24/02/2023
NEWS STORY
Zhou tops the timesheets and Russell suffers a hydraulics failure as Max Verstappen enjoys final outing in RB19 before the season opener.
Though testing rarely sets the world alight - especially in locations like Bahrain where there is no chance of interference from the Weather Gods - today did have its moments.
OK, next weekend's result appears to be a foregone conclusion - of which more later - but in terms of the rest of the field it is still too early to start claiming who's hot and who's not.
The highlight of the day had to be this morning's close encounter of the wrong kind, when Carlos Sainz almost came to grief after a mix up during the practice red flag restart procedure, almost hit by Lewis Hamilton as he tried to make his way around Lando Norris' McLaren.
This afternoon, while the practice restart took place without any issues, just moments earlier, as the VSC system check got underway, Guanyu Zhou was stranded at the end of the pitlane whilst Logan Sargeant's Williams appeared to suffer a phantom hybrid issue. On the day that season 5 of Drive to Survive was launched, the 'fake' dramas seemed appropriate.
Anyway, back to Verstappen.
Having driven all day yesterday, this morning the Dutchman handed over to teammate Sergio Perez., who completed 76 laps without incident.
After the lunch break, whilst the majority of teams were still working on their cars, adapting them for the change of driver, Verstappen was already out on track and posting a time good enough to go third.
While other drivers began to head out Verstappen improved to second and then, inevitably, went quickest.
After 18 laps the Dutchman headed back to his garage, where the screens went up to in order to keep out prying eyes.
With Zak Brown having already warned that not too much should be expected of McLaren in the early races, as if to prove the point Oscar Piastri was out of his car and talking to his mechanics, there were few smiles.
There were even less smiles at Mercedes when George Russel ground to a halt with a hydraulics failure, causing the second red flag of the test.
"We've confirmed it was a hydraulic failure," Mercedes subsequently tweeted. "That's likely to be the end of our running for today." Indeed it was.
Fernando Alonso was one of three drivers doing 'a Verstappen', in the sense that they were at the wheel all day, the others being Zhou and Logan Sargeant.
Still unsure who his teammate will be next weekend, Alonso went second, repeating the order we witnessed yesterday. Even more impressive was that the fact this was the Spaniard's 116th lap.
Shortly after, albeit on the very softest rubber, de Vries went second.
At a time most were finally looking to up the pace, Leclerc opted for a short run on the hardest compound, while Zhou went for the softest in the range and swept to the top of the timesheets.
Yesterday, Verstappen completed 157 laps, while today Alonso completed 130, Zhou 133 and Sargeant a very impressive 154. Other than the obvious reliability, the fact that all three finished in the Top Seven suggests they also have pace.
While it was all smiles at Alfa Romeo at Alpine there was frustration as the team experienced what appears to be an issue with the rear axle that meant it took minutes - minutes!!! - to remove rear wheels on Ocon's car.
Then, as the VSC system check got underway, as if to add a little drama to the moment Zhou ground to a halt at the end of the pitlane, while Logan slowly climbed from the car as if it was ‘live'.
While this was initially assumed to be practice for the American rookie, as mechanics gathered around the car clearly not wanting to touch it, it was unclear if the car was indeed live. The car was subsequently pushed into its garage and cordoned off.
Once again we has a red flag restart practice and once the all-clear was given, de Vries headed out, followed by Hulkenberg, Piastri, Gasly, Leclerc and Verstappen.
Again they lined up on the grid, this time with de Vries on pole, and again the start was aborted and they headed off on another formation lap. Unlike this morning however there was no confusion, and de Vries led Hulkenberg towards Turn 1.
As we said, Verstappen and Red Bull look a comfortable bet, and while Ferrari looks to be second best, what of Mercedes and the rest?
Among those best suited to give an opinion, is Pat Symonds, formerly with Williams and Renault and now technical boss at F1 itself.
"I think what we are seeing here is what we are seeing a lot of in the new cars," he said of the RB19, while talking to Sky Sports, "we are not seeing the revolution, we saw that last year, what we are seeing now is the evolution.
"If you look at that car now you will not see many changes... the aerodynamicists have had to optimise and with the rule change on the ride height they lost performance and I think talking to people up and down the pit lane Red Bull have found that performance back again.
