Max Verstappen is Larry Bird and other thoughts on the final day of F1 pre-season testing

Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Is Ferrari “Team Two” behind Red Bull and other thoughts on the last day of F1 testing

Perhaps it was veteran driver Fernando Alonso who put it best during pre-season testing this year.

“I think 19 drivers in the paddock now will think that [they] will not win the championship,” said the Aston Martin driver to Autosport.

That 20th driver? None other than Max Verstappen. If you thought the field would catch up to the three-time Drivers’ Champion ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 season, think again. Similar to last year, Verstappen and Red Bull’s RB20 look to be the dominant combination once again, leaving drivers like Alonso wondering when — or even if — they might get a chance at a race win.

“I would say, I think after seeing Max and the Red Bull car this year, there are less chances for everybody to win a race this year. But this is how it is,” added Alonso.

Just take what we saw from the final three sessions of pre-season testing this year. Verstappen sat out the fourth and fifth sessions, Thursday’s afternoon session, and Friday’s morning session. That opened the door for another driver to top the timing sheets, and on both occasions, it was Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr.

But then Verstappen climbed into the RB20 to close out the week for Red Bull, and within ten laps he was back atop the timing sheets, almost a half-second ahead of Sainz. While Charles Leclerc eventually pulled ahead of him — with a stint on the C5 softs — Verstappen then posted a long race simulation on the C1s which was incredibly consistent, and a thing of beauty. Over 14 laps or so Verstappen posted lap times ranging from 1:36.805 to 1:37.559 on the harder compound.

We are reaching almost mythic levels with Verstappen, similar to Tiger Woods during his prime, or Michael Jordan amidst his. The feeling that everyone else is fighting for second, and who brings home the biggest hardware each week is already settled.

In many ways, the best comparison might be Larry Bird. In the early years of the NBA’s Three-Point Contest, the Boston Celtics star won the competition in the first two seasons. Then ahead of the third installment, Bird walked into the locker room ready to defend his title. He looked at his competition and then asked them a simple question.

“Who’s coming in second?”

Bird then went out and won for a third-straight year, without taking his warmups off.

That was an exhibition, however.

Verstappen seems to be doing this for real.

Here are the results from the final day of F1 pre-season testing, as well as some other thoughts:

Is Ferrari “Team Two” on the grid?

Photo by Peter Fox – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

Now that pre-season testing is in the books, we can try and take stock of how the teams stack up.

Behind Red Bull, that is.

If there is a team that grabbed the title of “best team behind Red Bull,” it would be Ferrari. Sainz topped the timing sheets on the second day, albeit with a lap on the softer C4 compound, and was fastest in the morning session on Friday. Even after Verstappen took to the track and jumped to the top of the leaderboard Friday afternoon, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari bolted on a set of C5 softs, and the Ferrari driver put the SF-24 back to the top of the timing board to close out the week.

For many observers, Ferrari took a step forward this week with their race pace. As we saw a season ago, their one-lap pace was strong, but their race pace was lacking, and tire degradation issues plagued the team over the course of the year.

But diving into some of the data from testing, as our friends at The Race did in this lengthy bit of analysis, highlights that Ferrari’s race pace might be much stronger than it was last year. They found:

“[b]oth Red Bull and Ferrari made race simulation runs, at much the same time and running the same combination of C3, C2 and C1 respectively for the three stints. In this comparison the Ferrari looks suspiciously good, with a respective pace suggesting Carlos Sainz would have beaten Sergio Perez by… a full minute over the 57-lap distance.”

Of course, the usual caveats regarding testing apply. But if this is truly indicative of Ferrari’s race pace, they might very well start the season on the front foot.

Team Principal Frederic Vasseur spoke with Laura Winter on F1TV on Friday, and while downplaying the results of testing and adding the usual caveats, he noted that both Leclerc and Sainz were much more comfortable in the SF-24 than they were in last season’s challenger. He also stated that the team was ahead of where they were last year at the same stage, with respect to both race pace, and “consistency.”

Whether that is enough to challenge Verstappen and Red Bull at the front, however, remains to be seen.

More pace from Haas on Friday

Over the first two days of pre-season testing it was apparent Haas had one goal:

Address their brutal tire degradation issues from a season ago.

The story of their 2023 season can be summed up with the Canadian Grand Prix from last June. Nico Hülkenberg, thanks to their strong one-lap pace and a bit of weather-related luck, put his VF-23 on the front row in qualifying, right alongside Verstappen.

He finished 15th.

