Bottas fastest for Mercedes on second day of Bahrain F1 test

Valtteri Bottas set the fastest time on the second day of pre-season testing in Bahrain which is also the fastest lap in this year’s testing and Pierre Gasly was the second fastest for AlphaTauri.

After Ricciardo in McLaren was the fastest in the first part of the day ahead of Alonso in Alpine, Giovinazzi in Alfa Romeo was the first driver to improve his time from the morning part of the day and take first place.

Bottas, Schumacher, Stroll, Norris, Leclerc and Gasly replaced their teammates who drove in the morning and Norris in McLaren soon improved on Giovinazzi’s time on C4 tyres (1:31.239).

The first red flag in the afternoon occurred about an hour and a half before the end of the day when Perez in Red Bull dropped its engine cover as he overtook Latifi in Williams at the starting finish straight.

After the stewards cleared the track Giovinazzi again took first place before being knocked down by Gasly in AlphaTauri and his time was knocked down by Norris at McLaren before Gasly once again took the top spot on the softest C5 compound which won’t be used in the first race of the season on this track.

After fast laps on C3 and C4 tyres, Bottas also tested the C5 tyres on which he set the best time of day 1:30.289 despite not setting his personal best in the last sector.

After a bad first day in which they drove only 48 laps, Mercedes had a much better second day with the best time and 115 laps while Gasly finished second on C5 tyres for AlphaTauri and together with Tsunoda drove as many as 144 laps for the new AT02.

Stroll took over the Aston Martin AMR21 in the afternoon from Vettel who had a gearbox problem in the morning and finished third using the C5 tyres, 0.171 seconds behind Bottas while Norris finished fourth for McLaren on C4 tyres.

Giovinazzi finished fifth for the Alfa Romeo (C5) with 125 laps and Leclerc was sixth and drove 128 laps with Sainz in the Ferrari SF21.

Latifi spent the entire day in the Williams FW43B and finished seventh fastest with 132 laps although he spun in the first corner and eighth was Perez in Red Bull who had another productive day for the RB16B with 117 laps onboard.

Ricciardo’s best time from the morning part of the second day was enough for ninth place at the end and Alonso tried out the new Alpine A521 for the first time and drove 128 laps on the way to tenth place.

Tsunoda finished 11th for AlphaTauri ahead of Schumacher in Haas and Sainz in Ferrari while Mazepin was 14th fastest for Haas ahead of Hamilton in Mercedes who set his best time in the first part of the day on the C2 compound.

Vettel drove only 10 laps in the morning due to gearbox problems.

The last day of pre-season testing will be held tomorrow.

DAY 2 RESULTS