"A lot of work will have been going on to get the weight off and I think those are the things we are looking at this year. You've got these stringent safety tests that the chassis has to go through, little things like the roll hoop being smaller means you can save a little weight. Most of that losing weight won't be visible things. It's a small thing to do, it's also a very expensive thing to do, but it's a little performance.
"This is a time of day when you start setting some fast times," he continued. "That sort of things is not important to a team like Red Bull. Perez has done a very impressive race distance today headlining the fact that I think they are still the dominant team.
"Ferrari is an interesting concept," he added. "Because when you want to add performance to a car, a lot of it is about getting out of corners and using your performance on the straight. The interesting thing to me about the Ferrari, I still see this car porpoising quite badly. Where I see others looking quite better, they've still got the performance and yet the Ferrari is still bouncing... If you start pushing the limit again, of course you can get the car to porpoise again... There is a huge amount you can do on your simulators these days, but that final little bouncing it shows up in testing.
"That Mercedes, that is the car I have seen a massive difference in the ride compared to last year. It looks completely better. I think they are in for a much better season..."
The looks on the faces of Toto and his team as they reflected in the paddock at session end suggested otherwise, though the same could surely be said of McLaren, Alpine, AlphaTauri...
Like Verstappen, Zhou and Sargeant have had their final outings before next week's season opener, while, with Lance Stroll's fitness still in doubt, Felipe Drugovich is back in the Aston Martin tomorrow.
"Lap times in testing are of limited value," admitted Alfa Romeo, "but the team can take great encouragement by the good mileage racked up by Zhou Guanyu.
"We are well aware this is testing, of course, and everyone is trying different settings, but it feels nice to see my name and that of the team up there in the timing sheets," said the Chinese driver. "It's been a positive day overall, we got more mileage in and went through all the targets and tasks we had set for ourselves, so I can say I am happy.
"The car felt reasonably good, both in daytime and night-time conditions, and I felt more confident pushing as the day progressed. Today was the final day of pre-season 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."
"It was a good day for us with a lot of laps completed, said Alonso, "just what you need in a new car. We had a busy programme and tried a lot of different things.
"After a long winter it is good to get strong mileage under your belt early on and there is no better training than driving a Formula One car. I now feel fitter and sharper ahead of next week, which will be my first race with Aston Martin and I am very excited about that. I have another half day tomorrow so we will use this to continue learning and collecting as much data as possible. I am looking forward to getting back in the car tomorrow afternoon."
"We are pleased with the progress we have made during our second day," added team boss Mike Krack. "Fernando completed 130 laps, allowing us to run through our full test plan and gather further valuable data.
"We are continuing to get to know Fernando's driving style and what he wants from the car, but his feedback has been incredibly constructive and the changes we implemented overnight were received well.
"It is very difficult to make predictions on competitiveness based on a few days of testing because we have the full range of tyres available, different fuel levels and so many other variables to consider. We are just focussing on ourselves, preparing as much as we can, and getting through the job list.
"It will be next week after qualifying when we get a much clearer picture of how competitive we are. For our third and final testing day, we are pleased to have Felipe returning to the AMR23 during the morning session, with Fernando taking over in the afternoon."
Check out our Friday gallery from Bahrain, here.
"It's been another positive day," said de Vries, who ended the day fourth on the timesheets, "even though we had a red flag. The session was suspended, but we still managed to get through our programme. We were able to test quite a few things, so in terms of our day we are happy, and in terms of performance it is hard to say.
"We have one more day of testing tomorrow, so hopefully we can complete everything and put it all together for the race."
"This morning we achieved the most laps compared to the rest of the field, so it was a good session," added Tsunoda. "This also allowed us to catch up on our programme, as we fell short on the number of laps we wanted to run yesterday.
"Today we mainly focused on long runs where we found some limitations, but at the same time, there are positives to take from the good data we gathered for the race, which we can continue to build on tomorrow.
"Overall, I'm happy with my driving and feedback to the team, which is constantly improving. I will continue to work like this, and I'm excited to start working on short runs tomorrow."
"Overall, we had a very productive day," said chief race engineer, Jonathan Eddolls. "The car was very reliable and enabled us to complete 159 laps with no major issues.
"Yuki was in the car in the morning and, after the usual rake running to start with, he went straight into a race simulation to begin preparations for Round One. We completed a two-stop strategy and tested the new Pirelli C1 compound as part of that, to gather important data ahead of next week. Yuki closed the morning with some set-up work, trying to improve the balance in the hot conditions.
