F1 Bahrain Testing Day 2: Sainz Jr. puts Ferrari on top in morning session

By Mark Cipolloni

Carlos Sainz Jr. turned the fastest lap of preseason F1 testing Friday morning in his #55 Ferrari with a lap of 1m32.486s on medium Pirelli tires and 4/10ths of a second faster than Thursday fast man Max Verstappen.

Sainz beat the #2 Williams of American rookie Logan Sargeant by just 0.063s, a remarkable lap by the youngster, however, his lap was set on the soft C5 tires.

Fernando Alonso on medium Pirellis was 3rd quick in the #14 Aston Martin, 0.483s behind the Ferrari.

Guanyu Zhou was 4th quick in the Alfa Romeo 0.684s behind while Kevin Magnussen rounded out the top-5 for Haas.

Sergio Perez could only manage the 7th best time, but he spent most of the session on long runs and hard tires. Verstappen will replace Perez in the Red Bull this afternoon after the lunch break.

Lewis Hamilton also focused on long runs and ended up 8th, 1.4s off the pace. The car never looked completely happy, with the rear dancing around a bit. Hamilton did lose a piece of bodywork during the session that again ran pretty much trouble free.

The trouble-free session allowed teams to get plenty of mileage in and help Pirelli with development work on C3 prototypes.

Bahrain Day 2 Morning Times