Report of final day of 2021 F1 testing in Bahrain

Event: Wintertesting
Track: Bahrain International Circuit

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02 during the Bahrain March testing

Weather: dry  19.8-28.2°C
Tarmac: dry  25.0-45.0°C
Humidity :32.4%
Wind : 3.4 m/s NW
Pressure: 1015.4 bar

Mar.14 - Yesterday Mercedes seemed to get up to speed with Valtteri Bottas topping the timesheet. Lap times do not really matter during testing, because the fuel levels and engine modes of the cars are unknown.

Williams driver George Russell got his first outing in the FW45B. Sebastian Vettel had some making up to do in the Aston Martin after yesterday's gearbox problem compromised his morning run.

Morning session

The morning started with perfect weather. The wind of the first 2 days had really dropped and the sun warmed up the very rough Bahrain tarmac to a very high 45°C.

Charles Leclerc drove the Ferrari this morning and showed up on top of the leaderboard in the first hour and a half with a quick lap time of 1:30.486. Later on Red Bull driver Sergio Perez took over P1 with the quickest lap of the weekend so far. Perez drove his lap on the C4 tyres, while Leclerc used the the harder C3.

Kimi Raikkonen drove the most laps in the morning session. He got 91 laps under his belt with the new Alfa Romeo C41.

Afternoon session

In the afternoon session the sun lowered and the track temperature dropped 10 degrees. Every team seemed to run there program without any problem. Only rookie Yuki Tsunoda had a small spin, but was able to go on.

Lewis Hamilton was back in the car today and was still fighting the rear of the car coming out a corner. His main rival of last season Max Verstappen seemed to have much better afternoon. The Dutchman even drove the quickest lap of the week on Pirelli prototype tyres. It was the first lap below 90 seconds.

In the last hour a couple of teams fitted the soft tyre on the cars and went out in cooler temperatures to checkout what lap time was possible. Rookie driver Yuki Tsunoda even topped the timesheet with a 1:29.282 min. The Japanese AlphaTauri driver even was 0.451s quicker than Verstappen at that moment.

In the last half an hour of the test the track temperature had dropped to 25°C and an ambient temperature of 20°C. Hamilton had fitted soft tyres (C5) to put in a fast lap. At the end of his in-lap the champ showed that the Mercedes is far of stable when he spun coming out of turn 14.

Kimi Raikkonen drove the most laps today. The Finn drove 154 laps with the Alfa Romeo who looked quite stable. Vettel's testing session again was shortened today. Yesterday it was caused by a gearbox problem, today the turbo in the back of the Aston Martin had given up.

In the last lap Kimi Raikkonen and Carlos Sainz got close and even had a collision in turn 10. Both cars could go on but none of them wanted to give any space to each other.

The fastest lap time of last year's race was 1:27.264 min driven during qualifying.

Quickest Lap Times 3rd day of testing

Here you can find the photos of the final day of testing in Bahrain.

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