Mercedes were the team to beat after the week of testing in Barcelona, and after the first few days in Bahrain, they did the same again.

Kimi Antonelli topped the standings with a 1:33.669, just over two-tenths clear of teammate George Russell, while the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton rounded out the top three before he brought out the red flag.

In terms of the lap count, Hamilton's teammate Charles Leclerc was the leader with 219 laps, with McLaren's Oscar Piastri and the Williams of Carlos Sainz clocking 215 and 212 laps, respectively.

One of the biggest talking points in 2026 has been the reported compression ratio 'trick' used by Mercedes, with team principal and CEO Toto Wolff hitting out at rivals who have complained.

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur spoke about the topic on everyone's lips and stated that no protest would come for his team, but he does want to see some 'clarity' in the regulations.

"The most important thing for me is to get clarity. Everybody can accept that we made mistakes, or we didn't have the same understanding before. But what we need is to have it clear cut that it’s now 'like this'. I think it's what we can expect from next week," explained the Frenchman.

A cat-and-mouse game of words has been taking place between Mercedes and Red Bull throughout the first week of testing in Bahrain.

Toto Wolff said that Red Bull's new power unit built in collaboration with Ford was the "benchmark" for the rest of the grid, before Max Verstappen dismissed that tag given by the Austrian.

However, despite Mercedes topping the timing sheet at the end of Friday's running, George Russell mirrored the thoughts of his team principal about Red Bull's pace.

"They're not just a small step ahead. You're talking in the order of half a second to a second in deployment over the course of a lap. So it's pretty scary to see that difference," said the Brit.