Report: 145 laps completed on first day in Bahrain

A busy and productive start in Sakhir sees us top the charts on total laps

Published

11 FEB 2026

Est. reading time

2 min

Formula 1’s first official pre-season test is underway, and Atlassian Williams F1 Team completed the most laps of any constructor on the opening day of running in Bahrain.

It was Carlos Sainz who got behind the wheel of our FW48 for the morning running, completing 77 tours of the Sakhir International Circuit.

Alex Albon took over after lunch and added a further 68 laps to our day-one tally, meaning we totalled 145 laps – equivalent to 745 kilometres of running.

With little focus right now on outright lap times, there’s not too much to read into where our drivers finished the day. Running in the cooler hours, Alex finished P10 with a best lap of 1:37.437, whilst Carlos was P13 with his quickest time being 1:38.221.

James Vowles, Team Principal –

“A strong day for us in terms of getting the mileage under our belts. Our intent all the way through was just making sure we did the mileage required to learn and understand about the chassis, the power unit, and to start flushing gremlins out of the system. There will be a lot of them, and these next three days are all about getting a good foundation to work from, and we can then build performance from there. In terms of the car, what I can say is there's no vices to it, there's nothing particularly poor, but clearly we have to dig into the details. “One interesting element we’ve experienced today is that the wind is completely different to what we've had any other time that we've been here. It's an easterly, south-easterly wind which causes us a little bit of trouble, especially into turn 1 and turn 10. Otherwise, the drivers' comments so far are net positive. The balance doesn't feel as though it's too far off, and that's without any setup work whatsoever, so it gives us a good baseline to start with going into tomorrow.”