Ferrari have completed their first day of F1 2025 pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, with Charles Leclerc getting behind the wheel of the SF-25 in the afternoon session.
The Maranello-based squad had kicked off their testing programme earlier in the morning with their newest recruit, Lewis Hamilton. The seven-time world champion completed 70 laps and clocked the fifth-best time of 1:31.834 in the AM session.
Running an almost identical programme to his teammate, the Monégasque driver completed 71 laps around the circuit. He started his session on the C2 tyres before switching to the C3 compound later on.
Leclerc continued with the mapping work and getting to grips with Ferrari’s 2025 challenger, the SF-25. The 27-year-old also ran various fuel loads, enabling the team to gather data from several areas of the car, before ending the day with some practice starts.
Although the morning session went without a hitch, a power outage interrupted the PM session, which led to its extension by an hour. Leclerc set his best lap time of 1:30.878, the fourth-fastest of the entire day, on C3 tyres.
Leclerc’s thoughts on first day of testing and the new car
At the end of the first day of F1 testing, Leclerc stated that he was rather delighted to hit the track again. Commending the hard work Ferrari have put in over the course of the winter break, he shared his excitement over testing the SF-25 and kicking off their 2025 campaign.
Despite acknowledging the positives of running a clean session, the eight-time race winner expressed caution about drawing any premature conclusions regarding their performance and the pecking order. With the Italian marque following the same schedule on the second day of testing, Leclerc added that the team would comb through the data overnight and apply the findings to their programme tomorrow.
“It feels good to be back on track. The whole team put a lot of effort into the SF-25 project over the winter break, so it’s exciting to finally get down to work with it.
“It’s always a positive to have a smooth session without anything unexpected happening in terms of your run plan, although of course, it’s still too early to come to any conclusions about our performance.
“We’re going to analyse our data from today and make use of what we learn tonight when we start work again tomorrow.”
