2026 Bahrain Test Two – Day One

• The second and final pre-season test got underway in Bahrain today (18 February).
• Kimi was in the car for the morning session with George taking over for the afternoon running.
• The Italian completed 69 laps around the Bahrain International Circuit as the team focused on evaluating several updates brought to the track.
• George completed a similar programme later in the day, finishing with a total of 78 laps and topping the timing screens with a 1:33.459.
• George will continue in the car tomorrow before Kimi takes over for the afternoon.
  

Kimi Antonelli

We enjoyed a positive morning and overall, a good day to begin this second pre-season test. We had an extensive programme planned with plenty of items we wanted to test. We managed to work through that list efficiently with few delays and learnt a lot more about the W17.

Whilst we’ve had a solid start to these final three days of running ahead of Melbourne, there is still lots of work for us to do in these final days. Several of our competitors continue to look strong and we have to continue to evolve our package and find more performance. Australia is not far away now so we will be working hard to maximise these final two days here in Bahrain.

George Russell

It was good to get back on track here in Bahrain. With only three days of pre-season running left before we head to Melbourne, every lap is precious. We didn't enjoy the best reliability in the first test, but we've started off on the front foot this week, completing 147 laps between myself and Kimi.

We have brought several updates to the W17 this week, so our programme was focused on evaluating those and ensuring we didn't encounter any nasty surprises. We were able to complete most of the work we had planned and can now continue to build our learning over the final two days of running.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We have made a solid start to the final few days of testing completing 69 laps with Kimi and 78 with George. We've updated a few parts on the W17, and they seem to be doing what we hoped. We've also been working through a programme of set-up items trying to understand more about the car and tyres. The track changes quite considerably over the course of a day here as it heats up and cools down so it's often difficult to analyse results, but we seem to have been able to keep the car in a good window and it's been encouraging to see that degradation has been under control.

We've still got a lot of work to do as we go into the final two days so fingers crossed the W17 will continue to run reliably and allow us to get through our full programme.