Mercedes Valtteri Bottas was fastest on the second day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit. The Finn set his fastest time on the C5 tyre to put himself a tenth quicker than the Alpha Tauri of Pierre Gasly, following the difficulties they had on Friday.<\/p>\n
Bottas\u2019s time was set on the soft tyres which was set during the qualifying simulations in the closing hour of the second session, which moved him first into second than into the top spot by a tenth. Meanwhile, Gasly couldn\u2019t improve but again proved the Italian team had a strong car.<\/p>\n
As the start of what will be the start of qualifying in two weeks approached, lap times started to fall. Alfa Romeo\u2019s Antonio Giovinazzi was first to improve on the soft tyre going fastest on a 31.533, which was then lowered by Lando Norris to a 31.323 and then Gasly moved up to third before the red flag.<\/p>\n
Aston Martin\u2019s Lance Stroll did the bulk of the team\u2019s work managing third-fastest following seventy-one laps in the afternoon. However teammate Sebastian Vettel\u2019s lunchtime session was restricted to just ten laps, following a gearbox issue he finished the day sixteenth fastest, behind Sir Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
The seven-time champion still struggling with both handling balance and inconsistency of car behaviour. The strong tailwind didn\u2019t help, sending him into a spin and beaching himself in the gravel. He says Mercedes was still trying to understand the best way to run the car following rule changes that have cut away part of the rear floor intending to reduce downforce.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said: “It’s very gusty, as I found out into Turn Thirteen. The rear doesn’t feel particularly great with this new regulation change but we are trying to find the sweet spot. It’s day two of testing so we’re just focused on doing our job and understanding the car so there is no point being worried just yet.”<\/p>\n
Lando Norris put his McLaren fourth fastest ahead of Giovinazzi by almost three tenths after teammate Daniel Ricciardo topped the lunchtime session. But the Australian had to settle for ninth by the end of the day. The main focus of the day however was Fernando Alonso\u2019s return with Alpine.<\/p>\n
The two times champion managed a hundred and twenty-eight laps on his way to tenth, two seconds off the pace. His first outing since a cycling accident where he fractured his jaw last month appeared trouble-free with him setting his fastest time a 32.3.<\/p>\n
Giovinazzi managed a 30.7 putting himself fastest of the Ferrari powered cars, after going over a tenth quicker than the works Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. However, the Monacan was closer than he was in qualifying in November to the McLaren despite lap times being slower for all the teams.<\/p>\n
Nicholas Latifi was seventh fastest ahead of Red Bull\u2019s Sergio Perez on his first outing for Red Bull. It was another low key day for Red Bull, but the Mexican managed a 31.6, a second and three tenths off the outright pace. Perez completing a hundred a seventeen laps.<\/p>\n
Red Bull may have chosen to focus on getting Perez used to the car rather than chasing performance. Ferrari may have taken the same approach with Carlos Sainz, who did only a race distance on his way to fifteenth fastest, he was over a second and a half behind Leclerc.<\/p>\n
Perez did cause the only proper red flag of the evening, when following the Williams’ Nicholas Latifi on the main straight, it appeared air got under the engine cover which hadn\u2019t been tightening properly blowing the cover off as it started to disintegrate.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was eleventh fastest, going two hundredths ahead of Mick Schumacher\u2019s Haas. Schumacher appearing to be faster than teammate Nikita Mazepin by three tenths.<\/p>\n
It still appears too early to conclude which team will be the fastest, but Mercedes appears to be still in the hunt to be the fastest PU with three of the top four are all powered by Mercedes. Red Bull, you need to think remain Mercedes closest challenger, but you could say Ferrari have made progress the question is how much?<\/p>\n
The fact we have two Ferrari\u2019s in the top ten shows progress in qualifying last November and December there were no Ferrari powered cars in Q3. They could be rebuilding and re-joining that midfield battle at the front with Aston Martin and McLaren, but joining the top three appears to be slightly too much to ask at this point.<\/p>\n
Mercedes Valtteri Bottas was fastest on the second day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit. The Finn set his fastest time on the C5 tyre to put himself a tenth quicker than the Alpha Tauri of Pierre Gasly, following the difficulties they had on Friday. Bottas\u2019s time was set on the soft tyres<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[47,115,116,122,123,125,167,198,199,245,246,369,390,493,674,707,709,882,885,1130,1131,1287,1290,1298,1330,1417,1434,1544,1574,1637,1638,1642,1749,1791,1808,1843,1973,2105,2152,2186],"class_list":["post-8705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-47","tag-alfa-romeo","tag-alfa-romeo-ferrari","tag-alpha-tauri","tag-alpha-tauri-honda","tag-alpine","tag-antonio-giovinazzi","tag-aston-martin","tag-aston-martin-mercedes","tag-bahrain-international-circuit","tag-bahrain-test","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-testing","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-ferrari","tag-haas","tag-haas-ferrari","tag-lance-stroll","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-mercedes","tag-mick-schumacher","tag-nicholas-latifi","tag-nikita-mazepin","tag-pierre-gasly","tag-pre-season-testing","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-honda","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sakhir","tag-sebastian-vettel","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-testing","tag-valtteri-bottas","tag-williams-mercedes","tag-yuki-tsunoda"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}