"Nyck took over in the afternoon and the focus was on aero work, trying some larger set-up items which we wouldn't usually have the opportunity to test during the time-limited Free Practice sessions. Nyck then made very good progress with a series of new tyre runs towards the end of the day, finding lap time and improving on each set, which was great to see.
"The testing today has highlighted some areas of the car performance that we need to dig into deeper tonight through data analysis, so we can make changes and find even more performance for the final day of testing tomorrow."
At Haas, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg completed a total of 135 laps. Magnussen was behind the wheel for the opening session, focusing his efforts on three areas. Aero testing was completed during the installation lap, while a large part of the morning was spent on developing mechanical balance to compare against data from the day before. The final stint of the morning was spent on high-fuel runs, racking up a total of 67 laps before the lunchbreak.
Hulkenberg returned for the afternoon with reliability being the main objective for the session. As dusk descended with 90 minutes left on the clock, the red flag was brought out. 15 minutes later running resumed, and the German headed back out on track with the C4 tire for the first time. An additional three runs to the end of the session resulted in a total of 68 laps, with a fastest lap time of 1:32.466 (P5).
"It feels good," said Magnussen, "but it's always hard to see where you are against your competitors. So far, we feel good and we're happy with what we've got. We need to do more work to understand the car better and today we got into a different area, trying things we didn't yesterday, so we're learning.
"here have been very few problems and we're now getting into more performance related testing which is nice and more interesting for us."
"Today was a positive day," added Hulkenberg, "it was a good, busy afternoon where we got lots of things done I feel and a lot of interesting data collected as well. Also for myself I'm building more of a connection with the car and trying it in different conditions, as you do in testing.
"I don't think a qualifying run is the number one priority for me - I've done enough and I know what's coming - and I drive in the morning tomorrow where the temperatures are not as representative."
"Today our plan was to start, in the morning, with some aerodynamic measurements while still targeting to stay as much as possible on track and get mileage in," said Simone Resta, the team's technical director. "We were then testing through different compounds, different fuel levels and several test items including various procedures.
"This afternoon we repeated a similar program with different compounds and a wider range of fuel levels. We ended up completing 135 laps on the day, so it's been quite a positive day.
"We've learned a lot of things and we're putting together all the best conclusions approaching the third day of testing - we try to put everything together to end the test on a high."
At Ferrari the SF-23 completed a further 138 laps, with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc both driving the car, as they did yesterday.
Once again, it was Sainz who drove first, continuing the work on set-up and tyre evaluation, running Pirelli's prototype compound and the C3. The Spaniard ran with different fuel loads, setting a best time of 1'32"725. After doing 72 laps yesterday, he added 70 today.
Leclerc also worked on set-up, as well as evaluating the C2 compound tyres followed by the C3, with which he set his best time of 1'32"725. In the final part of the session, he ran in race trim with a heavier fuel load, bringing his total laps for the day to 68 (making a total of 132 so far).
For tomorrow's final day of testing, Leclerc will drive in the morning before passing the baton to his team-mate at the lunch break.
"It's been another positive day," said Sainz. "Reliability was again very good and we've been able to explore all the set-ups we targeted to test. We keep exploring the limits of the car and finding potential areas where we can maximise performance. The main target is to keep up the good work tomorrow and get ready for next week."
"We ran various tests today, with our main focus on the car's set-up," added Leclerc. "We are working hard and it's still too early to make any judgement yet. It was good to get some more laps down and we will keep pushing forward by analysing our data ahead of the last day of testing tomorrow."
"Conditions were like yesterday apart from a brief period after the lunchbreak when the wind dropped significantly," said Dave Robson, Williams head of vehicle performance. "This stability allowed us to continue the work from yesterday and to push the FW45 a little harder.
"Logan drove for the whole day, which gave him an excellent work out ahead of the grand prix. He was able to use a lot of new tyre sets and therefore had the opportunity to experiment with setup and tyre management. He did an excellent job, completed a lot of useful work and although his pre-season testing has been very short in time, he has been able to complete a lot of valuable laps.
"Alex returns to the car tomorrow and with slightly different conditions expected, we will get to see some different characteristics of FW45. We are looking forward to a third day of reliable running to allow us to complete our season preparation; naturally there are a lot of areas of opportunity with a new car and tomorrow is about identifying and unlocking as many of them as possible in time for next week's grand prix."
