Ricciardo leads Alonso in second morning of Bahrain F1 test

Daniel Ricciardo set the fastest time for the second day in a row in the morning part of the second day of the test in Bahrain behind the wheel of a McLaren MCL35M and Fernando Alonso drove the first laps in the new Alpine A521 and set the second fastest time.

Ricciardo drove 1:32.215 on C3 Pirelli tyres, 0.013 seconds slower than his best time from yesterday while Alonso was 0.124 seconds slower on a degree of harder tyres and drove a total of 59 laps in his F1 return.

In his first official appearance for Red Bull Perez drove 39 laps and set the third fastest time on C2 tyres, 0.263 seconds slower than Ricciardo in McLaren while Latifi showed encouraging speed for Williams in fourth place with best second sector on C5 tyres despite having a spin early on.

Tsunoda once again had a very good performance for AlphaTauri without major mistakes and in the first part of the second day he finished fifth with less than half a second behind the fastest Ricciard on C4 tyres with 57 laps for the new AT02.

Sainz was the first to drive the new Ferrari SF21 today and finished sixth fastest on C3 tyres while Mazepin was the last driver to be less than a second behind Ricciardo with the most laps in the first part of the day (76).

Hamilton and Mercedes had another low-key morning with only the eighth fastest time and the world champion flew off the track and got stuck in a sand trap, driving a total of 58 laps, 16 more than yesterday.

The Briton lost the back end in the Turn 13 at about half of the first part of the day and ended up in a sand trap causing a red flag and a 15-minute break while his Mercedes F1 W12 had to be dragged to the pits.

Giovinazzi was the ninth fastest for Alfa Romeo on the C2 tyres and Vettel was the slowest for the Aston Martin and drove only ten laps due to transmission problems.

This is the second problem with the Mercedes gearbox in the two days after Bottas lost almost the entire first part of the day  yesterday due to the same problem and drove only six laps.

The test continues at 1 p.m. (CET).

DAY 2 PART 1 RESULTS