The Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) dominated the first session of the two scheduled on the third and final day of the pre-season tests at the Sakhir circuit, which next week will host the first round of the Formula 1 World Cup, the Bahrain Grand Prix , a training session in which Alfa Romeo suffered its first serious setback.
The temperature on the asphalt of the Bahraini circuit exceeded 40 degrees and in his second lap with the C4 tire (outside the range that the drivers will have at the opening of the World Championship) set the best time of the session (1:31.024) and from the weekend, more than half a second better (1:31.610) than the Chinese Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo) on Friday with the experimental compound (C5).
The British George Russell (Mercedes) was the second classified in the time table of the session, 4 tenths behind Ferrari, which in the afternoon will be driven by the Spanish Carlos Sainz.
The podium was completed by the Brazilian-Italian from Aston Martin Felipe Drugovich (1:32.075)who will be replaced by the Spanish Fernando Alonso in the evening.
They also added kilometers the Mexican Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez (Red Bull), who was fourth (1:32.459) and totaled 69 laps. The man from Guadalajara will repeat in the afternoon since this Saturday the Dutchman Max Verstappen will have a rest.
French Pierre Gasly (Alpine), German Nico Hulkenberg (Haas), Thai Alex Albon (Williams), Australian Oscar Piastri (McLaren), Dutch Nyck de Vries (Alpha Tauri) and Finnish Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) They completed the morning.
The day started with a red flag in the first minutes for a piece on the track and had another with an hour and twenty to go. After 72 completed laps, Bottas’ Alfa Romeo suffered an engine failure that forced to interrupt the training after being in the escape of turn 8.
The session resumed a quarter of an hour later and in the Alfa Romeo box they placed a human barrier so that the work being carried out on the car could not be seen.
Was the first reliability problem that Alfa Romeo had in these pre-season tests in which the McLaren drivers reappeared with the cracks in the front wheel wings, which they had to reinforce and conditioned Piastri’s session.
On the track, Nyck de Vries, who was the one who rolled the most (87 laps, 4 more than Russell), spun which did not prevent him from continuing in action in the penultimate practice session, one week away from the cars showing their real performancesince in the tests there are many variables that determine the times such as the fuel load, the chosen tires and the configuration of the cars.
In the last minutes of the session, different race situations were tested, such as the virtual safety car.
