Bahrain International Circuit · Sakhir
57 laps · 5.412 km per lap · Pirelli C1 Hard / C2 Medium / C3 Soft
Bahrain International Circuit is a bonus circuit not on the 2026 calendar — the 2026 race at Sakhir was cancelled and the 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix was run at Sepang instead. The circuit sits in the Sakhir desert and is where every Formula 1 team completes its pre-season testing, making it one of the most thoroughly understood circuits in F1 before a season even begins. The wide, sweeping layout mixes long straights with a technical, undulating middle sector.
Desert sand blown onto the track combines with genuinely abrasive asphalt to produce some of the highest tyre degradation anywhere F1 races, and the combination of extreme heat and abrasion gives Bahrain one of the highest blistering risks on the calendar as well.
Run at night under floodlights, the circuit's width and multiple straight-into-corner combinations give it a solidly above-average overtaking score, making it one of the more strategically varied races on the calendar despite the tyre challenge.
Pirelli nominates the C1 Hard, C2 Medium and C3 Soft for Bahrain — a harder allocation reflecting the circuit's severe abrasion and heat. Even this trio wears faster here than the same compounds would at a milder circuit.
Even the hardest compound in Pirelli's range faces real degradation at Bahrain. Most strategies lean on this tyre for the bulk of the race distance, with close monitoring for blistering.
A common starting tyre, though its life is short enough here that even a modest opening stint requires careful management.
Q3 runners start on the Soft under the usual rules, but its life is dramatically shorter at Bahrain than at most circuits — teams treat any Soft stint beyond 10-12 laps as a genuine risk.
Bahrain's combination of severe tyre degradation and above-average overtaking potential creates one of the more dynamic strategic environments on the calendar. Unlike a circuit where track position alone decides the race, a driver on fresher tyres here has real chances to pass, making the timing of pit stops a genuine battleground rather than a formality.
This also means undercut and overcut plays are both viable at Bahrain — the pace delta between fresh and worn tyres is large enough to support an undercut, while the circuit's straights give a driver on older tyres a fighting chance via slipstream if they can hold position into the pit window.
The standard plan given Bahrain's severe degradation: a relatively short opening stint on the Medium, followed by two Hard stints that respect the tyre's limits.
For a driver prioritising track position, running two long stints on the Hard minimises pit-stop time loss at the cost of carrying more degradation for longer.
Given the large pace delta between fresh and worn tyres here, an early, well-timed undercut can be genuinely decisive — a driver within striking distance of the car ahead has real incentive to pit first.
The long main straight is Bahrain's clearest deployment zone, and a well-charged battery there sets up genuine overtaking chances into Turn 1's heavy braking zone.
The technical, undulating middle sector offers solid harvesting opportunity across its sequence of corners, giving drivers enough recovered energy to deploy fully on both the main straight and the back straight each lap.
A one-stop is 7.7 s faster than the best two-stop in clean air.
One-stop pit window: lap 22–31 of 57
Single car, no traffic, track position or Safety Car — so PITWALL shows stop count and timing but no compound order: in 2026 the model prefers finishing on softs, while teams mostly ran medium → hard. Model circuit-1. How the model is calibrated →
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