Report: 110 laps recorded as testing resumes in Bahrain

Alex and Carlos were back behind the wheel of the FW48 as the final pre-season test begins

Published

18 FEB 2026

Est. reading time

2 min

Atlassian Williams F1 Team returned to the Bahrain International Circuit for the first day of Formula 1’s second official pre-season test, completing 110 laps across Wednesday’s running.

Alex Albon was first behind the wheel of the FW48, taking on the morning session in Sakhir. The Thai racer completed 55 laps, setting a best time of 1:35.690 to sit P4 at the lunch break. By the end of the day’s running, that time placed him P11 on the timesheets.

Carlos Sainz took over for the afternoon and evening session, also logging 55 laps as the team continued to build mileage and gather valuable data.

His quickest lap – a 1:35.113 – saw him end the day P8 overall, rounding out another solid day of preparation ahead of the new season.

Of course testing is less about the lap times and more about the mileage, with today’s 110 laps equating to 595km worth of data for the FW48. This takes our Bahrain total to 2,879km with two days still to ahead of us.

James Vowles, Team Principal:

“It was a productive day today. It’s great to see us completing a solid number of laps, being tyre limited rather than anything else. We completed different programmes from morning to afternoon, with Carlos focusing on high fuel runs while Alex looked at a number of set-up items that we carried into the afternoon. It’s a good foundation and we’ve found a sensible direction. We now need to prove that it’s repeatable in all conditions over the next two days. “This week is very much focused on how we extract the most from the package in preparation for Melbourne, so we’ll keep moving the set up forward ahead of the first race.”

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Carlos' thoughts after 55 more laps in the FW48

We caught up with Carlos Sainz after the first day of the second pre-season test in Bahrain to get his reaction

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18 FEB 2026