“It’s pretty clear now, obviously the result is not what we should be doing and it’s very disappointing. I think we know where to look, the issue is as soon as we get into traffic and behind cars, our degradation is immense, we cannot get the tire performance back and we just slip back,” said former Team Principal Guenther Steiner after the race. “We can clearly see it, as soon as we get away from free air and start to fight, we just degrade. We know really what we need to look for, and we’ll be looking for it. We need to put our heads together and try to find a solution to this and not hide behind good qualifying results.”

The focus for the team in Bahrain, at least over the first two days, was that issue. Haas focused on longer stints, trying to solve the riddle which plagued them a season ago.

“Following on from yesterday, we continued our program on tire management and high-fuel performance. Nico drove in the morning, and even with the disruption he had that made the session a bit shorter, I think we got the basic answer we wanted. We handed over to Kevin in the afternoon and he ran for five hours, and it was a pretty good session again,” said Team Principal Ayao Komatsu in the Haas post-session media report. “We got lots of good data and confirmation on what we wanted to run, so I’m pretty happy with the last couple of days. Tomorrow, because we’ve had two decent days, we may change the program a little but I’m looking forward to another productive day of testing.”

Well, it does seem like they changed the program a bit.

Because both Hülkenberg and teammate Kevin Magnussen showed a bit more pace on Friday. Magnussen drove the morning session for the team, and when that came to a close he was up in P7, not at the bottom of the field as he had been throughout the week:

Then it was Hülkenberg’s turn, and he showed even more pace, pushing up into the top ten and highlighting just what the VF-24 could be capable of. He would eventually slide back as some other drivers put some banger laps on the board, like Alexander Albon who bolted on a set of C4s and jumped into the top ten.

Whether that pace Haas showed on Friday will carry over into the season remains to be seen, but certainly signs of life from them as pre-season testing came to a close.

A few late-session runs of note

As the minutes ticked away in Friday’s final session, a few different drivers bolted on softer tires and posted some glory laps to close out the week.

We noted Albon, as the Williams driver posted a lap good for P5 with a set of C4s. He was not alone, as Yuki Tsunoda jumped up into P3 for a period of time with a lap done on the C4s. George Russell at Mercedes ended the day in P2, just 0.046 behind the time posted by Leclerc on the C5s, but with his lap coming on the C4 compound.

Then there was Zhou Guanyu, who finished the session in P3. thanks to a strong lap on the C4s.

All very notable and impressive, but a few cautionary words.

First, the C3 will be the softest compound next week, as both the C4 and the C5 will be unavailable.

Second? Verstappen still finished P4, with his run coming on a set of C3s.

Ominous, indeed.

What do we make of Aston Martin?

There are two teams that we have not addressed yet during pre-season testing this year.

One of those? Last year’s testing darlings, Aston Martin. A year ago the team brought the AMR23 — or the third Red Bull as some described it — to Bahrain and made an emphatic statement as the season began. The strength Aston Martin showed in testing a year ago carried over to the start of the campaign, as veteran driver Fernando Alons began the season with three-straight podiums and podiums in six of the first eight races.

However, while they started strong the team faded down the stretch, falling from an early P2 position in the Constructors’ Championship to end the year in fifth.

Entering this season, there is one word floating around the team: Development. Speaking at the launch of the AMR24 Dan Fallows, the team’s Technical Director, addressed how the team took a “pragmatic” approach to the end of 2023, as well as how Aston Martin needs to do better to win the “in-season development races.”

“I think it’s no secret that we took a pragmatic approach to the end of last season,” Fallows told the media following the launch of the AMR24. “We wanted to make sure that we used every opportunity to really learn the lessons that we needed to learn on AMR23.

“We recognised that we needed to do something that was going to teach us lessons for 2024 and we did. And I think to come out of that having achieved good performances towards the end of the season, culminating in a podium in Brazil and [fifth] place [in the championship], which was a great result for us, and then to come out of that and then to obviously have that momentum going into this year, I think that was the really key bit for us,” added Fallows. “Having been through that process and continuing that momentum into ’24, I think gives us a lot of confidence going into this season.”

Being better over the course of the season is a priority at Aston Martin in 2024.

“We’ve seen, particularly last season, but also the season before, the in-season development races is absolutely fierce, and we want to be as competitive in that as we have been going into the new season,” continued Fallows. “So that’s what we’ve been really focussed on is to make sure that we’ve got a good, stable basis for us to go and develop the car and keep those updates coming and keep the performance coming.”

