What to watch out for on Day 2 of Bahrain F1 pre-season testing

Follow live text coverage of the Bahrain pre-season test here.

Formula 1 pre-season testing is under way in Bahrain with Day 2. It is already the penultimate opportunity for teams and drivers to get their 2025 cars up to speed for the new season which starts in Australia on 16 March.

Each team can only run one car per day meaning drivers are set to contest just one and a half days each, with track time especially scarce for 2025’s huge rookie class.

The morning session runs from 07:00 until 11:00 GMT. Following a one-hour lunch break the action continues for another four hours from 12:00 until 16:00 GMT.

Line-up for 2025 F1 Bahrain test

Tyres selected per team

Tyre colours | C1: white (no brackets) — C2: white — C3: yellow (no brackets) — C4: yellow — C5: red (no brackets) — C6: red — Intermediate: green — Wet: blue

What to look out for on Day 2

Could the weather disrupt running?

One of F1’s main reasons for moving pre-season testing from Barcelona to Bahrain was to ensure better weather conditions to test in around late February and early March, and while the opening day wasn’t badly impacted by rain, some light showers did hit the track – and rain is forecast again on Day 2.

The possible rain, combined with the wind and the cooler than normal temperatures, could therefore pose a stumbling block to each team’s test programme, given only Haas (one intermediate set, one wet set) and Aston Martin (three intermediate sets) have selected any wet weather tyres for the test.

The chances remain slim it will cause a significant disruption, but with every minute counting across just three days of pre-season testing, there will be a few nervous looks up at the sky if the clouds darken on Thursday.

Last chance of running for Lawson and Sainz

As soon as pre-season testing has started, the sooner it feels like it is over, which will actually be the case for Liam Lawson and Carlos Sainz by the end of Day 2.

Both drivers have been given the full day of running by Red Bull and Williams respectively, as they will hand over driver duties to their team-mates for the final day. It means their necks will get an almighty workout and it is their last chance to get in the groove with their F1 cars before FP1 for the season opener in Australia next month.

All other teams will continue to split duties with each driver getting one session per day.

Edging towards performance running

Despite the surprise red flag caused by a power cut at the circuit on the opening day, and subsequent extra hour of running to make up for lost time, every team ran reliably and clocked up huge numbers of laps on the opening day.

While we don’t know each team’s detailed run plan and therefore who is ahead or behind their schedule, it is a reasonable assumption for teams to move towards performance running given testing will tick past the halfway mark midway through Thursday.

Added to that is the solid reliability, so teams will also want to push their new cars to understand where the limits are while exploring set-up windows.

Teams could push onto Pirelli’s softer rubber

In combination with performance running, teams could experiment with Pirelli’s tyre compound range once satisfied with installation and reliability of their cars.

Only Ferrari and Williams have opted for the new-softest C6 compound (just a single set each, too), and chances are each team may not run it at all on the abrasive Bahrain track, but the likes of the C4 and C5 tyres will be of interest to the teams which picked them to get an early understanding of the compounds ahead of their use later in the season at different tracks.

Haas might not partake in this particular exercise given its focus on the long runs last year to get on top of its tyre-eating habit, a trend that was also on show on the first day of action this time around, with the US squad only selecting four sets of C4 and no C5s or C6s.