2025 F1 Pre-Season Test: Key Takeaways

The 2025 F1 pre-season test ends with George Russell in his Mercedes topping the timesheets ahead of Alex Albon in his Williams. The three days of testing have been interesting as they have revealed quite a bit about how the pecking order is potentially shaping up.

The three days at Bahrain have arguably been the coldest for the preseason testing in a while and that has led to quite a few question marks as well, with teams and drivers not entirely sure about what they could expect from the car. With that being said, these three days have revealed quite a bit.

So, with 8 hours of running (more or less) on all three days, what have we learned? Let's take a look.

2025 F1 Pre-Season Test: What did we learn?

#1 McLaren might just be the benchmark

Keep the caveat in mind that the conditions were a bit of an outlier, McLaren might just still be the benchmark as we head into the first race of the season. The team has conventionally not been great around Bahrain. If we take a look at the ground effect era, Lando Norris or his counterpart have not even troubled the podium.

The fact that the car still looked pretty much the best around the track is a testimony to the improvements that the team has made with the car. Even if it is by a whisker, McLaren seems to be the benchmark ahead of the 2025 F1 season.

#2 The chasing pack is not too far back

This is arguably the most important bit that fans need to keep an eye on. Yes, McLaren might be the fastest at the moment, but that is in no way similar to the 'Red Bull being fastest' early in the ground effect era or 'Mercedes being fastest' in the turbo hybrid era.

Those teams had a substantial gap over the chasing pack, and whichever track we went to, they were the favorites. McLaren doesn't have that luxury. Just like the second half of the 2024 F1 season, it's highly likely that we will go into every race this year with no clue over who is going to have the best package.

#3 Max Verstappen should not be too disappointed with the car

Red Bull doesn't have the best car on the grid going into the 2025 F1 season. Ideally, that should ring the alarm bells because in a conventional season, this would mean that the championship is done.

That's just not the case here because, in all fairness, if Red Bull had closed down the deficit that it had to the front during the winter break, it would have been a massive ask. The gap was too big, and it wasn't until Austin that the team finally got the bearings of what the problem was with the car.

For now, though, Red Bull is in the mix. There would be races where the car is in contention for wins, and that's where Max Verstappen comes into play. The driver has the best operations squad behind him and that should give him confidence heading into the season.

#4 Alpine and Williams are potentially the best of the rest

It does appear that Haas potentially kept its cards close to the chest, but the lap times executed by Alpine and Williams turned heads. The proof is in the pudding as always, and those two teams have shown their hand, albeit it is a strong one.

The caveat, however, still holds true. This is specific for this particular track and in these particular conditions. We could see higher temperatures bring Haas into the mix, for instance, or we could see different track characteristics play into the hands of different teams.

The P5 to P8 in the pecking order includes Williams, Alpine, Haas and Aston Martin. Expect the pecking order to change from track to track. For now, Racing Bulls and Sauber appear to be a further distance behind during the test, and these two teams might just be the backmarkers at the start of the year.

#5 The gap between the F1 midfield and the front has shrunk

Something that Andrea Stella touched on is important to consider as well, and that is the fact that the gap between the top 4 teams and the conventional midfield that we had in the 2024 F1 season has shrunk. We do not have the same gap anymore by the looks of it.

According to Stella, he was even willing to claim that the top six teams could potentially mix things up at the front. But for now, looking at the lap times that both Alpine and Williams have been able to put together, it's safe to say that the massive gap that existed between the F1 frontrunners and the midfield is going to shrink even further.