Photo by Philippe Nanchino/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

While Alonso and teammate Lance Stroll hung around the middle of the field over the first two days — Stroll finished P7 on Thursday with Alonso in P12 — the AMR24 showed a bit more fight on Friday. Both drivers were up inside the top ten for a while, before finishing the day in P8 (Alonso) and P13 (Stroll).

Is this a sign that they have something for the field again in 2024? Alonso hinted at that following Thursday’s sessions. “It’s hard to know exactly where we are compared to our competitors because we all have different [programs], but we have completed what we intended to do in these first two days and that is positive,” said the veteran driver.

“In the second half of last season, we understood a lot about the areas we wanted to work on and we’ve applied our learnings. Everything feels good but I’m sure everyone has made a step forward too, so it’s a question of who has made the biggest step relative to their position last year,” added Alonso. “We’ll keep working on the car and understanding it in the time we have left, and also in the first couple of races, but everything is feeling positive and we’ve done a good job so far.”

Last year, Aston Martin roared out of the gate, but faded down the stretch. Can they avoid that mid-season swoon in 2024?

What do we expect from Alpine?

The other team we have not discussed yet during pre-season testing?

Our friends at Alpine.

There have been some positive signs for Alpine over the past few days. When the first day of pre-season testing drew to a close, Pierre Gasly was up in P5, having put 61 laps on the board. “It’s been a positive day where we ran our programme accurately and completed all our intended laps. That is the most important thing about testing: to run reliably and complete plenty of laps,” said Gasly. “The initial feeling in the car is good but now it is important for us to dig into the data, do our analysis and continue to unlock performance.”

Then on Thursday it was Esteban Ocon’s chance to finish in the top ten, as his best lap put in eighth on the timing sheets. Ocon even enjoyed a taste of racing action, as a few drivers bunched up late in the afternoon session around Turn 1.

“It was a very long session today with the extended running in the afternoon. We missed some track time in the morning due to the stoppage, but we managed to get it back and finish the programme we wanted to complete in the morning,” said Ocon.

“We improved the car throughout the day, and it was nice to try the car in different conditions, which are more reflective of what we’ll see next weekend in the Grand Prix. We had a bit of racing towards the end which was also fun. This does not usually happen at testing but this time everyone was pretty eager and it was very exciting on the run down to Turn 1 with a number of cars side by side and sparks flying everywhere. I’ve definitely got the appetite to go racing now!”

The biggest question facing Alpine entering 2024 is whether they extract more out of their power unit. By almost any metric they were the sixth-fastest team last year, and according to this analysis from The Race their power unit was around 0.5 to 0.9 seconds off the pace. Things got so bad for Alpine that the team requested an exception to FIA’s power unit freeze, believing they were around 15 bhp behind the field.

That request was denied, and the team found themselves in the middle of the pack. They were comfortably ahead of Williams so their position in P6 was not challenged, but it was unreasonable to expect them to challenge Aston Martin and the other teams in front of them.

However, looking at some data from this week, it could be reasonable to conclude that they have taken a step forward this season. Again, the standard caveats about testing apply, but take this data from F1-Tempo, comparing Ocon’s fastest lap from Day 2 last year, to this year:

Both laps were done with medium tires, and as you can see Ocon’s best lap this year was over a second quicker than his best lap on day two a year ago. The 2024 lap, shown in pick above, was quicker over the bulk of the lap, but for the long straight into Turn 1 as well as a few corners in Sectors 2 and 3.

Another sign might be the speeds over those two laps, shown here from F1-Tempo:

Outside of that long straight — indicated by the peak along the left side of that above graph and at the every right — the A524 hit higher speeds over the rest of the lap, sometimes by a lot. For example, that vertical white line notes the speed of both cars at the end of the back straight, which runs from from Turn 10 parallel to the main long straight and into Turn 11.

At its peak the A524 hit 303 km/h. A year ago at the same peak the A523 hit 292 km/h.

Once again, the caveats apply, but Alpine might have addressed their biggest issue from a season ago.

Prediction time

Okay, the time for talking is almost done.

How about some early predictions for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix?

The first one is easy: Max Verstappen will win the Bahrain Grand Prix next week. One might say he already has one hand on the trophy.

However, it does look like a big fight is shaping up behind him for the other two spots on the podium. Ferrari certainly looks to be in the mix with Sainz and Leclerc, and McLaren also looks far ahead of where they were a season ago. Aston Martin might also have something to say about the podium when all is said and done, and you cannot count out Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Pérez.

A more off-beat prediction?

Hülkenberg gets into Q3 and makes a little noise of his own.