The first day at F1 Bahrain GP had plenty of action in the daylight as well as under floodlight with plenty to talk about.
At the front, Ferrari seemed to be back on track at Bahrain International Circuit to start Bahrain GP weekend with both Charles Leclerc (FP1) and Sebastian Vettel (FP2) topping a session each, ahead of the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.
The expected performance from Ferrari was there to be seen but team principal Mattia Binotto shot down the excitement levels by admitting that the team ran a different engine mode at the higher level to the other teams as they carried out their work.
While it can be said that they are certainly close to Mercedes but Binotto didn’t want to raise undue hopes just yet. “We focused on ourselves and on our programme, trying to react and address the issues we had [in Australia],” said Binotto.
“The delta you see here is not too significant. Tomorrow it will be certainly a tough battle. The others will be very strong tomorrow. It’s quite obvious, you may see the GPS data – the speed on the straights, we were certainly pushing different engine modes compared to what the others were pushing.
“What is important is staying focused on ourselves. We improved our situation after Australia. This one is quite a different track. Let’s say we didn’t have today the problem we suffered in the Australia, thanks to the track and thanks to the modification we made.”
Vettel, on the other hand, didn’t seem pleased with the day despite having ended up second in FP1 and leading FP2. The German said the pace was down to the team being on different strategy which means that they will have to dig deeper on Saturday.
Teammate Leclerc was satisfied but raised the same alarm bells about its rivals. At the same time, Mercedes seem to believe that Ferrari has the upperhand as things stand as they reckon their car doesn’t have the same advantage like in Australia.
Both Hamilton and Bottas had balance issues in FP1 which they said was better in FP2 but they were clear the Ferrari are ahead. The team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin also agreed with Ferrari on the power mode the team was running on.
“It certainly seems like we don’t have the advantage we had in Melbourne and also that Ferrari have made a good step forwards,” he said. “Through the corners we had a decent balance on a single lap and the apex speeds look pretty good compared to our competitors.
“Ferrari are clearly quick on the straights here but it may be that they are running their power unit a little bit harder than we were today; we’ll find out tomorrow.” Behind the Top 2 teams, the Red Bull Racing duo had a mixed run as they lagged from the top.
While Max Verstappen hovered around the Top 6, Pierre Gasly couldn’t set a quicker time in FP2 to be up there. Both complained about the lack of performance on the soft compound which meant they couldn’t set a lap time as quick as they wanted to.
However, they were mostly happy and confident with the medium compound and the long run pace for Bahrain GP race. Meanwhile, the pack behind Red Bull is still not set with Renault, Haas, McLaren and Toro Rosso – all looked good at certain point of the session.
Renault had Nico Hulkenberg inside the top half but Daniel Ricciardo couldn’t find any rhythm as he struggled with the balance of the car. The Australian felt better with the long run but still wasn’t 100 percent as he heads with a bit of an unknown on Saturday.
At the same time, Haas had a pretty routine Friday, while McLaren and Toro Rosso hovered around the Top 10 with at least one car inside. Both seemed confident that Q3 is a possibility but aren’t celebrating just yet.
On the other hand, Racing Point struggled to find pace with Lance Stroll crashing in FP1 and then damaging the floor in FP2 while Sergio Perez facing mechanical issues. The team admitted that the day wasn’t ideal with a chance of Q3 looking slim at this point.
In fact, Perez went on to state that making it into Q2 will also be difficult as the update package they brought for the start of the season is still raw and hasn’t delivered to its full extent. “It’s been a challenging day to start our Bahrain GP weekend.
Steady, Lance 😮
Those tyres are cooked, and there's some front wing damage after the Canadian spins
#BahrainGP 🇧🇭 #F1 pic.twitter.com/G8GgxWYyV4— Formula 1 (@F1) March 29, 2019
“We need to work hard to find a few tenths overnight and improve the balance of the car, otherwise it’ll be very difficult to reach Q3,” he summed up. Aside the two Williams cars, the Alfa Romeo Racing team did not have a great FP2 session either.
Water leaks on both Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi‘s cars limited their running to just 16 laps in FP2 with only Giovinazzi managing to do some laps after it was was fixed. As a result, they go into qualifying and the race with lots of unknown and no long run data.
And finally, the Williams cars were at the bottom with George Russell once again beating Robert Kubica. Despite the evident lack of pace, they are confident of making it under 107 percent rule on merit in qualifying to start the Bahrain GP race.
The major worry though was for Kubica, who seemed lost after practice. The Pole ran different set-up to Russell in Australia and suffered. He tried the same set-up to Russell in Bahrain and it felt the same with no difference whatsoever.
“It wasn’t an easy day, but we know what we need to work on,” said Kubica. “After the first race I had some doubts and questions, but those have now gone. In Australia, I ran a different set-up to George.
“We could clearly see the different characteristics of the car, here we started with the same set-up and the characteristics are still different. I just hope we are able to solve it, but we have some tests to do so we understand the reasons.”