By Luis Vasconcelos
Any doubts about Red Bull’s strength as the 2023 Formula One World Championship is about the start were dispelled in style in the last half day of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit.
After struggling with the balance of the new RB19 during his first outing, on Friday morning, the Mexican didn’t seem to make a lot of progress in the first half of Saturday’s session, but once his focus turned to performance runs, the pace he showed was frightening for the opposition.
On the same compound as the Ferrari drivers were when they did their qualifying simulations, Pérez was 0.7s quicker than both Leclerc and Sainz and while it’s believed the Scuderia ran with more fuel in the SF-23 in those short runs than Red Bull did, that’s a considerable margin that is unlikely to be bridged in the five days remaining until the first race of the season.
No wonder, then, Pérez was in much better mood at the end of the day compared to one day earlier: “I think these days have been pretty intense. Testing is very short so it’s very important to get the maximum out of it. And it worked really well. I think we got a good understanding of our car. Obviously, Bahrain is very difficult in testing, the track is changing pretty much every time you go out, the tarmac is very rough. So, just in general, I think it’s a difficult track to test. But I think we did the most we could. We did a lot of analysis on setups and tyres. So, I think we did the most, as we complete our programmes both days. I’m pleased with that.”
Ferrari didn’t change their program to try and close the gap to the Mexican and both in the morning, with Leclerc, and in the afternoon, with Sainz, getting down to 1m31.0s was the limit for both drivers, using the C4 compound.
The work was focused, mainly, on getting on top of the tyre degradation that had affected the SF-23 in the first two days of testing and, according to Team Principal Fred Vasseur, “we tried a couple of things that didn’t work at all but also tested a few things that worked really well and will be very useful for next weekend and the rest of the season.”
After a dreadful Friday, Mercedes had a much better day on Saturday, as the handling of the car became much more predictable, keeping the strong corner turn in seen from the first day of testing but without the sudden loss of the rear end as the drivers got to the apex of each corner.
With a much saner baseline, Russell, in the morning, and Hamilton, after the lunch break, chipped away little by little and with the benefit of the C5 tyres the seven-times World Champion managed to end the day – and the week – with the second quickest time. Even tyre corrected, the time achieved by Hamilton left him clear of the midfield, which is good news for the Brackley-based team after the scare it had the day before.
Cautious, after the bad experience from last year, Hamilton stated that, “it has been an interesting few days here in Bahrain. There has been a lot of discovery and the whole team has approached it with the same mentality, working hard, not being complacent and staying focused. We’re not quite where we want to be but it’s a good platform to start from. We don’t know where we will be next week, but we will stay positive and continue to push to the maximum.”
Valtteri Bottas was third quickest, less than 0.2s behind his former team mate, also on the C5 compound but, probably, running a bit lighter on fuel load. Nevertheless, the Finn had achieved a very interesting pace on the long runs, before a Power Unit issue forced him to stop on track bringing out the red flag and then, close to the end of the final session, did a couple of runs with the C4 and then with the C5 tyres, to confirm what Zhou had done the day before.
Especially comparing things with this time last year, the Finn was delighted with these three days of work: “I think today was a positive day, apart from the issue we had, but that’s part of testing. The feeling with the car is quite positive but, as usual, in testing it’s not possible to get a read of where you are exactly, but it seems we are more or less on target. I feel like we’ve stepped up as a team, in terms of the quality of the car. We’ve also had fewer issues than in testing last year and, overall, the car feels better than last year’s. So, hopefully that will be the case.”
AlphaTauri had a very positive end of testing, as Yuki Tsunoda put the AT04 very close to the top of the midfield battle, the Japanese driver doing a few performance runs after new team mate Nick de Vries spent the morning doing long runs, in a race simulation that heralded interesting results for the Italian team.
After two days in which he was very close to the top of the time sheets, Fernando Alonso was only 9th quickest on Saturday, with just one run with the C4 to his name. but the Spaniard did a very impressive Grand Prix simulation, particularly after swapping for the two harder compounds that will be available during the Grand Prix, showing the Aston Martin will be a force to be reckoned with right from the start of the season.
For Alonso, “it was a good day for us with lots of laps and we have learned a lot about the new car. But it is only testing and we do not know what everyone else is doing so there are still many questions to answer. Overall, the car felt competitive across the three days, but we need to compare to the others next week. There is a lot of potential left for us to unlock and I think we are in a decent place heading into next week.”
Alpine continued to hide its game, as neither Pierre Gasly nor Esteban Ocon did performance runs, both spending the day running with the three harder compounds available in this test and never going for low fuel runs.
The short runs the French drivers did were, therefore, done with a considerable amount of fuel on board and the C3 tyres, so even the opposition doesn’t really know where the French team is but the visual impression everyone has is that the A523 should be at least as competitive as the Aston Martin and the Alfa Romeo this time next week.
On the other hand, McLaren seems to be struggling both with lack of aerodynamic efficiency on the MCL60 and a plague of small reliability issues, so rather than trying to find performance the team spent this final day chasing issues, Norris providing a bit of respite as he set a pretty decent lap time on the C3 tyres, but both rookie Oscar Piastri and him completed fewer laps than any other driver on Saturday.
BAHRAIN TEST REPORT – DAY 3 OF 3
Fastest times:
1. Perez (Red Bull RB19), 1m30.305s, C4 (133 laps)
2. Hamilton (Mercedes W14), 1m30.664s, C5 (65)
3. Bottas (Alfa Romeo C43), 1m30.827s, C5 (131)
4. Leclerc (Ferrari SF-23), 1m31.024s, C4 (67)
5. Sainz (Ferrari SF-23) 1m31.036s, C4 (76)
6. Tsunoda (AlphaTauri AT04), 1m31.261s, C5 (79)
7. Magnussen (Haas VF-23), 1m31.381s, C5 (95)
8. Russell (Mercedes W14), 1m31.442s, C5 (83)
9. Alonso (Aston Martin AMR23), 1m31.450s, C4 (80)
10. Drugovich (Aston Martin AMR23), 1m32.075s, C5 (77)
11. Norris (McLaren MCL60), 1m32.160s, C3 (37)
12. Gasly (Alpine A523), 1m32.762s, C3 (56)
13. Albon (Williams FW44), 1m32.793s, C5 (136)
14. Ocon (Alpine A523), 1m33.257s, C3 (76)
15. Hulkenberg (Haas VF-23), 1m33.329s, C3 (77)
16. Piastri (McLaren MCL60), 1m33.655s, C3 (44)
17. De Vries (AlphaTauri AT04), 1m38.244s, C3 (87)
