2022 F1 Bahrain test: Leclerc tops morning session as final test begins

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly led the pack out of the pits when the first four-hour session of the three-day event got underway at 10am local time – the Frenchman’s car adorned with an enormous aerodynamic-load measuring rake.

Most of the cars made early forays with rakes attached – although not Haas, which missed all the opening session due to freight delays meaning its VF-22 could not be readied in time.

After the heavily-revised Mercedes W13 was revealed in the full-grid promotion shots F1 organised ahead of the track running starting, there was plenty of attention being paid to Lewis Hamilton’s opening laps running the car and its near non-existent sidepods.

He established the early first place benchmark at 1m41.502s on the C2 hard compound, but that time was quickly worked down as the field reached representative times at the end of the opening half an hour.

At Red Bull, Sergio Perez was aboard the RB18 and he took over from Hamilton at the head of the times with a 1m38.953s.

A few minutes later at the opening session’s forty-minute mark, Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou moved ahead on a 1m35.953s set on the C3 medium rubber.

But as the opening hour drew to a close, Leclerc put in a 1m35.953s on the soft C4 rubber, the second softest of the five compounds Pirelli will use in 2022.

After a lull in action over the next hour, Leclerc, by then switched to the yellow-walled C3s, went quicker again to post a 1m34.531s, which stood as the session’s best to the close at 2pm local time.

Hamilton jumped up the order to sit second, 1.834s off Leclerc’s time, also on the C3s a few minutes after the Ferrari driver had posted the best time.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

But the seven-time world