Sakhir, Bahrain (AFP) — George Russell struck late on the third and final day of Formula One pre-season testing as he edged four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen to post Friday’s fastest time in the closing minutes.

The Mercedes driver clocked one minute and 29.545 seconds to edge Verstappen’s Red Bull by 0.021sec at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain.

Russell’s late move under the floodlights meant that for once Verstappen failed to set the fastest time of any of the winter test days, but said the times might not be a reliable indicator of race speed once the season starts on 16 March in Australia.

“I think we had a decent day today,” the Dutch driver said. “There were a few little problems, but overall, we completed quite a bit of what we wanted to do.”

“I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction,” he said.

Thai driver Alexander Albon was third fastest for Williams, a day after his new teammate, Spaniard Carlos Sainz, took first with the fastest lap of the three-day session in 1:29.348.

Most teams swapped their drivers after the morning session, but Verstappen stayed behind the wheel and drove all the 81 laps recorded by Red Bull during the day. Williams stuck with Albon who completed 136 laps, the most by any driver over the day.

The Ferraris of Briton Lewis Hamilton and Monegasque Charles Leclerc, were sixth and ninth on Friday, but recorded the second and third best times over the three days.

Hamilton was cautiously optimistic after his first outing with his new team.

“This is the most positive feeling I’ve had for a long time,” the Briton said.

“I feel like we’ve built a really good foundation, but these guys out there look really competitive, it looks very close.”

Verstappen said he was not reading too much into the times.

“It is difficult to tell where everyone’s pace is,” he said. “It’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now. You see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams, we tried to focus on our program.”

Some teams, such as McLaren, the reigning constructors’ champion, did little to test lap speed and may have deliberately concealed their full potential from rivals. The British team seemed serene over the three days of testing.

“We were able to work through our plan and collect more data,” British driver Lando Norris told the team website. “We’ll now put it all together and look through everything we’ve completed over the last few days to make sure we’re ready for Melbourne.”

The teams have two weeks to analyze the data and tweak their set-ups ahead of the green light in Australia.