Zhou and Bottas agree: progress of the C24 compared to Day 1 | FP

Progress despite a smaller schedule

Day 2 quite productive for the team F1 Stakes in Bahrain, with the two drivers of the Swiss team who always concluded their respective sessions in the top-10. The morning tests, which ended an hour early due to the manhole hit in turn 11 by Charles Leclerc, saw Guanyu Zhou close in seventh placebut above all completing 38 laps.

An unfortunate session therefore for the Chinese driver, at least for the time spent on track compared to the pre-established programmes, but enough to notice some improvements in the C24 on the penultimate day of testing: “Today we had another solid day of testing – commented – we have definitely seen progress compared to yesterday and we were able to gather more data and valuable insights. Unfortunately, our morning session ended early due to the red flag, but luckily we managed to complete our planned program without having to reduce anything. Tomorrow is an extra day to improve the feeling with the car before the first race next weekend.”.

What has improved according to Bottas

Good performance also from his teammate Valtteri Bottas, 9th at the end of the day with the time of 1:32.227 and almost 100 laps completed, 97 to be precise. The Finn tested the car in low and high fuel load conditions, with the final day seeing him back on track in the morning, while Zhou will take the checkered flag for pre-season testing in the afternoon.

“Today was another good day on the track – added the former Mercedes – we collected a large amount of data in 130 laps and The ride was smooth, even better than yesterday with cooler track conditions – as I participated in the afternoon session, which is closer to what we will experience next week. From the point of view of balancingI think we made gods progress and we found a little more performance, which definitely gives us a good feeling. However, there is always room for improvement, and this is the direction we are aiming for tomorrow, trying to get the most out of the last day of testing.”