Max Verstappen sends a clear message to Mercedes and the rest as he posts the fastest time of pre-season testing.

Note: As was the case yesterday, Haas was given additional running time to make up for missing out on Thursday. It was during these two hours of running that Mick Schumacher posted the second best time of the day, the second best time of the entire test.

While this morning's session saw teammate, Sergio Perez top the timesheets as Red Bull revealed its much anticipated update, the world champion left it late into the afternoon before ensuring that everyone got the message.

Missing the first hour of running, and with the screens firmly in place, there was speculation that Red Bull might have another raft of updates for the final session, but if changes had been made over the lunchbreak they were barely discernible.

Having gone third quickest on the C2s, Verstappen returned to the pits where his crew shielded the car from prying eyes - and cameras - before heading out again, his front wing smothered in flo-vis.

As he focussed on a long run, like a number of others, the world champion was frustrated when Bottas stopped on track, bringing out the red flag for the second time this afternoon. When the session resumed shortly after, the Red Bull driver headed out and went purple in all three sectors, crossing the line at 31.973.

With just 8 minutes remaining, the Dutchman raised the bar even higher, stopping the clock at 31.720, and as the cameras cut to his garage his crew cheered and Helmut Marko grinned, just as he had done this morning when Perez went quickest.

Meanwhile, with Lewis Hamilton insisting that Mercedes is the underdog heading into the season opener, Russell was clearly struggling with the W13, pretty much as he and his illustrious teammate have been for the last few days.

Other than porpoising, the youngster had to deal with a car that takes understeer to a whole new level.

Alex Albon, whose Williams at one stage sported bright red flo-vis, went 8th only to be demoted when Vettel went third.

As was the case this morning, we had numerous examples of how the new rules might affect overtaking, Russell and Tsunoda at one stage repeating the battle we'd witnessed earlier involving their teammates.

While Mick Schumacher had caused the first red flag of the afternoon having spun off at Turn 1 on cold tyres, Bottas' red flag moment came shortly after he had improved to fourth. At that point Norris, Leclerc, Verstappen, Vettel, Russell and Alonso had all been on long runs.

With Latifi having lost track-time yesterday following his brake fire, with an hour remaining Williams opted to put the youngster back in the FW44, an odd decision when you consider that Albon had only managed 18 laps.

Indeed, Latifi had the highest lap count (124), ahead of Alonso (122), Gasly (91) and Norris (90), the AlphaTauri driver having only driven this morning.

Alfa Romeo completed the most laps (150), ahead of Mercedes (149) and AlphaTauri (148), while McLaren completed the least (90).

"We have failed to tick a lot of boxes," McLaren boss, Andreas Seidl told Sky Sports. "We've made steps but due to the time constraints here we've only done minimal changes.

"Thanks to the support from home we were able to do some longer runs this morning," he added. "What we have seen from the car, on the runs we could do, we have a healthy platform but we have failed to tick a lot of boxes in these three days due to the limitations."

Whatever the truth in terms of Mercedes pace, Red Bull appears to have the edge, while Ferrari also continues to look very, very good. McLaren is hard to call, while Alpine and AlphaTauri look set to continue where they left off last season.

"We've been focusing on ourselves and it is a positive six days," Mattia Binotto told Sky Sports. "We've run consistently and gathered lots of data.

"Performance is difficult to judge, I think both Red Bull and Mercedes are the ones that won last season, they have been strong teams in the past and there are no reason why they are not the favourites."

Fact is, no matter what conclusion we think we can draw from the last three days, in terms of outright pace we won't know until next Saturday, while the rules overhaul gets its first real test the following day.

We can't wait.

Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen completed a total of 96 laps on another solid day of running. The tally took the drivers' Sakhir test total to 320 laps, leaving the team well prepared for next weekend's season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

"The main focus today was testing the tyres we are going to use next week," said Verstappen. "The car felt alright and we completed the programme we set out to do, so that's always positive. No one gives full beans or goes to qualifying spec at testing, so we can't read too much into the timing screens. The new parts we tested today worked well which is what we always hope for."

"This morning was good," added Perez. "We have definitely learned a lot throughout this testing period and I think there is still so much to learn. There are lots of areas for improvement to arrive at the best performance package possible. Generally, we had a positive day and now I'm just looking forward to the race next weekend."

Reflecting on the day's running and the final test as a whole, Head of Race Engineering, Guillaume Rocquelin said "The lap times are irrelevant. Today was more about putting together the lessons we have learned over the past few days. It was about going through the process of running different compounds, so that the drivers are happy and that we have a platform to work from for next week.

"There were some slight differences in the tyre allocation between Max and Checo, but generally the idea was the same, to establish a good baseline with which we can start the race weekend and I think we achieved that."

The last day of the test saw Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc work on a programme which was the mirror image of yesterday's. Overall, the Ferrari drivers did 119 laps, equivalent to 644 kilometres, thus bringing the total over the three days to 349 laps (1.889 km). It means that prior to this coming Friday, when the first free practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix gets underway, the F1-75 will have completed a total of 788 laps (3.941 km) between the Barcelona and Sakhir tests, more than any of its competitors.

Sainz was out on track shortly after 10:00 and ran for the majority of the session on the C3 compound, continuing to work on car set-up. Right at the start though, the Spaniard did some laps on the harder C2 tyre and the C5. It was with this that he set his best time of 1:34.905. He did 68 laps in all, or 368 km, making his total over the three days 180 laps (974 km).

Once again, during the lunchbreak prior to the afternoon session, the mechanics adapted the F1-75 to suit Leclerc who first tackled some qualifying runs before switching to race simulations. With less fuel on board, the Monegasque began with the C2 tyres, before also using the C3, C4 and C5s. His best time was 1:32.415, set on the C4 compound.

In the final half hour, after some time was lost as a stranded car was brought back to the pits, Leclerc finally did a long run with a high fuel load. He ran a total of 51 laps (276 km) bringing his three-day total to 169 laps (914 km).

"We cannot draw any definite conclusions, because it will take a few races before we can get a picture of the pecking order among the teams," said Mattia Binotto. "However, what we can say now is that these past few days have been positive for us.

"We were well prepared for these test sessions, as can be seen from the fact we were able to run consistently, without any significant issues, which allowed us to complete more laps than any other team. Our main aim was to gather as much data as possible to understand this completely new car, correlating it with what we had from our tools back in the factory, primarily the simulator.

"It's very hard to say where we are in performance terms and there's no reason why the frontrunners from last season should not once again be the favourites. We will try to be ahead of the chasing pack, which I hope to be very evenly matched.

"Our car is a good basis on which to build and to maximise its potential given that, with such a long season, car development will play a vital role. Charles and Carlos came into these tests in great shape and they have made a major contribution to us getting the most out of these days. Finally, it's great to see so many different interpretations of the rules among all the teams. We can expect a very interesting season."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Bahrain, here.