The first response of the 2022 season is in favor of Pierre Gasly. The AlphaTauri was the fastest car in the first free practice session of the Baharain GP. The Frenchman achieved his performance with a set of Pirelli soft tires: the time of 1’34 “193 is 2” 8 slower than last year, a sign that the ground-effect single-seaters are not far from the F1 2021 lighter than 46 kg, especially since the pilots had to deal with an annoying wind.
Behind Gasly are the two Ferraris with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz separated by just 18 thousandths, but the Cavallino drivers have set the time with medium tires, a harder compound that should cost about 0 “8, while the F1-75 are Only three tenths of a second. The Scuderia, despite covering itself up, proved to be a wonderful reality on the track. Leclerc, after having broken down on a curb, ended up in a harmless spin due to the sudden loss of load.
The red seems to be much less sensitive to hopping on the straight after the latest modifications to the bottom and extractor, while the Mercedes W13 suffers the problem: Russell with the standard bottom has definitely done better than Lewis Hamilton, only seventh, who had a new pavement cut. The Englishman accused a strong hopping and left over seven tenths to Gasly, also finding himself in front of Lance Stroll with Aston Martin who defends himself as he can.
Eighth position for Fernando Alonso with the Alpine who focused on the soft compound: the Spaniard got away with it, while Esteban Ocon saw the right belly “explode”, ruining the only new configuration of the sides, forcing the transalpine to come back. The Frenchman after causing a red flag that shortened the turn by over a quarter of an hour, finished 12th.
The top 10 was completed by a good Yuki Tsunoda in front of Sergio Perez only tenth three tenths from captain Max Verstappen, fifth with the Red Bull RB18: the world champion only lapped with the “yellow” and did not seek the time , so the gap from the AT03 by half a second does not really matter. The Milton Keynes team is still in hiding.
Guanyu Zhou’s debut with Alfa Romeo was positive: the Chinese rookie with the C42 slipped into an honorable 11th place, where we would have expected to see Valtteri Bottas. The Finn, on the other hand, has accused a Ferrari engine misfiring and has practically no time.
Williams is 13th with Nicholas Latifi and 15th with Alex Albon: Nico Hulkenberg took the place of Sebastain Vettel, hit by COVID. The German pays a second from Stroll but discovered the AMR22 on the track: more could not be expected from a driver who did not participate in the tests.
Badly the McLarens who have not solved the problem with the front brakes that now risk becoming a nightmare for the Woking team: Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, recovering after the virus, are ahead of the two Haas of Michael Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen. Muted debut for the USA team from which more is expected …
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