McLaren had “three productive days” in Bahrain, claims Stella

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After the three days of F1 pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit drew to a close on Friday evening, McLaren’s team boss Andrea Stella was cautious when he assessed his team’s highly impressive performance in Sakhir.

Despite not topping the timesheets on the second and third day of pre-season, the race simulation lap times put McLaren as the leading force in the same tone as last season.

Lando Norris racked up a total of 57 laps on the third and final day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, posting a best time of 1m30.943s which put him 11th quickest on the order. However, his race simulation on Day 2 was over half a second quicker in average than what Charles Leclerc and Andrea Kimi Antonelli achieved at the same time of the day which means that all of them ran in comparable weather conditions.

His team-mate Oscar Piastri is looking forward to his third season with McLaren. Although he looked less comfortable behind the wheel of McLaren’s MCL39 than Norris, but his race simulation on the last day of testing also appeared to be a class above the ones of the Woking-based squad’s direct competitors.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella was cautious when he assessed McLaren’s performance during the three-day pre-season testing, but he insisted that the Woking-based outfit had a productive preparation for the upcoming season.

“The end of three productive days here in Bahrain. We completed our aero tests this morning, before giving both Lando and Oscar a chance for some runs to allow them to gain insight into the capabilities of the car before we head to Australia.

“We also took the opportunity to make some further set-up changes as we continue to learn about the characteristics of the MCL39. The team here and in Woking have done a great job of bringing our new car to the track and allowing us to maximise all of the time available to us this week. We have plenty to analyse and work on before the first race of the season in two weeks’ time.”

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