Five talking points from the final F1 Bahrain test day
The final day of testing brought with it lots of performance runs, sustainable fuel, tyre and FIA chat as well as a new potential commentary talent.
1) Alfa Romeo loses a whole half a morning running
Midway through the morning heading to turn eight with Bottas at the helm, the Ferrari v6 decided to simply stop with no dashboard warning this brought out the red flag and sent the car into the garage for the rest of the morning.
Although they did back out about an hour into the afternoon session, this coupled with another mysterious crunching engine sound yesterday towards the end of the session when Zhou was driving has grown concern for the team’s reliability and have given them a huge job to do between now and the first race next week. However, the team still managed to end the day in P3 which shows the car still has pace
2) The return of the Brow behaving badly
If you remember on Thursday, McLaren lost half an afternoon fixing a badly bending wheel brow. This problem returned again this morning for the team with a good hour or two spent on adding more strengthening resin on to the brow to try to encourage it to stay in its position.
This combined the team knowing the car is not near where it needs to be in terms of development. McLaren’s fans are definitely in for a tough first few races until upgrades come online.
3) Mercedes finally showed their true pace
After two days of being concerned and worrying about the fact Mercedes weren’t sandbagging and their true pace was actually in the lower top 10.
Today those fears were all laid to rest with Lewis Hamilton in the afternoon session doing on the C5 soft tyres which left him P2 and George Russell ending his morning session in P5 with a lap on the C5 soft tyre. This shows Mercedes are right in the top 3 fight
4) Alpha Tauri showing some interesting pace
With the news Red Bull could be looking to sell Alpha Tauri or move the team to the Red Bull MK7 campus. Their test session today was overshadowed however they still managed to put some interesting times in with Yuki Tsunoda getting the car into P6 midway through the afternoon.
5) I think we have found a future F1 talent on the presenting and commentary side
During the early afternoon running. F1 invited its DHL commentary prize winner into the comms box to commentate and be introduced to the F1 world and as someone who is pushing for more women in the sport either driving or presenting, I have to say the Irish woman who won it this year called Yasmin Janahi is an exciting well informed well spoken presenter/commentator, and I hope over the next year a junior level series picks her up full time, and she can start her journey.
F1 twitter has been well receptive of the young Northern Irish woman which shows she has won over the community as well.
Testing times
- Pérez, Red Bull, 1m30.305s, C4 – 133 laps
- Hamilton, Mercedes, 1m30.664s, C5 – 65 laps
- Bottas, Alfa Romeo, 1m30.827s, C5 – 131 laps
- Leclerc, Ferrari, 1m31.024s, C4 – 67 laps
- Sainz, Ferrari, 1m31.036s, C4 – 76 laps
- Tsunoda, Alpha Tauri, 1m31.261s, C4 – 79 laps
- Magnussen, Haas, 1m31.381s, C4 – 95 laps
- Russell, Mercedes, 1m31.442s, C5 – 83 laps
- Alonso, Aston Martin, 1m31.450s, C4 – 80 laps
- Drugovich, Aston Martin, 1m32.075s, C5 – 77 laps
- Norris, McLaren, 1m32.160s, C3 – 37 laps
- Gasly, Alpine, 1m32.762s, C3 – 56 laps
- Albon, Williams, 1m32.793s, C5 – 136 laps
- Ocon, Alpine, 1m33.257s, C3 – 76 laps
- Hulkenberg, Haas, 1m33.329s, C3 – 77 laps
- Piastri, McLaren, 1m33.655s, C3 – 44 laps
- De Vries, Alpha Tauri, 1m38.244s, C3 – 87 laps
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