Alonso believes Verstappen will now enjoy his time on the track as he prepares to mount his first-ever title defence.
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Former world champion Fernando Alonso claims that current Formula One champion Max Verstappen will feel less pressure this season after achieving his goal in 2021. Last year, Verstappen won his first championship after a season-long battle with Lewis Hamilton. Alonso believes Verstappen will now enjoy his time on the track as he prepares to mount his defence.
“If anything, you will have less pressure because you accomplished already one of your dreams,” the Spaniard said. From now on it’s more fun and you go into the races knowing you are champion already once and you will always try to fight for championships and add number two. But if anything, he should have less pressure.”
Read More – Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz says afternoon testing session at Bahrain felt ‘strange’
Despite having only one and a half days of pre-season testing left, Red Bull has yet to demonstrate its speed, with Sergio Perez admitting that the team has not focused on outright speed.
Kevin Magnussen was the fastest on day two of the Bahrain F1 Test, pushing Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz off the top of the timesheets during extra track time for his Haas F1 Team. The American team was allowed to test for a total of four extra hours at the end of the day for other teams because they were unable to hit the track during the first half of Thursday’s opening day due to their air freight, including their car, arriving late.
Read More – Bahrain testing day 2: Haas’ Kevin Magnussen goes fastest
They ran an extra hour on Friday and plan to start an hour earlier and put in two extra hours on Saturday’s final day of testing. The official session hours are from 10 am to 7 pm local time. Sainz had led until Magnussen’s late 1:33.207s flier, as Ferrari continued to live up to their rivals’ claims that they are the pre-season favourites. The Spaniard lapped the floodlit Sakhir desert track in 1:33.532 seconds, finishing 0.479 seconds faster than Red Bull world champion Max Verstappen.
Lance Stroll of Aston Martin finished fourth, with seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who struggled with porpoising in his dramatically redesigned Mercedes, finishing fifth.
