Oscar Piastri left fuming as two F1 cars collide for first time this season in clumsy testing incident

Oscar Piastri hit the right-rear of Nico Hulkenberg's Sauber as two F1 cars collided for the first time this season.

The Aussie McLaren ace was on a hot lap on the second day of pre-season testing when he came behind the slow-moving Hulkenberg in the final hour of the morning session.

Hulkenberg drove around the outside of the right-hand hairpin in an effort to stay out of the way. Piastri, put off by the slow-moving car, braked too late into the corner and slid wide into the German.

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The Aussie gestured to Hulkenberg as he drove past him – without touching – later in the lap. Neither car was damaged in the clumsy incident, although both pitted for precautionary checks.

Piastri finished the day 13th on the time sheets, nearly 1.5 seconds slower than the pace-setting Williams of Carlos Sainz.

The incident came only a day after Hulkenberg missed an hour of track time after he suffered a bizarre garage eye injury on the opening day.

A Sauber mechanic was grinding a piece of bodywork in the team's garage when a fragment of material ended up in the German's eye. He was forced to skip pre-arranged media obligations while he saw medics.

New Ferrari recruit Lewis Hamilton was second, having sat atop the time sheets for much of the day before Sainz – the man he replaced at the Scuderia – beat it by .031 of a second.

Hamilton's Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc was third fastest, .083 off the pace, with a much larger gap to Mercedes' George Russell in fourth, 0.43 off Sainz's time.

Hamilton and Sainz were over a second faster than the best lap from the first day of testing, which was set by Lando Norris for McLaren.

"I am really enjoying the car. We're slowly bonding, I think," Hamilton said in televised comments.

"Today was a bit more of getting to explore my interaction with my engineer, but so far I really enjoy driving this car."

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said he was satisfied with the team's work in testing.

"So far so good, but the first topic is reliability. It's always a question at the start of the season, and it went well," Vasseur said part-way through Thursday. He added it's harder to tell a car's true performance because it isn't clear how much fuel competitors have in their cars for test runs.

Adding to the unseasonably cold conditions, the rare sight of light rain in Bahrain was an extra complication for teams trying to learn more about their new cars.

Expecting dry conditions in the desert, only two teams — Aston Martin and Haas — brought wet-weather tires for the test.

There is a third and final day of testing on Friday evening (AEDT). The first race of the season is the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 16.