By Peter Habicht
Fernando Alonso once again took the fastest time of 1m 32.340 during the final practice session before qualifying later today in his Aston Martin-Mercedes at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Aston Martin and Mercedes traded the fastest laps briefly with Lewis Hamilton taking the fastest lap in the opening 15 minutes while Red Bull Racing opted to put both drivers on the hard compound tires, keeping them off the pace of the front runners on soft compounds.
There was much attention was on Lance Stroll in the opening minutes and he was seen getting into the car with care around his right hand at the session start, following an inability to operate his steering wheel normally in FP2 yesterday. Stroll had surgery just a week ago to repair damage to his wrist suffered in cycling accident. He went on to complete practice without incident, briefly taking the fastest lap late in the session.
Max Verstappen briefly held the fastest lap in the closing minutes of the session for Red Bull-Honda when Alonso bested him by 0.005s. Sharing a sense of ease and some surprise with his team over the radio after learning he’d retaken the quickest time back from Max, Fernando took the moment in stride replying: “Oh really? Great.”
Sergio Perez finished in third just 0.101s behind teammate Verstappen, with the Mercedes of Hamilton finishing fourth fastest, 0.215s off Alonso’s pace. The Ferrari of Charles Leclerc finished fifth, 0.284s behind the leader.
With Aston Martin and Red Bull seemingly poised to square off at the front, Mercedes and Ferrari were not far behind with Leclerc in fifth between the Mercedes’ of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, and Stroll’s Aston Martin and Carlos Sainz’ Ferrari in seventh and eighth.
Farther down the midfield, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri took a respectable ninth place with teammate Lando Norris in 13th, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly wound up tenth with teammate Esteban Ocon behind him in 11th. The Alfa Romeos of Zhou Guanyu and Valttieri Bottas reportedly ran heavier fuel loads today and took 12th and 18th. The Haas duo of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg finished up 14th and 15th.
Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Nick Devries finished the session in 16th and 20th, with Williams teammates Logan Sargeant and Alexander Albon in-between at 18th and 19th.
Amidst a variety of tire choices and fuel loads today, four different teams completed laps within 0.3s of Fernando Alonso – and the top thirteen places were within one second.
As teams equalize their fuel loads and compete on race tire strategy tonight during qualifying in Bahrain, team and car competitiveness will come into sharper focus while cooler track temperatures and the degree of track evolution will more closely represent race conditions for tomorrow’s season opener.
