A positive opening day of the Grand Prix weekend in Bahrain saw Lewis quickest in FP2, ahead of team-mate George.

FP1 was held in the usual unrepresentative warm day time conditions. A strong, gusty wind also played its part in obscuring the performance picture.

The team got through plenty of useful running on the Medium tyre though, ultimately posting the third and fifth fastest times on that compound.

In the cooler conditions of FP2, focus turned to the Soft compound tyre. Both Lewis and George reported being comfortable with the overall balance of the W15 and ended up P1 and P2 overall. Initial data from the long runs suggests an incredibly tight chasing pack behind the Red Bulls.

Lewis Hamilton: It was very windy in FP1, and the track was very different to during the test. We didn't know exactly where we would stack up against everyone else, but we had a positive FP2 session. The car was feeling good, but we can't get ahead of ourselves. We know there is more to extract, and our long run pace isn't in the fight with the Red Bulls.

Overall though, I'm feeling much happier with the car than last year. We've made some good improvements and it feels much more like a race car. It's a really good platform for us to build from. We just need to keep our heads down and keep chasing.

George Russell: We're not going to get carried away after one day of practice. Our qualifying pace did look strong. We made some changes from the test and the improvement exceeded our expectations. But ultimately our long run pace is where it counts. Verstappen looked comfortably quickest, and it was very tight with the Ferraris, the McLarens, and the Aston Martins. So we've likely got a real fight on our hands there.

Nevertheless, we're pleased with how our day has gone; the car is performing well. We will sit down and understand where the main improvements came from and try to sustain that. We want to be fighting for good positions on Saturday night.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: Following the test we were most concerned about our single lap pace. We had both drivers in the simulator before returning here. From the running today, it looks like we have improved. We're certainly not getting carried away, as there is plenty of scope within power unit modes and fuel loads for several cars to find a chunk of time before tomorrow. It's encouraging though that the picture we had last week seems to have improved.

The long run data also looks close. Verstappen is still comfortably out front, as we saw last week, but behind him it's going to be a tight battle for the remaining podium spots. We know we've got plenty to fine tune on the balance. It's still early days with the W15, and we're learning how to get lap-time out of it with each run, but it's already feeling very different to the last two years that we have been here.

Check out our Thursday gallery from Bahrain here.