Aston Martin in disarray as Leclerc tops testing

• AFP, SAKHIR, Bahrain

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on Friday topped the time sheets on the final day of preseason testing at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain while Aston Martin’s plans to make an impact in the new Formula One season crumbled into chaos.

The new Adrian Newey-designed Aston Martin car is radically different to the others on the grid, although all have undergone major changes as teams adapt to new regulations on chassis and engines.

The eye-catching Aston Martin on Thursday ran into problems with its Honda power unit when Fernando Alonso suffered a battery failure. The team were also short of spare parts and Lance Stroll only completed six laps on Friday — two in the morning and four in the afternoon — before Aston Martin called time on testing two hours before the scheduled close.

“Overall, we are not happy with our performance and our reliability at the moment,” Honda trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara said in a news release. “We collected data successfully; however, we didn’t achieve the accumulated mileage that we were targeting.”

Alonso and Stroll completed a total of just 128 laps over the three days — the equivalent of what many teams did in one day.

“It’s been a challenging couple of weeks here in Bahrain, and today’s limited running wasn’t the way we wanted to finish the second test,” Stroll said. “It’s clear the car isn’t where we want it to be performance-wise, and we know there’s a lot of work ahead in the coming weeks and months.”

Aston Martin also missed almost two full days of last month’s shakedown in Barcelona, Spain.

“We know which areas we need to focus on and improve the car in, which is very positive,” team ambassador Pedro de la Rosa told F1 TV. “The new regulations are very complicated, but they are also fascinating.”

Honda and Newey now have just two weeks to fix the problems before the teams gather in Melbourne for the opening grand prix of the new season.

With teams still hiding their full capacity and testing different aspects of their cars, the time sheets were not a clear indicator of strength.

However, over the course of the shakedown in Barcelona and the two sessions in Bahrain it appeared the top four teams — McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes — would again dominate this year.

Ferrari’s Leclerc put in 132 laps on Friday and threw the quickest time of 1 minute 31.992 seconds, heading world champion Lando Norris in his McLaren and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

“It’s still difficult to understand where we really stand, because teams are hiding their true form, so it’s important not to focus too much on lap times and prepare for the first race,” Leclerc said.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur pronounced himself “happy” with testing, but added that it was not just important to be ready for Melbourne.

“The development will be so huge during the season that the most important [thing] is the capacity of the team to develop, the capacity of the team to bring parts quickly, much more than the performance at race one,” he said. “We need to keep the momentum of the season and to be focused on development.”

Mercedes have been tipped as the car to chase this year, although Kimi Antonelli was brought to a halt on the track on Friday by a pneumatic issue. In spite of that, the 19-year-old Italian said he was looking forward confidently to Australia.

“I feel good going into the season,” he said. “Much more prepared compared to last year. Of course, there’s a lot of expectation around us, but I think the other top teams are very strong as well.”