Leclerc fastest as Norris completes most laps on day two

Charles Leclerc was fastest on day two of Formula 1’s 2026 pre-season test in Bahrain, pipping world champion Lando Norris who completed the most mileage.

The Ferrari driver set a 1m34.273s early in the morning session with his time on softs subsequently going unbeaten – 0.511s quicker than the medium-running McLaren, which was fastest on day one.  

But Norris’ time also came in the morning as teams conducted more long-run programmes in the afternoon, while three red flag periods headlined the post-lunch session.

The first occurred midway through when Valtteri Bottas lost a part of his Cadillac’s right mirror, which landed on the track and nearly hit the Williams of Carlos Sainz.

The stoppage lasted for approximately 10 minutes, before another red flag intervened very shortly after due to Pierre Gasly’s Alpine stopping at Turn 1. A final red flag waved towards the end of the session to simply test the procedure. 

It was the third time that Alpine caused a red flag since the start of the Barcelona shakedown last month, but it wasn’t the only Mercedes-powered outfit to suffer problems on day two in Bahrain.

That’s because the factory squad completed just three laps via Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the morning session, as a power unit issue ruled out the Mercedes driver for much of the session.

But things improved after lunch as Antonelli’s team-mate, and the bookmakers’ title favourite, George Russell moved up to fourth in the leaderboard with 54 laps completed – three short of a Bahrain race distance.

It came after the Briton set a 1m35.466s, putting him a second behind Leclerc but only 0.072s off third-placed Oliver Bearman, with whom he constantly swapped positions all afternoon. 

Russell’s Mercedes has arguably been one of the two most talked about teams in pre-season with the other being Red Bull, which made headlines on Wednesday as Max Verstappen completed the most mileage.

But then, like Mercedes, it had its running curtailed on day two in the morning as newly promoted Isack Hadjar endured a hydraulic leak on his RB22, which meant the Frenchman completed just one lap.

Hadjar bounced back in the afternoon though with the fifth-fastest lap time, a 1m36.561s, meaning he and the rest of the field were at least two seconds behind the lead. 

Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

This comes with the usual caveat of it being pre-season testing and at such an early stage, the focus is on mileage instead of lap time considering everybody is on different rubber.

So it was Norris who led that particular leaderboard on Thursday, with 149 laps of Bahrain International Circuit ahead of Leclerc (139), Bearman (130), Fernando Alonso (98) and then Gasly (97).

That obviously favours the drivers who drove all day rather than share running with their team-mate, as Mercedes, Audi, Racing Bulls, Cadillac and Williams all split track time between drivers.

But it was still McLaren that conducted the most mileage of all teams with Ferrari in second, ahead of Racing Bulls (133), Williams (131), Haas (130) and Audi (114) with Cadillac (109) being the seventh and final team to hit a century of laps.

F1 Bahrain pre-season test – Day 2 results

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