Shanghai, the gap was 0.45s per lap. Now it’s half a second or more.

The average tyre degradation in the long runs across the field was 0.288s per lap. The Bahrain track features the roughest asphalt on the entire Formula 1 calendar – combined with high mid-April temperatures in the desert state, this results in a tyre-killing combination that will very likely lead to a two-stop race.

While the track will gain more grip over the course of the weekend, and drivers will generally manage their tyres better during the race, a one-stop strategy seems unrealistic while a three-stop strategy appears too conservative. “The most important point we can take away from today is that what we saw a week ago in Suzuka won’t repeat itself,” said Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra. “In today’s long runs, we saw that thermal degradation of the tyres was very high, not only at the rear axle but in some cases also at the front. It is therefore easy to imagine a race with two stops – where all three compounds could play a role.”

When calculating the tyre data from the long runs with PACETEQ’s strategy software OneTiming, a clear advantage emerges for the two-stop strategy: it would be over 13s faster than a potential one-stop variant – even with a relatively high pitstop time loss of 23.5s. The wear on the Pirelli tyres is simply too high.

A two-stop strategy looks most likely for all contenders in Bahrain

Photo by: Ayman Yaqoob - Anadolu - Getty Images