“The car felt reasonably good, both in daytime and night-time conditions, and I felt more confident pushing as the day progressed.”
Zhou was 18th in the 2022 championship, his first season in the sport, scoring six points in total.
Teammate Valtteri Bottas, the vastly-experienced former Mercedes driver, was 10th with 49 points.
“Today was the final day of preseason testing for me, and I am very much looking forward to the start of the season next week. I feel ready and excited about the new campaign and I can’t wait to be racing again,” Zhou said.
Red Bull driver Verstappen, who was fastest on Thursday, was second behind Zhou in 1 min 31.650 sec off a modest 47 laps with fellow two-time world champion Fernando Alonso third in an Aston Martin with a best of 1 min 32.205 sec.
Rookie Nyck De Vries of AlphaTauri was fourth.
In 2022, Verstappen won 15 of 22 races, including nine of the last 11 as he swept to back-to-back world titles. His final points tally of 454 was comfortably 146 ahead of second-place Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.
“Every time I jumped in the car today, I felt comfortable,” said the Dutch star who will be seeking a third successive title in 2023. “We will see how quick we are next week, but I’m feeling positive.”
Carlos Sainz was the best of the Ferrari duo on Friday, coming home in sixth place while Leclerc was eighth.
The Mercedes of George Russell and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton were down in 13th and 15th spots respectively with their progress hampered by a hydraulic failure.
“It was a difficult morning,” Hamilton said. “The hot temperatures made it challenging with the tyres overheating, as we often see here in Bahrain.”
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