The 2025 F1 Cars Are Already Way Faster Than Last Year

The Formula One circus is in Bahrain this week for the official pre-season test mere weeks before kicking off the season in earnest, and wouldn't you know it, most of the engineers who designed these mildly modified 2025-spec cars are pretty damn good at their jobs. The test is only halfway through, and the fastest time on the board is a second clear of what was posted a year ago. Obviously it's difficult to glean any significant information from the pre-season test, but you can extrapolate a bit about the overall theme, and how the cars look out there. Some teams have done a better job than others, but for the most part pretty much everybody has improved on the pace from last year's test. Last year's fastest time of the three-day Bahrain test was Charles Leclerc's 1 minute 30.322 second run on the final day. On Wednesday morning Ferrari's Sir Lewis Hamilton was the first driver to drop their test times into the one-twenty-nines, and despite a rain-stifled session topped the times with a 1:29.379. 

Even more impressive than Lewis setting fast times in his new Ferrari, Carlos Sainz in his recent move to the Williams team has already cracked off a 1:29.348 in the fourth session of the week on Thursday afternoon, and he did so on the hard compound tire. Alex Albon, who set the best time for Williams in 2024 testing, only managed to get last year's car to run a 1:30.988. That doesn't necessarily mean that Williams is in the championship fight for 2025, but perhaps the team from Grove will be in the mix for some good points this season. A welcome change for the once legendary team, to be sure. 

Bahrain was the first grand prix of the season in 2024, giving the Red Bull team a lot of data to mull over before hitting the track for qualifying after the team finished testing four tenths off the pace with a 1:30.755. The Bahrain Grand Prix, as you probably know, is run at night under the lights, while testing happens in the much hotter days of the kingdom. In qualifying for the GP last year Max Verstappen set a pole position time of 1:29.179. With cooler night weather providing more power to the defending world champ, the time difference can largely be explained. It's impossible to consider anything a one to one comparison between testing and qualifying, but if running at night gained Verstappen a second and a half in lap time, then perhaps we'll see times down in the mid-1:27s by the time F1 comes back to Bahrain for round four in mid-April. In the here and now Max has only managed to best his 2024 testing time by a tenth of a second, running a 1:30.674, while Red Bull newcomer Liam Lawson has tripped the beams with a 1:30.252 already.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing I've seen thus far is a continuation of last year's competitive times. For now I wouldn't put much faith in the running order that is on the board, though both Haas cars running full seconds off the pace isn't great, and the lack of pace from the Saubers is indicative of that team's efforts as of late. The fact that most teams have chipped a second or more from their last year times is encouraging. This is the final year of the current spec of F1 car, so it stands to reason that teams continue to develop and tinker with the aero to find more time. By the end of the 2025 season, these cars will be as fast as they ever will be.