Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz topped the timesheet in Friday’s opening session at pre-season testing as the Maranello team hit back after a dominant opening day for Red Bull. The Spaniard’s time of 1:32.486 took almost half a second out of Max Verstappen’s leading effort from a day earlier, providing encouragement for the Italian side as they seek to end their long wait for a Formula One title.
Zhou Guanyu, Fernando Alonso and Logan Sargeant continued on track for the afternoon testing session at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, while Charles Leclerc replaced his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz behind the wheel of the SF-23 car for the second part of the day.
Green light in Sakhir, with Zhou Guanyu the first out on track, swiftly joined by Max Verstappen. As ever, the Dutchman found pace immediately in the Red Bull and it was by far their quickest time of the day. He was just three tenths off Carlos Sainz. A swift six-lap stint after lunch from the world champion, and his last lap before pitting sees him move up another place. The Red Bull man was just 0.033s behind Carlos Sainz, while Charles Leclerc moved into the top 10 for Scuderia Ferrari – on a rather different programme – meanwhile, two seconds off the pace.
Replacing Lewis Hamilton after lunch, George Russell exited the garage for the first time in the day in that W14.
In the meanwhile Max Verstappen was going for low-fuel runs after lunch and went 0.6s faster than Carlos Sainz with the new fastest time of testing. It was a 1:31.863, just a tenth off the quickest time of this test last year. On the same C3 tyre as the Ferrari SF-23, too – although we don’t know fuel loads of course. The Red Bull man was the only driver pumping in competitive times at that stage of the afternoon session they were indeed very competitive. He improved on his previous best by a couple of tenths, increasing his lead over Carlos Sainz to 0.8s.
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It was a slow start to the afternoon at Mercedes for George Russell, but he gradually managed to lifted himself up the board, posting a 1:34.1, a tenth off Lewis Hamilton earlier, as he was now 11th. Midway through the session Charles Leclerc went fourth for Scuderia Ferrari with a 1:32.745 – a second off the world champion – while Pierre Gasly and Russell went ninth and 10th for Alpine and Mercedes respectively.
It was then the moment for Haas’ best time of the day as the returning Nico Hulkenberg went seventh, usurping new team-mate Kevin Magnussen, with a 1:33.193. Just the 15 laps for Max Verstappen this afternoon at that stage but almost every one of them has been competitive. His last one of the stint was a 1:32.4, which was 0.8s off his best, but was still the second best time of the test so far. With two hours to go until the end of Day 2, Nico Hulkenberg jumped on the second softest tyres to move ahead of Carlos Sainz and Sargeant, still 0.8s off Max Verstappen.
For the following hour, the only improvements came from Oscar Piastri and Pierre Gasly: they jumped up to eighth and ninth, respectively. We did not see Red Bull, Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes on track for a while, with each team working on setup changes.
In the final stages of the afternoon session, we had just our second (actual) red flag of pre-season testing, and the cause was the Mercedes of George Russell stopping out on track. A message on his dashboard read: ‘Hydraulic failure’. That was about the worst time you could have a reliability failure – these were the most representative times for running. Mercedes later confirmed that George Russell did suffer a hydraulic failure. After a bit of a delay, with Mercedes keen to cover their car and not give a rivals to catch a glimpse of the details – particularly the floor – the W14 was lifted onto the recovery truck.
Following a 20-minute or so delay, Verstappen, Hulkenberg, Sargeant, Zhou, Piastri, De Vries and Charles Leclerc were all immediately back on track, with an hour and a half left in the second day of running. These were also the last moments on track for Max Verstappen, who will not be in action until next weekend’s Bahrain GP after today.
Nyck de Vries set AlphaTauri’s best time of the test – a 1:33.145 – to go seventh. 116 laps into his day, 41-year-old Fernando Alonso set his best time: it was a 1:32.429 so, like Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz and Sargeant, he was around eight tenths off Max Verstappen. There were changes aplenty on the timesheet as now De Vries jumped just ahead of Fernando Alonso into second.
There was a bit of a surprise in the final moments of the session: Zhou Guanyu shot to the top of the timesheet with a 1:31.610, which was almost half a tenth quicker than Max Verstappen. While it’s very nice for Alfa Romeo, Anthony Davidson immediately described it as a “glory run”, pointing out that Zhou was on the softest tyre compound, unlike Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso. Just as the testing period for the Virtual Safety Car began, Zhou Guanyu appeared to suffer some sort of technical issue as he attempted to make his way out of the garage, and pulled up at the end of the pitlane. His Alfa Romeo mechanics ran down to the pit lane and wheeled him back along it, protected by a man with a yellow flag.
As was the case this morning, we went through the starting procedure in the final minutes of the afternoon session: as the process dictates, we had an aborted start, and will had an actual one. This morning’s almost ended in disaster as Lando Norris was caught dozing and was almost hit by Carlos Sainz.
And that remains a nice moment for Alfa Romeo and Zhou Guanyu, as the Chinese driver ends the day at the top of the timesheet. His run was on softer – and faster – tyres than those of Max Verstappen, who finished narrowly behind him in second place. Red Bull still appear to be the team to beat, as Charles Leclerc ended Day 2 of testing with 68 laps and a personal best lap time of 1:32.725.
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