Daniel Ricciardo tops opening pre-season session as Mercedes falter

Pre-season Testing

Ricciardo tops opening pre-season session as Mercedes falter

Ricciardo was fastest for McLaren

Sam Hall

Friday 12 March 2021 12:09 Updated: 12:45

Daniel Ricciardo topped the opening session of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain for McLaren as Mercedes lost three hours of running through a gearshift problem.

Ricciardo set his session-topping time of one minute 32.203secs before the halfway mark of the opening session of pre-season testing on the hard-compound Pirelli tyres but the success of the Australian was overshadowed by the problems of Mercedes and Haas.

When the lights went green, all 10 teams took to the track eager to make the most of the limited three days of running. Each driver completed an installation lap but as the other nine teams returned to the track, Mercedes was conspicuous by its absence.

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It quickly emerged Valtteri Bottas - who will hand the car over to Lewis Hamilton for the afternoon - had reported a gearshift issue and Mercedes elected to make a precautionary gearbox change.

This cost the team over three hours of running, with Bottas eventually completing just six laps after returning to the track with just over half-an-hour remaining.

Haas was also forced into making a gearbox change after rookie driver Mick Schumacher suffered a hydraulic failure. The German was, however, able to register 15 laps overall.

After a brief pause to allow for the recovery of Charles Leclerc's Ferrari that had stopped out on track with 10 minutes of the four hours remaining, the session resumed with three minutes on the clock but under Virtual Safety Car [VSC] conditions.

Pierre Gasly and AlphaTauri ended the session with the most laps of anyone, with the Frenchman completing 74 laps. Last year, the Bahrain Grand Prix was raced across a total of 57 laps.

Also exceeding a race distance were Max Verstappen [60], Leclerc [59] and Kimi Raikkonen [63].

Gasly ended the session second fastest, just 0.028s shy of Ricciardo's benchmark.

Session results

1. McLaren - Ricciardo - 1:32.203 [45 Laps] 2. AlphaTauri - Gasly - +0.028 [74] 3. Red Bull - Verstappen - +0.042 [60 4. Alpine - Ocon - +0.756 [55] 5. Ferrari - Leclerc - +1.039 [59] 6. Alfa Romeo - Raikkonen - +1.117 [63] 7. Aston Martin - Vettel - +1.539 [51] 8. Williams - Nissany - +2.586 [39] 9. Haas - Schumacher - +3.924 [15] 10. Mercedes - Bottas - +4.647 [6]