Reigning Formula 1 champion Lando Norris and his McLaren team set the fastest time of the opening day of F1 testing in Bahrain - but Red Bull and Max Verstappen stole the limelight.
Norris, who took over the MCL40 from team-mate and 2025 title rival Oscar Piastri in the midday break, jumped ahead of Verstappen with a 1m34.669s set on medium tyres in the penultimate hour of running.
That time - though four seconds off the best time of the opening day in the sole Bahrain test last year - went unmatched for the rest of the day, Verstappen coming up over a tenth short despite a couple of tries on softer rubber.
However, Verstappen - who had the RB22 all to himself through the day - caught the eye with a series of impressive and consistent long runs, amid Mercedes boss Toto Wolff having claimed the new bespoke Red Bull-Ford power unit is currently enjoying a massive energy deployment advantage.
Charles Leclerc, who shared the Ferrari with team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the day, clocked in at just over half a second back from Norris, followed by Esteban Ocon in the Haas and morning session runners Piastri, George Russell and Hamilton.
The only other cars making it below the 1m37s laptime mark were Alpine (driven by Pierre Gasly) and Audi (driven by Nico Hulkenberg).
The Audi, showing off a dramatically different sidepod design here, had caused a red flag with a stoppage early in the afternoon, but returned quickly after that and ran extensively.
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Mercedes found an issue with its car when preparing it for Kimi Antonelli to take over from Russell in the afternoon, so Antonelli only really ran in the closing hour.
Mercedes' issue, however, was clearly less dramatic than that encountered by Aston Martin-Honda - which was a no-show in the afternoon, limited to 36 laps in Lance Stroll's hands.
A Honda statement read: "Our power unit test plan today with Lance went as planned in the morning. However, we detected a data anomaly this afternoon which required further analysis.
"We will fix the issue and resume testing tomorrow."
It is such a dramatic mileage shortage relative to rivals that Williams, which unlike Aston Martin was a complete no-show in the Barcelona shakedown, has surpassed Aston's total collective mileage by virtue of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon combining for nearly 150 laps on Wednesday.
There was also a much-needed mileage haul for the new Cadillac team, which ended the day four seconds off the pace, albeit 14th and 16th overall respectively out of 18 drivers.
Similar to Aston Martin, Racing Bulls missed the afternoon of action after clocking up 75 laps in the morning.
