The Friday in F1 Bahrain GP was not the one to disappoint as Aston Martin really livened up the discussions of where they are compared to others.
Even with the whispers of tF1 Bahrain GP: Aston in mix; Mercedes struggle; midfield & morehe F1 2023 season belonging to Red Bull post the pre-season test, the Friday in Bahrain GP did not have them in the headlines but the performance of Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin making all the noise.
All winter and since last week, everyone had their say about the pecking order but after Alonso put the Aston Martin on P1 in FP2, they were in notice. Even though, Red Bull and even Ferrari remains as the favourites in the larger fight, the ‘green’ cars will be seen.
With Mercedes having a slow start, Aston Martin could really push for podium places and even push them down further. Alonso is not thinking too far ahead though as he is downplaying the notion of fighting for pole or race win in the two days.
Teammate Lance Stroll didn’t disappoint either with the injured wrist. He was seen relaxing his hands and also taking help to get out of the car, but the Canadian insists he is fine and that he was just relieving some pressure to keep himself ready for the days ahead.
Over at Red Bull, Max Verstappen was fine with the day despite some one-lap struggles. It was the case for both him and Sergio Perez, where both were satisfied with the race pace. Ferrari spent most of their time checking through various set-ups.
They did the same last week and continued to do so here but were optimistic about their chances. Carlos Sainz did not hook up a good lap as thing didn’t as per plan after FP1 spin. Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, was quite downbeat after their Friday show.
Alonso: “Well, obviously, it’s another step into the right direction. The car still feels good, but we need to wait and see. At the moment, there is not much focus still on times. We have to improve a few things on car in terms of set-up, but also it’s very early days. Even in the meetings, the approach to racing, we’re still changing a lot of things and trying to reinforce the team in every area, not only car performance. It’s going to be a very interesting process, but I think the team is learning every day. No, no, no – not at all.
“I’m not thinking that high [of a pole fight], to be honest. Actually, I don’t know exactly what position will be a good one for us. After testing we were thinking to be in Q3 with both cars, score as many points as possible in these first couple of races, try not to make mistakes – it’s very easy to make a mistake. It’s a completely new team, new procedures, the team as well, so we have to be with the feet on the ground. The target has to be fighting for the championship, but in the long-term – I don’t think in this year, yet.”
Stroll: “Yeah I’m feeling alright, a little stiff but it was overall okay in the car. It was so great to be back in the car today and get my first proper laps of 2023 in. It has only been 13 days since my accident and at that point I was not sure I would be back in an F1 car so soon, so to be here with the team is amazing. We lost a little bit of time in FP1 with an ignition issue, but once that was fixed we ran well and collected some important data to work through tonight. It is clear that the team have made some really good progress over the winter break; the car was feeling great to drive and I am excited to get back behind the wheel tomorrow. And, no, no, I just was protecting it; it feels a little bit more comfortable so I feel like I can definitely drive no problem.”
Verstappen: “Aston Martin quick. But you could see that already in testing that they were very competitive, so yeah, they had a great day. For us, still a bit of work to do – I mean we know we have a very competitive car. It’s just now about putting all the pieces together. I mean FP1 was really bad, just couldn’t get a balance, which was a bit odd because in testing, whatever we tried – OK, some things were maybe not amazing – but we were not that far out, so a few things to understand. Even the start of FP2 was a bit difficult but I think on the final run, even not having a good reference and confidence up until then in the car, the lap was not too bad in the short run. And also, the car felt a bit more connected.
“And then I think the long run with all the changes we made, I was quite surprised with the pace we had – I think overall the car is not too bad in the long run. I just need to find my rhythm again with the car and just the way the car is driving from short run to long run. I think if I feel happy in the car again and I can push like I want to push in the car on one lap, then for sure we are very fast – but it’s also of course making sure that the car doesn’t fall out of the window for the long run.”
Sainz: “We were just testing some things in the car, trying to finalise a few things that we wanted to try in FP1, scrubbing the medium tyres which we wanted to get rid of in FP1. It didn’t go to plan, clearly it wasn’t intentional, but it was a test that went wrong and we came back for FP2. I lost a bit of track time, lost a bit of rhythm, and probably paid the price in FP2. Still the car doesn’t feel the same as it did in testing, so we’re putting an eye into what it could be. The track conditions have changed a bit. We’ll have a good look overnight and try to put it together tomorrow.
“I think we all said that we expect Aston Martin to be in the fight. I’m not sure if they have enough to beat the Red Bull – who knows? But they definitely seem to be in the fight. I hope, still, that focusing on ourselves we can do a step tomorrow and get ourselves back up there. If the car feels like it did in testing, and I manage to put a good lap together… obviously the field looks very tight, and it’s impossible to predict, but it can definitely be better than today.”
