As Formula 1 testing continues in Bahrain this week, the Papaya team from England has found a few things to be positive about and a big reason to be bummed out. McLaren found a ton of speed across the 2023 season, after a dismal start to the year. According to the team’s data from testing so far, it has found even more speed in the off season. Unfortunately, so has everyone else. And according to McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, the 2023 runaway champions Red Bull Racing have allegedly managed to widen the gap at the front of the field.
McLaren posted the second-fastest time in testing on day one, and the second day (Thursday) team driver Lando Norris was fourth behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, the Red Bull of Sergio Perez, and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz at the point. Stella told Racer Magazine that McLaren’s new car is showing good progress, but he sees a bigger gap to Red Bull than what the team enjoyed at the end of 2023.
“In terms of report from the two days, I would say that starting from a performance point of view, the car delivers what we expected,” Stella said. “No big surprises — which in itself is some good news, because there are some elements of innovation in the car. So we wanted to see how they would have worked trackside, and they seem in line with expectations.
“I think the car is a good foundation for development — it’s a step forward compared to last year’s car. But overall, I can see that many cars have made a step forward, which is normal. Everyone finds performance in every week of development.
“There’s one car that seems to have found a big step — unfortunately, the car that was already the quickest last year. Some cars, I would say the group was already quite compact last year and, to me, it looks even more compact this year. That’s what we have learned from a competitiveness point of view.
Once again Red Bull turned more laps than any other driver on the day, with 129 versus Mercedes’ 123. Sainz may have topped the charts, but he did so on the second-softest Pirelli C4 tires in the arsenal. Most teams used the second day of testing to post long data gathering runs on harder compounds.