The Athletic

The race is on, and it was George Russell in the upgraded Mercedes on top on the first day of the final Bahrain preseason test as the lap times continue to drop. But what impact

could the looming compression ratio saga resolution have on its speed? And how did the experimental

start procedure trial at the end of the day play out? I'm Ed's Draw and joining me to review

another gripping day of running is Scott Mitchell Mown. Well, Scott, I think overall this was an impressive day for Mercedes,

wasn't it? Yes, from the headline pace, which obviously Mercedes will tell you, and George

Russell will tell you, it means nothing to some of the long runs such that they were. It was a weird

kind of set of runs that you saw from quite a few of the top teams today. Lots of broken up running. I guess there's only so many race simulations and proper stints that you can do, and there's always different things that you want to assess. So that looked impressive. And then, yeah, just the vibe at left track side as well. I think that's your kind of, it's a perfect hat trick really

from an F1 team when it comes to judging them such that we can at this stage of testing.

Yeah, it was a 133.459 for what it's worth that George Russell did. That was on his second push

lap and a set of C3. And a whopping 100th of a second faster faster than Oscar Piastri, I think, in the McLaren?

Absolutely, yeah, Piastri had been on top, also on the C3s.

So I think for me, that thing you refer to, trackside, the car's very consistent, they seem

to be able to lean on it.

It seems to do unexpected things with less regularity than anyone else. It just looks like a

well-sorted race car that the driver can do what they want in. It looks like a nice step on from

where they got it by the end of last week. So the first few days in, the first couple of days in

Bahrain, it was just a bit more inconsistent. It looked like it bit the drivers a little bit more when they did try to push. It didn't look very well sorted. And by the end of the

test, it was kind of there or thereabouts, really, with the Red Bull, but just not quite as

overtly impressive. But we recorded a video assessing our kind of trackside impressions for the race members

club.

And the phrase that you used there was unequivocally number one today in terms of the

...