It's windy in Bahrain, blowing with variable gusts which make the first free practice session of the GP which opens the 2024 season in Sakhir insignificant. The session carried out in 35 degrees is not very indicative on the performances because the top teams, excluding McLaren, did not have put on the soft tires to try for a flying lap, preferring to work on the set-up for the race.
The preamble was necessary before saying that the best time was achieved by Daniel Ricciardo who brought the Racing Bulls to the fore: the Australian reached 1'32″869 simulating the qualification. The Faenza team moves to the top of the table of the times giving consistency to the rumors that this team has important ambitions. The time was not extraordinary because it was a tenth higher than the one set by Sergio Perez last year.
Racing Bulls also placed Yuki Tsunoda in fourth place separated from his teammate by 314 thousandths, with the two McLarens in between: Lando Norris with the MCL38 is only 32 thousandths behind Ricciardo, while Oscar Piastri is a couple of tenths further back of his teammate in third place. Andrea Stella's two riders then did a mini long run: the Englishman on the softs and the Australian on the mediums.
The news of the day is that Max Verstappen was not the fastest with Red Bull among the drivers on the medium tyres. The Dutchman was preceded by Fernando Alonso who was at ease with the Aston Martin AMR24: the Spaniard finished at 1'33″193, three tenths from the top with one compound less. The world champion was sixth, 45 thousandths from the “green”. Max complained a lot about the RB20 when climbing and the technicians advised him to change the engine brake calibration, without solving the problem. It's surprising that Red Bull isn't immediately in front: Sergio Perez is even outside the top 10 with the 12th time but is a couple of tenths behind the tri-champion.
Behind the RB20 is Mercedes with George Russell seventh attached to Verstapen and ahead of Charles Leclerc's Ferrari. No big differences were seen: the Maranello technicians worked on the setup of the SF-24 and didn't look for the times. Charles had an instrumented front wing to check the deflection of the flaps which was then replaced by a standard one. The positive thing is that the two reds carried out two mini long runs with very positive results. Carlos Sainz is 11th preceded by Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Valtteri Bottas with Sauber who had to resort to soft tires to climb to tenth position. Guanyu Zhou fared worse with the other C44 and was only 15th: not a positive sign.
Alexander Albon placed the Williams in 13th position ahead of Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin – the Canadian did not impress. Logan Sargeant with the FW46 is 16th and seems to have broken away from the rear where the two Alpines of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly are stuck in serious difficulty. The Haas did poorly with Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg, but the gap of more than four seconds from the top is exaggerated: the American team did kilometers with the Dane who did 17 laps, while they had problems with the German who only completed three laps.
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