The 2022 season is already beginning its last dress rehearsal with the first of the three official test days that take place at the Sakhir circuit. After the “unofficial sessions” that were held in Montmeló, the teams and drivers now face the same track where they will play the Bahrain Grand Prix next week, as a prologue, dominated by two big headlines: the pace of Ferrari and the revolutionary new design of the Mercedes.
The Italian team had left Spain leaving magnificent impressions, and Charles Leclerc seemed willing to confirm it with the best time of the morning, a 1:34.531 with medium C3 tire recorded shortly before the middle of the session. His F1-75 not only offered great visual sensations, but the time was overwhelming compared to the rest, without no one else even dropped from 1:36 until the final half hour.
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For her part, Mercedes attracted all eyes in the morning with her innovative pontoon design, the narrowest in recent memory, and using extended wings as part of the side crash structure. Still, none of this seemed to fix the serious problems of ‘porpoising’, or marsupeo, which presented the W13 in Barcelona, and which is even more evident in the FOM images. In turn, the car driven by Lewis Hamilton was very nervous and unstable at the exit of the medium and slow speed corners, in the style of what happened to them last season at this point in similar circumstances, and only got fifth Best time.
The only driver who came close to Leclerc was the Thai alexander albinsecond behind the wheel of the Williams at six tenths with the C4 compound. Sebastian Vettel took third place with another late improvement on his times, beating a Sergio Pérez whose Red Bull exhibited equal parts great stability and some doubts in the slow corners, but who completed the largest run of the day with 69 laps, and the aforementioned Hamilton. Even with everything, nobody seemed to have the feeling that the drivers were squeezing the most out of their machines, being four seconds away from the 2021 test times.
For its part, the Alpine offered some glimmer of hope by registering high speeds in the ‘speed trap’ of the main straight, but the absolute times are still not following. Esteban Ocon signed the sixth fastest time in the Alpine A522, with which he completed 42 laps despite being in the pits for much of the morning. The ‘wooden spoon’ of the filming took her away McLaren, with apparent brake problems which restricted Lando Norris’ mileage to just 21 laps, making him penultimate in the standings.
The session passed without excessive pressure for the nine competitors on the track, being the only anomaly a mishap for Guanyu Zhou when he was left lying at the entrance to the pits. With his already anticipated morning absence due to the delay in the arrival of his vehicle, Haas will start his activity this afternoon with the tester Peter Fittipaldi behind the wheel, before Mick Schumacher and returnee Kevin Magnussen jump on board in the coming days. The American team will have a special session on Sunday morning to compensate for this absence due to external causes.
TIMES OF THE 1ST DAY OF TEST IN BAHRAIN (MORNING SESSION)
In this afternoon session, both Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz will have their first contact with the track, in conditions and temperatures that will more closely resemble those of the important Grand Prix sessions. George Russell will take over the Mercedes, while Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) and Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) will complete the changes between sessions. You can follow all the news on the direct writing of MOTOR.ES, with Juan Muñoz, and also in our new twitch channelwhere David Moreno will update all the information from 15:00.
Photos: Formula 1