Hamilton ends up quickest on second morning in Bahrain
Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton ended up quickest in the second morning session of pre-season testing on the Bahrain International Circuit. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo reports on the morning session of Day 2 in Bahrain.
Having completed his first official appearance with Ferrari yesterday, Lewis Hamilton continued to gain experience with his new car, the SF-25. The British driver racked up a total of 45 laps, and set the benchmark of the morning session with a time of 1m29.379s using Pirelli's C3 compound which will be the soft compound at next month’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion completed a series of short runs, concentrating on experimenting with a variety of setup options before performing a heavy-fuel run at the end of the session.
His former team-mate George Russell ended up second quickest with Mercedes. The British driver was the most diligent racer on the second morning, having notched up a total of 70 laps.
Williams driver Carlos Sainz was third quickest, with his best lap time seven tenths adrift of what Hamilton managed with Ferrari. Pierre Gasly was fourth fastest with Alpine, from Fernando Alonso in P5 and Yuki Tsunoda in P6.
McLaren's Ocar Piastri had a few moments during the morning session, ending up seventh quickest.
Red Bull had a tough morning session as Liam Lawson spent the majority of the four-hour running in the garage. The Kiwi only completed 28 laps.
Kick Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg had a relatively smooth session as he completed a total of 56 laps en route to P9 on the leaderboard. However, the German driver had a minor incident with Oscar Piastri, with the Australian picking up damage to his front wing.
Esteban ocon brought up the rear of the field, but he refused to complete any low-fuel running as he concentrated on longer runs.
With four minutes left on the clock, race control elected to test the VSC system before bringing out the red flag. However, the session was re-started with a minute to go, with Piastri, Ocon and Russell having headed back out on the track to complete a practice start on the grid.
