F1 Testing Day 2: Ocon leads morning times in Bahrain

Advantage to Alpine, as Esteban Ocon made big strides forward setting fastest time on the soft C4 Pirelli tire compound in the morning session on Day 2 of preseason F1 testing in Bahrain before Nicholas Latifi, Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas all stopped in separate incidents.

The Frenchman completed his low fuel quick runs early before it got too hot and windy, before settling in for some longer runs. With 59 laps to his name, that goes down as a very solid session for the Ocon.

Charles Leclerc was just 0.09s slower in the #16 Ferrari on medium C3 tires.

Sandbagging Max Verstappen was third for Red Bull but 1.598s behind on the hard C2 tires.

Sebastian Vettel was 4th quick on medium tires C3, but he caused one of the red flags when his Aston Martin had to be parked behind the barrier.

Lando Norris rounded out the top-5 for McLaren using hard C2 prototype tires.

AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda was 6th using DRS while Valtteri Bottas was seventh for Alfa Romeo ahead of Haas driver Mick Schumacher, who made his first appearance of the test in the VF-22 an hour into the session.

Obviously sandbagging was George Russell in the radical Mercedes W13, 4.309s back on hard C2 prototype tires.   He is switching out for Hamilton at lunchtime, the seven-time world champion getting a first go in the more representative evening conditions later on.

Plenty going on in that session, but the most dramatic moment was when Nicholas Latifi’s brakes caught fire. Williams have confirmed the original issue was minor, but with major consequences, and it remains to be seen if he’ll get back out this afternoon.

From initial investigations, it appears that the issue that caused the fire was quite minor, but became visibly quite dramatic. It is not as severe as the video footage might suggest, but there is fire damage to the rear of the car that the team need to repair. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/xRJVcJSwbW

— Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) March 11, 2022

Day 2 Morning Results

*Prototype Tire