Hamilton: “We found out we are a long way off. We kind of knew that a little bit in the test, but it’s a big gap. I’m trying everything I can out there but looking to Red Bull, just looking at the long runs they are a second a half faster. So, we’ve got a lot to work on. I think I got the car to the best place I can get. Set-up-wise we can continue to tweak a little here and there, but it’s going to be small bits here and there, which is milliseconds. It’s not going to be the closing of the gap of a second. Nonetheless we’ll just keep our head down tonight, we’ll go through the data, continue to work, and try and progress tomorrow.
“But we’ve got to try and find out if there is any way we can find performance overnight. Do I believe we can close the gap at some stage? Yes. But I think it’s quite hard with the concept we have. I thought Ferrari were second, but I think on the long runs we are quite close to Ferrari, It looks like the Aston is second and we are between third and fourth, so we are kind of where we were last year, if not a little behind. But we are just on the wrong track, and so we’ve got to just continue to graft away, and get ourselves on the right track. But right now, we’re long way off the guys at the front.”
With this pack done, the others behind are not too far in what can be termed as an extended F1 midfield pack. Haas were a surprise with Nico Hulkenberg ending up in the Top 10 for both the sessions, same as Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu.
The two Ferrari-powered cars had a better Friday than the main team. But the German is not resting on the fast time, he reckons the team still has to work on long run pace and maintain a good level of tyre degradation too which will make the difference.
But the Alfa Romeo pair were happy with their day and thought they are where they expected to be around the Top 10 and perhaps in the points. For Alpine, it was the first show of real pace after keeping it to themselves in testing.
They were again around the lower half of the Top 10 with more pace to come as per both the drivers. For McLaren, though, it was a better showing than how their test went. They still have a job at hand to finish in points, but they have a good baseline.
At the same time, the AlphaTauri pair weren’t too pleased with how the Friday went, with Yuki Tsunoda noting of a better start than 2022 but still lacking performance. Williams too found FP2 better than FP1, with them in the area of AlphaTauri and Haas.
Hulkenberg: “I wish I had taken a few tenths out to be honest and kept them in my pocket. It’s one lap pace… it’s fine, and it’s fun, it’s nice. But… on Sunday, that’s obviously where the goal is, and where it matters, and I feel that’s where we have a lot of work to do, and some homework. I need to find pace and deg as well that we need to work on. There are things to take away from here and to build on, and progress. I was just told that the delta was quite large from the medium to the soft and it felt that way. It’s fun when you get fresh rubber and you just have a lot of grip, that’s when a Formula 1 car really comes alive and you can play with it, it’s just dynamic and fun to toss it around. But like I said, on long runs still some homework to do.”
Ocon: “After a busy pre-season test, I’m pleased with how the first Friday practice of the season went, and it feels great to be back on track in the environment of a race weekend. We saw today that the car has gained performance since the test and we have a clearer picture of where there are improvements to be made. Things are going in the right direction and we’ll be discussing at length tonight how we can get ready to have a good first qualifying of the season. There’s more to come from us and I’m feeling ready.”
Norris: “I think it’s been a reasonable Friday. We put the car in a reasonable place, and I got a bit more comfortable with it both in low-fuel and high-fuel running. We have a lot of lap time to find to be competitive and to fight with the guys we want to fight against, but we’ll keep working hard overnight and look ahead to tomorrow.”
Guanyu: “Today has been smooth overall. We have been able to complete every task we had set for ourselves ahead of both sessions and the car felt good, it was comfortable straight away. As predicted, everyone is pretty close in the midfield: we must do some homework overnight, looking through the data gathered today, and try to make some gains as every little fraction of a second will matter. I feel we are in a decent spot, in terms of pace, so it’s really a matter of working out a few small details and making sure we are ready for the race.”
Tsunoda: “Today was not the easiest day. The performance itself doesn’t look good compared to our competitors so far. Obviously, we don’t know what programmes they ran, but on our side, there are limitations that we have identified. There is still one more practice session tomorrow and I’m feeling optimistic. We’ve definitely made a step forward compared to last year, so I’m confident we can continue moving in the right direction. It seems our long-run pace is better than our short-run one, which is maybe good for Bahrain, but there is performance missing. We’ll shift our focus now to qualifying, to improve as much as possible for tomorrow.”
Albon: “FP2 was much better than FP1. We’ve still got a bit of work to do but we’re close. If you look at AlphaTauri and Haas cars, on race pace we are close to them, so that’s who we’re fighting and let’s see tomorrow if we can get those little bits together to get them. Because of the way deg is around here, race pace is a bit more important than qualifying pace. Ease of overtaking is quite high, so if you’re the quicker car you tend to get past. You’re setting up the car for Qualifying, but with one and a half eyes on the race! There’s a bit of an unknown to race one; reliability across the paddock is less than the final races of the year and some teams get on top of their packages earlier than others. Realistically, maybe we don’t have the quickest car on the grid, but we can do a better job than others and maybe finish out of sequence.”
Here’s how F1 Bahrain GP FP1 panned out
Here’s how F1 Bahrain GP FP2 panned out