Verstappen fastest as F1’s new era flags off!

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Max Verstappen edged Charles Leclerc to set the pace in last night’s second Formula 1 practice in the F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix 2022, being held at Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) in Sakhir.

The Red Bull Racing driver clocked a fastest lap of one minute 31.936 seconds under BIC’s bright floodlights.

Earlier in the day yesterday, Pierre Gasly had put AlphaTauri on the top of the timesheet in the first practice, which took place in the afternoon.

The F1 field now head to a third session today starting at 3pm, which will then be followed by qualifying.

Last night’s second practice featured representative conditions for qualifying, as both are being held in the evening in cooler condition.

Verstappen’s mark was also the quickest overall for the day. The reigning F1 drivers’ world champion posted 20 laps around BIC’s 5.412-kilometre track in the one-hour evening session, after going for 22 in the morning runs.

At the end of the day’s events, the Dutch driver commented: “The car felt good today, testing here last week means we’ve all started in a good place. “We had quite a straightforward and smooth day so I’m pretty happy, we also tried a few things on the car in each session and they seemed to work well.

You can see that Ferrari are pushing hard and are very close so that’s exciting. “Looking ahead, we’ll have to wait and see with different teams’ engine modes, no one is in quali spec yet so I think everyone still has a lot more to give.

It’s good to see the teams are all closer together, in general that’s what everyone wants and I think over time teams will get even closer together.” Verstappen narrowly beat out Charles Leclerc of Ferrari by a mere 0.087 seconds in practice two.

Leclerc’s best lap was 1:32.023, while teammate Carlos Sainz was third-quickest in the other Ferrari 0.584s off the pace, with a best lap of 1:32.520. George Russell had a quickest lap of 1:32.529 to go fourth for Mercedes, while Fernando Alonso with a best lap of 1:32.877 came fifth for Alpine.

“It was a good day for us today and we completed our programme efficiently,” said Alonso, a two-time F1 world champion.

“It was a lot cooler today than last week at testing, so we tried to adapt to these different conditions and learn how the tyres work at these temperatures. Obviously some tweaks are still needed on the setup of the car.

“We’ll look at this all tonight and digest all of our information. There are many questions left for us to answer tomorrow, but I think overall it was a positive day for us.” Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas made up for not clocking a time in the day’s opening practice by going sixth in the second session with a best lap of 1:32.951, while Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez came seventh in 1:32.958. Mick Schumacher finished eighth for Haas in 1:33.085, Lewis Hamilton was ninth for Mercedes in 1:33.144, and Kevin Magnussen made it two Haas cars in the top 10 with a best lap of 1:33.183. “We recovered strongly from FP1, ending the day with an important session and plenty of laps, so I can say we saved the day,” said Bottas, who missed out on the first session with a technical issue.

“There’s still lots to improve, like for everyone else so early in the season, but you can definitely tell the potential is there: in the running we did in the evening session, the car felt really nice, especially on high fuel.

It feels we’re not far off where we want to be, which is really positive. “It will be interesting to see how it will be tomorrow, in qualifying, when everyone puts out everything they’ve got: now, however, it’s time to look at the data we collected together with Zhou and the team and learn from it.”

The rest of the second practice classification from 11th to 20th were Lando Norris of McLaren, Esteban Ocon of Alpine, first practice pace-setter Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda of AlphaTauri, Guanyu Zhou of Alfa Romeo, Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg in the Aston Martins, Daniel Ricciardo of McLaren, and the Williams pair of Nicholas Latifi and Alexander Albon.

Earlier yesterday, Gasly was fastest in the first practice of F1’s new era with a lap time of 1:34.193 with 23 laps. Leclerc and Sainz followed, with Leclerc just under fourtenths-of-a-second off Gasly’s benchmark in 1:34.557. Sainz had a quickest time of 1:34.611.

Russell was fourth in 1:34.629, while Verstappen came fifth with a fastest lap of 1:34.742. Stroll, Hamilton and Alonso were sixth through eight, and Tsunoda with Perez completing the top 10. Rounding off the first practice classification were Zhou, Ocon, Latifi, Hulkenberg, Albon, Norris, Ricciardo, Schumacher, Magnussen, and Bottas, who did not set a time.