Going by the numbers: Analysing pre-season testing

Three days of pre-season testing have come to a finish, amounting to 25 and a half hours of track time and an impressive combined count of 3992 laps of the 15-turn, 5.412km Bahrain International Circuit completed.

On the face of it there seems no question that Red Bull have come out firmly on top, with Max Verstappen topping the first day's timesheets and Sergio Perez producing the quickest lap of anyone in the test with his time of 1:30.305s.

But does that mean 2023 is going to be another Red Bull rout? The fastest time doesn't always tell the whole story, especially not this early on. Sometimes it's necessary to dig a little deeper into the data available. So let's do exactly that.

Bahrain Pre-Season Test - Overall times/laps

For one thing, where is Verstappen in the final aggregated times? Only 11th, which might look like a bit of a worry for the reigning world champion. That is until we see when his time was set.

Verstappen opted to be in the car for the whole of Thursday and then the afternoon on Friday, meaning he missed out on the final 'golden hour' at the end of Saturday's session when everyone still running opted to put on soft tyres to complete qualifying time trials.

Perez took full advantage of that which is why he's at the top, 0.359s quicker than Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes had had problems of their own during their test, but his final stint behind the wheel meant Hamilton comes out of it looking pretty good.

However Hamilton was on softer tyres than Perez for his run, which is worth noting. Likewise, Valtteri Bottas was also on the C5 rubber when he put the Alfa Romeo into third place on the overall timesheets. Still a pretty decent effort from the Finn, though.

Overall, there was just a fraction over three seconds between Perez and the slowest man of the test, Alpine's Esteban Ocon. That compares to last year's top-to-bottom spread of just under four seconds, despite Perez being a tidy 1.4s quicker than Verstappen's top time in 2022.

Williams made the most progress. Nicholas Latifi had been slowest of anyone in 2022 but this time around the team's average top lap time jumped 2.5s on last year's, a huge gain given that the FIA has introduced changes to tackle porpoising that should have cut everyone's lap times significantly.

Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo were also more than two seconds better than last year, as were Mercedes - but the Silver Arrows had a wretched time in pre-season testing 12 months ago that prefigured an even more difficult season ahead:. This week's data suggests that they're close to being back to where they should have been all along.

Alpine was the only team to fail to match its best lap of 2022 here. The squad has already stated that they will be bringing upgrades to the first race next weekend, but that's not good news for Ocon and Pierre Gasly.

Bahrain Pre-Season Test - Mileage by driver

Looking at the total mileage, the person putting in the most laps of anyone was Fernando Alonso. In part that's because he took over the lion's share of testing for Aston Martin in the absence of the injured Lance Stroll, with reserve driver Felipe Drugovich only getting 117 laps in.

Alonso had been second quickest behind Verstappen on the opening day, but overall he was down in ninth place. That puts him behind not only Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari on Saturday but also AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda and Haas' Kevin Magnussen. Work still to do there for Aston, it seems.

It's not too surprising to see two rookies at the top of the mileage charts, wanting to get the most time in the car they can before the start of their maiden seasons. AlphaTauri's Nyck de Vries was the second-most travelled driver on 246 laps just ahead of Logan Sargeant in the Williams; de Vries was also the overall fastest of this year's new faces.

But wait a minute, there's a third rookie in the line-up. Where's Oscar Piastri? Unfortunately this exposes one of the major stories of testing - the serious problems faced by McLaren with their continuing need for repairs to the front winglets and supports costing them track time.

Piastri managed only 170 laps during the three days. The only regular driver to have less running in Bahrain was his team mate Lando Norris who completed just 142 laps. That's a meagre total of 312 laps for McLaren over the full test.

Bahrain Pre-Season Test - Mileage by team

It's not just the poor reliability that this figure highlights. It also means that the team has had far less time to work on gathering data and refining the performance of the MCL60 compared to AlphaTauri (456 laps completed), Williams (439 laps) and Ferrari (417 laps).

Aston Martin suffered an electrical issue on Thursday morning, and Mercedes were sidelined by a hydraulics issue on Friday. Both use Mercedes power unit, as do Williams and McLaren, which means that it inevitably tops the total mileage chart when viewed by power unit type.

Ferrari comes second with four teams in its stable (Haas and Alfa Romeo), Honda RBPT completed a respectable 4703 miles with Red Bull and AlphaTauri, while Alpine was alone in running the Renault engine.

Bahrain Pre-Season Test - Mileage by engine

The teams will be chewing over this data and much, much more available to them in the coming few days as they rush to be ready for the first race of the season next weekend, at the same venue as pre-season testing.

Last year's pole position was claimed by Charles Leclerc (with a time slower than Perez set in yesterdays' final test day) and the Ferrari went on to win the race after both Red Bulls suffered fuel system issues.

Reliability wasn't an issue for long and Verstappen went on to win 15 of the 22 races, with Perez taking two more leaving four claimed by Ferrari and just one for Mercedes' George Russell.

The data suggests that this sort of domination by Red Bull and Verstappen is rather unlikely to recur - but neither can it be ruled out. Encouragingly, Ferrari and Mercedes both look pretty competitive - and we may see some surprises from the likes of Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri and Haas.

It's hard to get a read on Aston Martin at this point given the distraction of their sidelined driver. Meanwhile Williams - despite their lack of key technical staff right now - at least have a chance to dodge a second consecutive wooden spoon.

Alpine is a concern with the A523 showing so little speed. Let's hope that upgrade does the job or they will be hard pressed to keep hold of that coveted 'best of the rest' fourth place in the constructors standings.

And then there's McLaren. Surely things can't be as bad for the papaya-hued team as they looked in the darkness of Saturday night? If they are, it will be a long dark season ahead indeed for Norris and Piastri.

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