Leclerc shades Antonelli to lead Day 3 morning session

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc ended the ultimate morning of Method 1 2025 pre-season testing in Bahrain with the quickest time, simply 0.077s away from rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli. 

The Monegasque diced with the Mercedes driver within the early phases of the session on the prime of the timing boards, with the 2 buying and selling blows within the opening half-hour.  

Antonelli led for a short time, earlier than Leclerc punched in a 1m30.861s lap. And, though the Italian had bought shut with a 1m30.888s effort, Leclerc later raised the bar with a 1m30.811s on C3s – which remained untouched all through a comparatively serene morning session. 

The one sticking level was a short crimson flag inside the closing hour as a pane of glass broke free from the race administrators’ field and broke within the pitlane. This shattered hopes of uninterrupted operating, though the enforced hiatus was solely quarter-hour. 

After the flurry of lap-time gathering within the early phases, the wind picked up by the session and brought on a handful of drivers grief. Particularly, Lando Norris struggled to maintain his McLaren on the highway by the corners with crosswinds, going off at Flip 4 and reaching the service highway, then aborted a lap with a large second at Flip 13. 

The Briton nonetheless rallied and set the third quickest time, 0.132s down on Leclerc’s benchmark. 

Max Verstappen had the Purple Bull RB21 to himself, and shook down a brand new nostril cone design en path to fourth general within the timings. The reigning champion was 4 tenths away from the quickest time. 

Max Verstappen, Purple Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, RB F1 Crew

Photograph by: Purple Bull Content material Pool

Jack Doohan was fifth, simply three hundredths away from Verstappen, having additionally come a cropper on a handful of events as his Alpine didn’t mesh with the blustery circumstances in Bahrain. 

Alex Albon was the one driver to set their quickest time on C2s to go sixth, whereas rookie Isack Hadjar was seventh with the very best variety of laps logged – 73 – within the session. 

As Lance Stroll was deemed “not 100%” forward of the morning’s operating, he and Fernando Alonso switched periods – and the Spaniard ended his closing pre-season preparations eighth within the order. 

This put him a smidgen forward of his protege Gabriel Bortoleto, who spent a lot of the morning within the storage as a technical situation precluded him from doing an excessive amount of operating. The Sauber rookie accomplished simply 35 laps.

Oliver Bearman was on the backside of the order, once more seemingly backing off from exhibiting Haas’ true hand on his longer runs, though his session was interrupted with shedding bodywork. 

The rookie’s left-hand engine cowl suffered a delamination and the cooling louvres snapped away from the general meeting – which additionally featured a crack within the sidepod and flapping bodywork behind the rollhoop.