“History repeats itself,” wrote Karl Marx in “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” We can ignore the second part of that famous phrase but it’s true that news, including news about sport often repeats itself. That is the case come the end of the second day of official Formula 1 testing at the Sakhir circuit where Carlos Sainz set the fastest time, just as he did on the second day last year, with one important difference, namely that in 2024 the Spaniard was driving a Ferrari and this year he’s at the wheel of a Williams. Sainz set the best time of 1’29”348 running the C3 tyre on the 63rd of his 127 laps, a time 573 thousandths quicker than his best from 12 months ago. That rounds off his testing as tomorrow, team-mate Alex Albon will drive for the whole day.

Behind Sainz came the two Ferrari drivers who shared the SF-25. Lewis Hamilton was faster than Charles Leclerc by just 52 thousandths – 1’29”379 for the Englishman, 1’29”431 for the Monegasque. They too set their best times using the C3 compound.

It was cool once again today with temperatures fluctuating between 13 and18 °C, which is definitely unusual for Bahrain, as was the arrival of rain, which meant that the 18 drivers stayed in their garages for quite a while: 18 because Max Verstappen and Alex Albon did not drive today. The only exception was Esteban Ocon who took his Haas for a run on a set of Intermediates, the first time this tyre has been used at Sakhir since testing in April 2017, courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull. In fact, the French driver just did three practice starts.

In terms of tyre usage, once again today the C3 was the main protagonist, although less obviously so than yesterday: 767 laps, 60.97% of the total 1258, were completed on this compound. Apart from the Intermediate, the other tyre making its first appearance of the season was the C4, which did just 30 laps split between Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber), Sainz and Leclerc. The other compounds used were the C2 (238 laps, 18.92%) and the C1 (210 laps, 16.69%). This increased equilibrium between the three hardest compounds when compared to yesterday, was mainly down to the various race simulations, or at least long runs completed by almost all the drivers. Sainz did the most laps (127) while the longest stint came courtesy of Racing Bull’s Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda, who completed 25 consecutive laps on a set of C1s.

The third and final day of testing gets underway tomorrow at 10 am local time, ending at 19h00, with the obligatory lunch break from 14.00 to 15.00.