Why disruption to F1 Bahrain pre-season testing didn't matter

“Into each life some rain must fall…”

The American bard Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would not have been musing about pre-season business at the Bahrain International Circuit when he smuggled this pearl of wisdom into the third stanza of his poem, The Rainy Day, since he wrote it in 1841. Neither would Ella Fitzgerald when she crooned something to the same effect in 1944.

And yet this aphorism remains inarguably apposite, both literally and metaphorically.

Unfortunate events transpire. Deal with them.

What, then, to make of the apparent hysteria which greeted a power cut on day one of the Bahrain test, followed by what appeared to be a month’s rainfall on day two?

Certainly this brought a cascading series of challenges through the paddock, from disrupted run plans all the way to poor media folk caught outdoors with inadequate garb. Don’t worry, luvs – it’s not a Victorian novel, you won’t come down with consumption.

In the grand scheme of things I’d say this all represents a lower order of difficulty and challenge than, say, getting new Aston Martin team boss Andy Cowell to speak the name of Enrico Cardile in a press conference, let alone confirm when Aston’s new head-of-whatever-it-is-this-week is going to start work. Watching that unfold wasn’t quite at the level of Jeremy Paxman vs Michael Howard on Newsnight, but perhaps F1’s press corps on the ground lacked Paxman’s enterprise at his peak.

A power outage suspended running for over an hour on day one, while rain caused havoc on day two as teams were unprepared for it

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Losing an hour of running to the power cut on day one proved less disastrous than it initially seemed as the circuit was thrown into near darkness, but for a giant LED Aramco banner which vexatiously remained aglow. Though adding an hour to the end of the session required a change to the sporting regulations, and therefore a meeting of minds between the stakeholders, the necessary consensus was quickly achieved and transmitted via a suitably self-congratulatory message.

That unplanned final hour brought colder and windier ambients but, overall, no harm done – unless you had a restaurant booking, of course.

Crucially, it was the same for everyone. You could possibly argue that it helped a couple of teams – Red Bull having been inconvenienced by a water leak, McLaren taking its time to fettle its car for Lando Norris after taking over from Oscar Piastri – but not by championship-shaping quantities of data gained or lost.

What profit did Haas and Aston Martin extract from this brief window of having rubber suited to the conditions? Absolutely none 

Likewise the squalls of rain which blew in on day two, one intense enough to make the track properly damp. In the absence of anything else to excite the brain cells of those attempting to commentate upon proceedings, there was much hand-wringing over the absence of wet-weather rubber.

Here the dead hand of the accounts department was divined, since the season opener is now just over two weeks away and in Australia. For logistical reasons – the Bahrain Grand Prix is now a month and a half away rather than straight after the test – the standard tyre allocations are making their way cost-effectively to the southern hemisphere by air freight and teams had to specify what tyres they wanted here.

Only Aston Martin (three sets of intermediates) and Haas (one set of inters and one wet) had ordered ahead for tyres suitable in the event of an unlikely downpour. Quite why Haas wanted wets, the tyre compound likely to see even less use than the new C6 since a small puddle is now deemed enough for a red flag, is anybody’s guess.

Even Aston and Haas failed to benefit from the rain despite being the only teams to bring tyres suitable for damp conditions

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

So, much wailing and gnashing of teeth about more track time lost. And yet – what profit did Haas and Aston Martin extract from this brief window of having rubber suited to the conditions? Absolutely none. For they too remained in the garage, except for a brief recce which enabled them to conclude that lapping on inters, on a track as abrasive as this, was a waste of time which would teach them nothing (except, perhaps, not to bother ordering inters or wets for a Bahrain test).

Famously, ahead of events here the circuit environs are sprayed with adhesive to minimise the amount of sand blown onto the track, but the winds this week have imported micro-grit from further afield.

Bahrain crept onto the test rota in ‘beforetimes’ as a (usually) warmer location to test than the otherwise preferred Barcelona-Catalunya track. During the pandemic it slipped its feet further under the table by dint of its relatively remote location making it a safe place to go about business, especially if the first race of the season is in the same place.

But as we go back to normal, and Australia takes pole position again, you have to wonder if Bahrain’s usefulness as a test track has diminished. Layout-wise it’s a point-and-squirt job with perhaps three or four demanding corners, and then only because they’re Tilke ‘trip hazards’ with queasy camber rather than anything to give a driver a dry mouth.

In terms of variety of corners and relevance to other tracks, Barcelona is much more useful, if rather joyless at this time of year. And that’s probably why it’s going to be the venue of next year’s first test of the new generation of cars – and at the end of January, too.

Well, at least we’ll know what clothes to pack.

Barcelona is set to return as F1's pre-season testing venue and the decision to go back should prove popular

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool