Halfway through the hour, the reigning champion switched to soft tyres and set the fastest time with a time of 1m 31.936s.
Follow Us
In the second practice session of the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, Max Verstappen set the fastest time, finishing ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Halfway through the hour, the reigning champion switched to soft tyres and set the fastest time with a time of 1m 31.936s, just 0.087s ahead of Ferrari’s Leclerc. Later on, his teammate Carlos Sainz jumped to third, but only by half a second.
As a result, Mercedes’ George Russell was demoted to fourth (just ahead of Sainz), and Fernando Alonso was promoted to fifth as the last driver within a second of Verstappen’s time. Valtteri Bottas of Alfa Romeo finished sixth after the team repaired his engine after the Finn was forced to sit out much of FP1 due to a power unit issue.
Sergio Perez of Red Bull was 1.022s slower than his teammate, finishing seventh ahead of Haas’ Mick Schumacher in eighth. Lewis Hamilton struggled with porpoising and then complained of a front brake issue midway through the session, finishing ninth and splitting the Haas drivers, while Kevin Magnussen completed the top ten to cap off a successful day for the Americans.
McLaren had an unremarkable performance, starting FP2 on hard tyres (while their competitors started on mediums) before switching to soft tyres. Lando Norris came in 11th place, while Daniel Ricciardo came in 18th. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon finished 12th, half a second behind fifth-placed teammate Fernando Alonso.
Read More – Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz welcomes new qualifying rule, says it is ‘more fair’
Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri took the fastest lap in FP1 but struggled in the cooler evening conditions, finishing 13th ahead of teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who is being investigated for both impeding a Leclerc lap and an incident involving Lance Stroll near the end of the session. Zhou Guanyu, the Alfa Romeo rookie, finished 15th, ahead of the Aston Martins.
In FP2, neither of the Aston Martin drivers showed their hands, with Stroll 16th and stand-in team mate Nico Hulkenberg 17th – the German having spent very little time on soft tyres in order to concentrate on medium-tyred long runs. Due to a water leak, Ricciardo’s session was cut short with 10 minutes remaining, leaving Williams’ Nicholas Latifi (19th) and Alex Albon (20th) to complete the timesheets.
