The 2025 season rolled on under scorching skies in Sakhir as Lando Norris laid down an early marker in Free Practice 1 at the 2025 Bahrain Grand Prix, going quickest for McLaren in an hour marked by extreme heat, car tweaks, and a flood of fresh faces behind the wheel. The championship leader topped the session with a 1:33.204 on soft tyres, two-tenths clear of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and half a second ahead of Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari equipped with a flurry of upgrades.
What To Know
- Lando Norris set the fastest time in FP1 with a 1:33.204 on soft tyres, ahead of Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton.
- Six rookies took part, including Iwasa, Beganovic, and Browning, as teams fulfilled 2025’s mandatory young driver running.
- Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli hit trouble early, completing just three laps due to a power issue traced to water pressure loss.
Track temperatures soared close to 50°C in what is typically an unrepresentative session—held in broad daylight unlike the floodlit qualifying and race—but that didn’t stop teams from diving into valuable data collection. In accordance with 2025 regulations requiring rookies to participate in FP1 sessions throughout the year, six full-time drivers sat out, including reigning champion Max Verstappen, opening the door for an exciting crop of emerging talent.
Ayumu Iwasa, Dino Beganovic, Frederik Vesti, Felipe Drugovich, Ryo Hirakawa, and Luke Browning all got valuable seat time in place of Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Fernando Alonso, Ollie Bearman, and Carlos Sainz respectively. Iwasa led the charge as the first rookie to hit the track when the pit lane went green at 14:30 local time, joined by Browning and Hirakawa in a lively opening few minutes.
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But not all the young guns had smooth sessions. Kimi Antonelli, tipped as Mercedes’ rising star, completed just three laps before reporting “no power” on his radio. The issue, traced back to water pressure loss, brought his session to an early end and left his mechanics scrambling in the garage as the rest of the field got up to speed.
Grip was scarce in the early going, with several drivers struggling on the dusty, heat-soaked surface. Liam Lawson declared the balance on his Racing Bulls car “shocking,” while others cautiously worked through their initial runs on harder compounds. At the halfway mark, Alex Albon was the surprise name at the top of the timesheets, having edged Norris by just six hundredths on medium tyres.
As teams switched to the softs, times quickly tumbled. Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto briefly took the top spot before being overtaken by teammate Nico Hulkenberg, and then finally by Norris, who reclaimed the lead with a commanding lap. Gasly’s performance for Alpine—still chasing its first points of the season—was a welcome boost, while Hamilton slotted into third as Ferrari put six new components on its SF-25, including key updates to the floor, rear wing, and diffuser.
Hamilton’s radio frustrations made a brief return, complaining about car balance in the early runs, though the car seemed to settle better on the softs. Ferrari’s upgrades were clearly aimed at narrowing the gap to McLaren and Red Bull as the 2025 campaign intensified.
There were a few close calls too. Albon was released into Yuki Tsunoda’s path in the pit lane, earning a post-session investigation, while the other Williams—driven by Browning—nearly collided with a slow-moving Albon on track. The stewards would also review that incident.
The final order behind the top three saw Albon hold on to fourth despite a late-session power issue, followed by Ocon in fifth and Hulkenberg in sixth. Alpine’s Jack Doohan took seventh ahead of Lawson, Tsunoda, and Oscar Piastri rounding out the top 10.
Bortoleto led the next group in 11th, followed by Hadjar, Browning, and Beganovic. Drugovich and Lance Stroll ended up 15th and 16th for Aston Martin, with Hirakawa, Vesti, Iwasa, and Antonelli bringing up the rear—though the Italian’s troubles left him effectively sidelined for most of the hour.
As the sun set and the focus shifted to the far more representative FP2, Friday’s early running gave fans a flavour of what was to come—and a glimpse of the next generation waiting in the wings.
2025 Bahrain GP FP1 Results
2025 Bahrain Grand Prix FP1, 11 April 2025
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