F1 testing LIVE: Bahrain updates as Mercedes defend ‘very extreme’ sidepods amid controversy

Lando Norris is back in the McLaren garage once again with that brake disk issue from this morning resurfacing again.

The 22-year-old has only managed 40 laps across the whole day and his afternoon session has been very sparse indeed. In three hours McLaren have managed just nine tours of the circuit.

They may not be back out again with just an hour remaining.

The McLaren hasn’t undergone anywhere near as much change as the Haas, though, which has been significantly altered because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The team was set to run a Russian flag-themed livery because its former title sponsor, Ural Kali, is owned by oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally Dmitry Mazepin. The team cancelled their agreement with the fertiliser firm last week, though, and has now unveiled a new car design.

The team ran a blank all-white livery on the final day of testing in Spain but has now added sweeping black and red lines to its look for 2022.

Alex Albon is back in the Williams garage after seemingly suffering from some sort of steering issue.

The Thai-British driver delivered a very slow in-lap as he trundled back to the pits, with a problem seemingly caused by the hydraulic system.

The FW44 was making a very strange noise as it came back in.

McLaren have made some significant alterations to their livery since it received a lukewarm reception at the launch of the MCL36 in mid-February.

The team has incorporated sky blue tones into its standard papaya colour scheme for this year, after the alternative design it ran at last year’s Monaco Grand Prix proved popular with fans.

Now, though, the team has broken up the two colour by adding significantly more black to the livery, across the top of the car and on the side of the rear wing.

Mercedes new sidepod-less design has been causing controversy in Bahrain.

The team has delivered a significant upgrade to its W13 car since the shakedown in Barcelona a fortnight ago, and the sidepods which merge the front and the back of the car have been rendered so slim they barely exist.

Looking at the Petronas logo in the image above shows how thin the design is. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was quoted by Auto und Motor Sport earlier this morning as saying he thought the concept could be “illegal”, before the team issued a climbdown statement.

Haas missed the four-hour stint of testing in Bahrain this morning because a freight delay meant that their equipment and parts were stuck in Istanbul.

Development driver Pietro Fittipaldi has been out on circuit in the afternoon session, but the car has been back in the garage for a fair old while now and only 17 laps have been completed so far.

A lot of those laps were installations runs rather than ones where the car was really driven in anger, and the Brazilian is over seven seconds off the pace at the bottom of the timesheets.

The American outfit will be hoping to get back out and complete a proper run before the afternoon session ends.

McLaren have had a difficult day so far out in Bahrain, where the sun is beginning to set with just under two hours of running left to go.

The Woking-based outfit have Lando Norris in the car today but a brake disk issue cost them significantly this morning, and they still haven’t managed an impressive amount of laps in the afternoon either.

So far the team’s total is just 34 laps, which is 22 fewer than Alpine and Aston Martin ahead of them. With 118, red Bull have managed more laps than any other team.

One team which seems to be having a potentially concerning pre-season is Alpine.

The Renault-owned outfit finished fifth in the constructors’ championship last season, and has redesigned its engine for the upcoming season in the hopes of extracting more performance. In Barcelona, though, they barely ran on the final day of testing due to reliability issues.

Esteban Ocon completed 42 laps this morning, a solid if unspectacular number, but Fernando Alonso has hardly been in the car this afternoon. He has managed only 13 laps in almost two hours of running.

None of this means that the team’s car is no good, per se, but there seems to be far less positivity around the team than pretty much all their competitors.

Sergio Perez’s running in the Barcelona shakedown a couple of weeks ago was heavily compromised by a gearbox issue, and he will have been hoping for a much stronger outing in Bahrain to compensate.

So far, so good for the Mexican who has completed a whopping 112 laps in just under six hours of running across the morning and afternoon sessions.

Red Bull will be very pleased with the amount of data they’re gathering.