Ricciardo fastest for McLaren as pre-season testing begins

Daniel Ricciardo set the fastest lap in the new McLaren MCL35M on the first part of the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain driving for his new team while Mercedes drove just six laps with Valtteri Bottas after they had to replace the gearbox on their F1 W12.

Ricciardo drove 1:32.203 on P2 Pirelli tyres, which have the usual white markings, five seconds slower than last year’s pole position set by Hamilton in Mercedes, and 0.028 seconds faster than Gasly in AlphaTauri.

The Australian drove 45 laps in the new McLaren MCL35M, which uses Mercedes engines for the first time since 2014, and the second-placed Gasly drove the most laps in the first four hours of testing (73).

Verstappen was the third fastest for Red Bull on C2 tyres, and in the new Red Bull RB16B he drove 60 laps after locking the wheels on braking early in the session.

Mercedes suffered a blow at the beginning of the first day of the test as Bottas had to box after one lap due to gearbox problems and the team lost most of the first part of the first day due to the necessary gearbox unit change.

The new F1 W12 will be taken over by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton this afternoon.

During the three-day test, each team will have 30 sets of slick tyres, with two sets of wet weather components (wet and intermediate) although only dry and warm conditions are expected.

The teams also have two sets of test prototype tyres that are actually the same as the C3 tyres, but are manufactured in Turkey instead of Romania like all other tyres. Pirelli opted for this move to test the quality of products from another factory in relation to standard tyres and these tyres are the only ones that do not have any markings on the sides.

Ocon was the fourth fastest for Alpine and Leclerc the fifth fastest for Ferrari, who drove 59 laps even though he stopped on the track ten minutes before the end of the first part of the day and caused the first red flag in pre-season testing.

Raikkonen was sixth fastest for Alfa Romeo, less than a tenth of a second behind Leclerc, and Vettel was seventh in his first official appearance for Aston Martin using C3 tyres made in Turkey.

Nissany was the first to get the opportunity to drive the new Williams FW43B and drive 39 laps and Schumacher drove only 14 laps in the new Haas VF-21 which was officially shown to the public today after they did a filming day and drove the first 100 kilometers on the same track yesterday.

Thanks to transmission problems, Bottas drove only six laps and set the slowest time, 4.6 seconds slower than Ricciardo.

The test continues at 15:00 (local time).

DAY 1 PART 1 RESULTS

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