"I think today tops the most kilometres I've ever done in a day," said Sargeant. "I was able to physically hold up well. We got through so much running which is a testament to the team and the hard work they've put in. We moved in the right direction the whole day and it was really positive.
"We looked at shorter runs this morning and considering where the track temp was, I was relatively happy with how the car was feeling. Throughout the long runs this afternoon the car was in a good window and I could drive it exactly how I wanted to. There are still somethings we're chasing but I'll leave that up to Alex tomorrow.
"Overall, I'm really happy with where we've got the car and I can't wait to go racing next week."
Check out our Friday gallery from Bahrain, here.
"It was a solid day with everything running smoothly," said Oscar Piastri who ended the day ninth quickest. "Today's session has increased my learning of the car and I feel like I am improving with every lap. It was good to focus on different areas throughout my drive, including the race simulation.
"We are going in a good direction which is pleasing to see on day two of testing and I'm looking forward to getting back out on track in the session tomorrow morning."
"It's been a productive day for everyone in the team," added Norris. "I did a lot of testing on a number of different setups as planned and we also put in a solid number of laps which is positive. I'm looking forward to heading into tomorrow's running in the evening to finish off our run plan."
"It was a positive day," echoed team boss, Anreas Stella. "The car has been reliable, and we have recovered some of the mileage we were short of yesterday.
"Lando went through some basic tests in the morning which weren't performance focused. We have also saved the soft tyres for day three where Lando will run in conditions which are more representative of a race weekend.
"Oscar's runs today have been more focused on the race weekend preparation with a range of different setups. We are happy we have achieved all these objectives on day two and look forward to a positive final test day on track tomorrow."
Alpine completed 108 laps with Esteban Ocon continuing driving duties in the morning and Pierre Gasly taking over after the lunch break.
Ocon's morning was slightly hindered by minor interruptions as he completed 49 laps while Gasly rounded off the day by taking the team over the century mark with 59 laps across the afternoon-evening session.
The team looks to close off the three-day test tomorrow with a busy programme with Gasly returning to the A523 in the morning before Ocon finishes the test in the afternoon.
"It's been another productive day for the team today," said Pat Fry, the team's chief technical officer. "With only three days of testing, we always aim to be ambitious by fitting in a busy programme packed with many different test items and, subsequently, various set-up changes.
"While we managed to complete over 100 laps today, the usual teething problems that do occur at pre-season testing did pop up throughout the day and that certainly held us back from completing more mileage. Nevertheless, we've gathered plenty of useful data to work through to help us continue our learning process of our 2023 package.
"In addition, it was good to have a smooth evening run under representative conditions with an eye on preparing for next weekend's first race of the season."
A disrupted second day saw Mercedes afternoon programme curtailed owing to an hydraulic failure. Prior to that, the team completed close to a century of laps, gathering valuable data and adding learnings to yesterday's running.
Hamilton logged 72 tours of the Bahrain International Circuit across the morning session. The hotter ambient and track temperatures made conditions tricky, with the team focusing on understanding the overall car balance.
Russell took over the W14 for the afternoon starting with aero rake work. Attention switched to balance checks as dusk fell, prior to a planned programme of long runs; George using the C3 tyre to set his fastest lap of the day, a 1m33.654s. With 26 laps under his belt, and 90 minutes left in the session, the aforementioned hydraulic failure ended the Team's day prematurely during George's first long run.
"We've not had a strong second day," admitted Andrew Shovlin, "stopping on track with a reliability issue wasn't great and we have struggled to get the car balanced well across the changing conditions.
"We've got some investigations going on to understand why this has been such a challenge today when yesterday it was fairly straight forward. That work will continue into the night and no doubt we'll understand more come the morning.
"It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can understand the drop in performance and mitigate the lost track time."
"It was a difficult morning," admitted Hamilton. "The hot temperatures made it challenging with the tyres overheating, as we often see here in Bahrain.
"We got through our run plan though and it was good to get that mileage in. Everyone is working incredibly hard, staying focused, and we're discovering everything we can about the W14. We've got lots of work planned for the final day of pre-season testing tomorrow.
"Unfortunately, we had an hydraulic issue this afternoon which cost us some running," added Russell. "Even though we didn't complete our full programme, we uncovered some interesting things in the data throughout the day. That is a positive and we will analyse these overnight with the aim of finding lap time.
"We haven't unlocked everything yet in the W14 and everyone is working hard to do so and maximise our final day of testing tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Bahrain, here.