Carlos Sainz was fastest on day two of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the Williams driver set a 29.348 as the sunset to push Lewis Hamilton off the top spot by three-hundredths of a second. Both drivers topped the session they took part in with Sainz coming during the qualifying hour after improving by two hundredths from his first lap after lunch.
He also set his fastest time while others had switched to doing their race runs meaning there was no real challenge to his time. Sainz completed the most laps and appeared to be continuing to push when he spun briefly early on in the afternoon session.
Despite topping the times, Williams team principal James Vowles underlined that his team were not fast enough to compete at the front this year.
That means they are not directly comparable given the time of day, though Hamilton’s new teammate Charles Leclerc was third less than a tenth off Sainz during the afternoon session. Hamilton continued to look comfortable as he showed more progress in getting up to speed in his Ferrari.
Leclerc was comfortably faster than morning runner George Russell, the Mercedes driver was four-tenths behind his former teammate at the lunchbreak. Though the Monacan did spin on the softer medium tyres (C4) before completing eighty-three laps
Russell’s new teammate Kimi Antonelli continued to impress with a clean afternoon where he nearly matched the Englishman on pace, but was just six thousandths behind. Antonelli was the fastest rookie on day two despite a couple of wide moments.
Antonelli was comfortably faster than Lance Stroll by over four-tenths. But it was a scruffy afternoon for the Italian rookie, locking up several times but with no major dramas.
The top four seeming have an advantage though questions remain about Red Bull and McLaren, both yet to show any real pace in what is expected to be a four way team and eight-driver fight with Ferrari and Mercedes.
Pre-season testing is a notoriously unreliable indicator of actual competitive performance because factors such as fuel loads and engine modes are not revealed by the teams and have a major impact on performance.
Liam Lawson was fastest of the full-day runners going seventh, the Red Bull driver was two hundredths off Stroll. That was a decent amount of work for the New Zealander after losing issues with the first real technical issue of the test caused be a water systems problem.
However Red Bull has completed a full race simulation so far but the Milton Keynes-based team will surely show their hand on the final day of testing.
Jack Doohan was eighth as he went six hundredths faster than Pierre Gasly managed during the morning, while the Racing Bull of Isack Hadjar completed the top ten.
Fernando Alonso split the two Racing Bulls, the Spaniard going into the season twenty-five years after his debut in 2001, was a hundredth and a half behind Hadjar and nearly a tenth faster than Yuki Tsunoda.
McLaren doesn’t appear to be concerned about the lack of headline pace, but Lando Norris showed good consistent race pace. Norris completed a full race simulation with not only a strong pace but good tyre wear.
McLaren appeared to focus on aero tests in the morning when Oscar Piastri was in the car before switching to long runs and a race simulation in the afternoon with Norris.
Oscar Piastri was half a tenth faster than Norris, but the Englishman aborted his qualifying run in the final hour after running wide on what looked to be a decent lap at the penultimate corner. That left him nearly two-tenths behind Piastri as he pitted.
Piastri was involved in the first but minor collision of the season when he kissed the rear of Nico Hulkenberg at Turn Seven. The Sauber attempted to move out the way of the McLaren in the corner, but Piastri ran wide at the apex and nudged Hulkenberg’s right rear mid corner. There was no significant damage to either car.
Gabriel Bortoleto was fifteenth going four tenths faster than his Sauber teammate Hulkenberg. Haas are another team who didn’t seem to show their true pace Esteban Ocon going eighteenth and Ollie Bearman nineteenth.
