Perez on top on Day 2 in Bahrain

F1 teams completed a second day of testing in Bahrain as Sergio Perez remained at the top of the timesheets in the Force India VJM07.

Red Bull had a better day in terms of speed with Daniel Riccardo finishing third quick. However, the top team, Mercedes, had problems and Lewis Hamilton finished only 7th fastest some 3.5 sec behind Force India, Ferrari, and Red Bull.

Fuel loads are unknown, but it is the first time Red Bull has shown itself to be up among the fastest Mercedes- and Ferrari-powered cars. It was another sluggish start to the day for the world champions, but by the checkered flag Ricciardo had completed 66 laps and appeared to be running reliably in the final couple of hours. Sebastian Vettel will take over for the remaining two days of the test, which should help to either confirm or deny the apparent progress made on Friday.

Pastor Maldonado ended the second day of this week’s Bahrain test with 31 laps completed after a localized fire in the rear of the E22 ended the day’s running for Lotus F1 Team. Pastor set a lap time of 1min 41.613secs as the team continued to conduct evaluations of new parts.

“It went a lot better today," said Daniel. “This morning it was important to have the race crew here to do the pit stops, as they haven’t had the chance to get to grips with the car yet, so we didn’t do that many laps in the morning. However, in the afternoon we did some good stuff. We had a go on the soft tire, which was nice, to see how the car responds with a bit more grip. We also did one long run at the end, which was very important, just to see how the car is behaving with the tires. A big improvement everywhere over yesterday and a much more optimistic outlook now I think. We still have a lot to learn and understand, but we’re making progress and the past two days have been a big step in the right direction."

Sergio Perez: "It feels very good to have another full day and to do so many laps. It’s my last time in the car until we arrive in Melbourne and I’m feeling positive about how things are going. The set-up work today was very useful because we tried some different things to have a better direction for the first race. Everything went to plan and we managed to complete all the long runs in the afternoon."

Andrew Green, Force India Technical Director: “It has been another busy day with lots of miles completed and a great deal learned. The program this morning involved assessing a different set-up direction compared to yesterday, which will help in our decision-making going into Melbourne. After lunch we switched to extended runs using several of the tires compounds available to us. It’s been important for Sergio to have two solid days in the car to get him more comfortable with the VJM07 and race-ready for Melbourne."

Lewis Hamilton: Like every team, we're encountering problems every day and we've still got some work to do in terms of both reliability and speed. There are no specific problem areas, just lots of different things we need to improve. It's important to get as much mileage under our belts as we can and just as important to discover any problems before we get to Melbourne. It might be frustrating at times but finding them at this stage is actually a positive. We really don't know where anyone stands right now and we have enough to concentrate on without looking at how other teams are getting on. The focus is on ourselves and will continue to be right up to the first race. Today was a fairly average day but I've got one more to go before we get to Melbourne, so hopefully that will be a bit more productive.

Paddy Lowe, Mercedes: Our morning program targeted a baseline check run followed by a race distance simulation. The day started off without any problems, save a small spin for Lewis on cold tires at the start of the first run, which briefly halted his progress but caused no major dramas. Once we got going again Lewis put together a good run, with encouraging readings in particular during the middle stint on the hard tire, before a failure in the ERS system delayed running during the final stint. We returned to the track after lunch to conduct setup work. However, a problem with the gearbox unfortunately meant that our running was curtailed around 90 minutes early. Despite this, we have learned a number of valuable things from today's session and look forward to getting back down to work tomorrow.

Results