Why F2 and F3’s Bahrain test has revealed more than 2025’s races so far

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

F2 did three days of in-season testing at Bahrain after the first round of the season and ahead of this weekend’s races at the desert track. Could a lot be learned from who set the test pace last month?

Following one disrupted round in a soaking wet Melbourne and a three-day test held among the desert dunes of Bahrain, it would be bold to make any claims about Formula 2’s pecking order for 2025. But there are already patterns.

Prema’s Gabriele Mini was fastest in qualifying for the season opener, with ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins his closest rival. When the field returned to action for in-season testing, Mini was again fastest and Martins was once more nearest to him.

Mini’s ability to get the most out of the Dallara F2 2024 car and its tyres over a single lap should be no surprise, as when he cameoed in F2 last year in Baku he qualified eighth on what is arguably the hardest track possible to debut at. Since the reversed-grid races now come first on race weekends, his first F2 start came from third on the grid and he converted that into a podium. The potential was there to win, since he had the fastest race pace in the field.

What happened last year in F2 races is still informing what to expect going forward since there is little data to go off from the first race weekend of 2025. The sprint race’s Saturdays spot meant the Sunday washout in Melbourne prevented a feature race from taking place. And multiple virtual and real safety car interruptions led to no more than six laps being completed consecutively at a representative pace in the sprint race and therefore leaving no room to calculate anyone’s long-run pace.

No laptime data from F2 and FIA Formula 3’s pre-season tests at Barcelona was released either, so the week in Bahrain filled gaps both for outside observers and the teams which had hoped to be able to learn more from Melbourne.

There were 115 long runs [a stint on track lasting 10 laps or longer completed at a representative pace] by F2 drivers during the in-season test but only a few were race simulations. While the 32-lap feature race this weekend does include a pitstop, the 23-lap sprint race will not and that was a distance that was rarely attempted during the test days.

Absolute pace [gap to personal theoretical best]

Hitech GP pair Luke Browning and Dino Beganovic actually did it in the very first session, and AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen did it twice, with Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad being the only other driver to register a proper 23-lap run. Of the five that were completed, Lindblad’s was comfortably the quickest.

From all of the long runs completed, the quickest race pace [measured as average laptime from a 10-lap period within a stint] was achieved by DAMS’ Jak Crawford during a 15-lap attack on the second afternoon. The next day, his team-mate did two 17-lap runs back-to-back and was the only driver to get within half a second of his pace.

In-season testing lap count

1 Fornaroli 234   2 Villagomez 223   3 Bennett 218   4 Maini 213   5 Stanek 202   6 Mini 201   7 Martins 199   8 Miyata 198   9 Lindblad 194   10 Browning 193   =11 Marti & Beganovic 192   13 Montoya 181   14 Duerksen 178   15 Goethe 158   16 Meguetounif 157   17 Verschoor 156   18 Shields 154   19 Crawford 125   20 Cordeel 120   21 Dunne 119   22 Esterson 104

In-season testing lap count [teams]

1 Van Amersfoort Racing 441   2 Invicta Racing 436   3 ART Grand Prix 397   4 Campos Racing 386   5 Hitech GP 385   6 Prema 382   7 DAMS 338   8 AIX Racing 332   9 MP Motorsport 314   10 Trident 261   11 Rodin Motorsport 239

Most laps – session Martins & Miyata D2 AM – 49   Longest stints D1 Beganovic – 25, D2 Duerksen – 25, D3 Lindblad & Duerksen – 23

So is DAMS the team to watch this weekend? First, they will need to qualify near the front and that does not look likely in Kush Maini’s case. Crawford looks set to fare better, as he qualified third in Melbourne and was eighth fastest on absolute pace in the Bahrain test. By piecing his best sectors together, it was clear he left at least 0.218 seconds on the table too.

Long-run pace

Pos	Driver	Race pace	Pos	Driver	Race pace
1	Crawford	1m47.830s	12	Lindblad	+0.881s
2	Maini	+0.460s	13	Marti	+1.045s
3	Montoya	+0.518s	14	Miyata	+1.125s
4	Bennett	+0.652s	15	Fornaroli	+1.137s
5	Mini	+0.671s	16	Browning	+1.157s
6	Goethe	+0.698s	17	Shields	+1.218s
7	Villagomez	+0.730s	18	Martins	+1.341s
8	Beganovic	+0.772s	19	Meguetounif	+1.379s
9	Verschoor	+0.797s	20	Dunne	+2.577s
10	Stanek	+0.845s	21	Cordeel	+2.938s
11	Duerksen	+0.871s	22	Esterson	+3.590s

The only driver who had a greater disparity between his pace potential and actual fastest lap at the test was Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne. He was only 14th fastest, but had his best sectors all come in one lap he would’ve been 0.382s quicker and up in fourth.

The Irishman had mentioned that “the car has always been in a good window” in Melbourne, where he qualified fifth, and in Bahrain and so reckons “I don’t really feel like I’ve had to do a whole lot of developing or kind of changing things”.

But he only completed 119 laps in Bahrain, far fewer than the majority of the field, and just two long runs. Both of those were one lap shy of a full race distance, but the high fuel loads meant his race pace was slower on fresher tyres than drivers out on track for shorter periods.

“Free practice is usually on the harder tyre compound, and also much hotter, so there’s a lot less grip. Usually you have more fuel because you fuel for the whole session, so I think the jump from FP to qualifying is always quite big,” Dunne said as he looked ahead to this weekend’s races.

“And as a rookie that can be something that’s pretty tricky. So the fact that we’ve had a good opportunity to test that with testing has been very helpful.”

While a longer run provides more useful data than shorter ones, other drivers and teams got more data by doing more running. Formula Scout probed the 19-year-old on whether testing had been utilised in the best possible way.

“Hard to say. I think it’s kind of 50-50, to be honest. One thing that’s positive is that how strong Rodin were here at the beginning of last year,” he replied, leaning on 2024’s results for 2025 expectations.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

“Naturally a lot of teams have progressed a lot from the first round of the championship last year because it was a new car. So I think a lot of teams are much more on top of it now than what they were at the beginning of last year, so it’s going to be much closer. The pace over the test I was pretty happy with. Like you said with the sectors, on my final run before the end of day two I got traffic on my last lap, so I didn’t get that last opportunity to improve. And looking back if I finished the lap I was on, it would have been a pretty strong one. So, no, I think overall through the test, we did a pretty good job.

“We kind of maximised the [three] days that we were allowed to use, And I don’t really feel like I missed out on a whole lot [by doing less laps].”

While there were two FIA F3 Championship races in Melbourne, they too left teams with no way of measuring race pace since safety cars broke up the action. And the Bahrain test was even more important as there was a brand new car to learn.

There were 129 long runs done by F3 drivers at Bahrain, and 58 of those matched or exceeded this weekend’s sprint race distance of 19 laps. Hitech was again the only team to do a race simulation on day one, Van Amersfoort Racing’s Ivan Domingues did five in total and Campos’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak was the sole driver who did none.

He still did an 18-lap run, but with a 22-lap feature race this weekend too there could be a lot he has not learned by not doing those extra few miles. Formula Scout quizzed some F3 drivers to find out just how important the race simulations were.

“At some point we were doing a bit less laps, and at some point we were doing a bit more laps. And I think there is a big difference if you do 22 laps or if you do 17 laps,” ART Grand Prix’s Tuukka Taponen reflected.

“In the end [of a 22-lap run], you start to really get that tyre degradation, and you start to struggle with the grip overall. It was important for the driver as well as for the teams to learn a bit more about race runs, because in Barcelona [pre-season testing] most of the teams didn’t do a race run because day three was raining. And same thing in Melbourne.

Long-run pace

Pos	Driver	Team	Pace	Pos	Driver	Team	Pace
1	Giusti	MP	1m52.010s	16	Van Hoepen	ART GP	+0.745s
2	Tsolov	Campos	+0.001s	17	Domingues	VAR	+0.749s
3	Camara	Trident	+0.040s	18	Wharton	ART GP	+0.753s
4	Tramnitz	MP	+0.068s	19	Dufek	Hitech	+0.756s
5	Nael	VAR	+0.097s	20	Ho	DAMS	+0.770s
6	Wurz	Trident	+0.110s	21	Zagazeta	DAMS	+0.946s
7	Stromsted	Trident	+0.221s	22	Badoer	Prema	+1.031s
8	Taponen	ART GP	+0.257s	23	Inthraphuvasak	Campos	+1.040s
9	Ramos	VAR	+0.261s	24	Sharp	Rodin	+1.093s
10	Slater	AIX	+0.332s	25	Voisin	Rodin	+1.124s
11	del Pino	MP	+0.344s	26	Xie	Hitech	+1.149s
12	Stenshorne	Hitech	+0.410s	27	Leon	Prema	+1.157s
13	Lacorte	DAMS	+0.557s	28	Sagrera	AIX	+1.293s
14	Boya	Campos	+0.700s	29	Bilinski	Rodin	+1.312s
15	Marinangeli	AIX	+0.718s	30	Ugochukwu	Prema	+1.638s

“We just did a sprint race with a few push laps because of safety cars. So it was really important to get proper race runs and to learn about the tyre deg and to set up [the car] to manage the tyres as much as possible. And also for you to get the feeling to try to get the tyres alive as long as possible.”

Rodin Motorsport’s Louis Sharp was in full agreement: “It’s super important to do a full race distance, because how the tyre could feel after 10 laps could be completely different to how it would feel at the end of the race. So getting a full, full understanding of what the tyre does, how it behaves and what you need to change to the car or to your driving style throughout the race to adapt to that, is a super important thing.”

He added that in addition to getting no race simulations done pre-season, the fact that the medium tyre compound was used in Melbourne and the hard will be used this weekend also meant little from before the in-season test was applicable.

“Doing a race run and testing last week on the hard tyre, at a high deg track like Bahrain has definitely been super important. And I’ve learned, or figured out a good understanding of what needs to be done. Coming into this weekend, having two hopefully full races with not a lot of safety cars, the tyre management is 100% going to come into play.”

While the new Dallara F3 2025 has reset the field, teams could still look at past years’ data for tyre and track understanding. DAMS has not been so lucky, since it is new to FIA F3 and has had its learning curve steepened by the drama of 2025 so far.