F1 testing: George Russell tops times on final day in Bahrain
Mercedes driver George Russell set the fastest lap time on the final day of preseason testing in Bahrain after beating Max Verstappen’s best effort in the final ten minutes of the session.
Russell pipped the reigning champion to the best time by 0.021 seconds, but was still 0.197 seconds shy of the fastest time of the test set by Carlos Sainz‘s Williams on Thursday.
Testing lap times only ever provide a murky picture of relative performance, but unlike previous years when Red Bull emerged as clear favourites, the field appears to be much closer.
McLaren impressed on longer runs, including a particularly impressive race simulation by Lando Norris on Thursday, but Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull all seem to be in the running.
Lewis Hamilton, who returned to the track for Ferrari in the afternoon session but appeared to run into a reliability issue, pointed to McLaren as favourites.
“It’s hard to know what fuel loads everyone is running, as we’re all doing our own different programmes, so you have to take everything with a pinch of salt,” Hamilton said.
“McLaren won the constructors’ last year. We expect them to be one of the quickest, if not the quickest, as with Red Bull, who dominated for many, many years.”
In a week in which an hour-long power cut suspended running on the opening day, the Bahrain International Circuit continued to throw up surprises.
In the hour before the lunch break, a pane of glass from the starter’s box shattered and fell on the track by the pit straight. With the risk of punctures, the session was red flagged to allow marshals to sweep away the shards of glass.
Following the lunch break, the afternoon session was less than 30 minutes old when a circuit bus took a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the barriers. The bus’s presence resulted in a four-minute stoppage to allow it to navigate back to safety before cars were allowed back on track.
Haas had the most visible reliability issue of the day when the engine cover came loose from Oliver Bearman’s car. Team principal Ayao Komatsu said the incident “really impacted” Bearman’s run plan, but the car returned to the track and completed the afternoon session with Esteban Ocon at the wheel.
Source: espn.com