Mercedes boss Toto Wolff talks about the challenges Bahrain presents to F1’s teams and drivers

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain is an extreme circuit that is hard on the tyres, particularly the rears, owing to the rough track surface, mix of corner types, long straights and heavy braking zones. Car set-up in Bahrain is focused on low and medium-speed corners because the high-speed turns can be taken easily flat.

Mechanical grip is also important, to propel the cars out of the slow corners.

This is the opposite to tracks like Silverstone, where highspeed corner performance is the priority. A specific challenge in Bahrain is the differing conditions in practice.

FP1 and FP3 take place in the warm temperatures and sunshine of daytime, but FP2 is run in the cooler twilight temperatures also experienced during qualifying and the race.
Temperature and track conditions have a huge impact on the tyres and car handling, so it makes car set-up particularly difficult. Running in FP1 and FP3 therefore has limited value, so those daylight sessions are typically reserved for working on test items or tyre behaviour.

The pressure is then on the FP2 run plan, because the twilight session is the only one to provide representative conditions for qualifying and the race. So, track time must be maximised in this session.

The sand is also a factor in Bahrain, although as we observed in pre-season testing, it doesn’t tend to cause much drama for the cars and drivers, nor does it impact lap time too much. The sand does however impact track evolution and cause a reset, so it is preferable not to be the first car out on track in a session