When Zhou used the soft compound and rounded the circuit in 1 minute, 31.610 seconds under floodlights, he beat the Dutchman's time by 0.040 seconds.
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Zhou Guanyu quickly topped the Bahrain timesheets on Friday night after Mercedes flagged the race after George Russell’s W14 came to a stop. Carlos Sainz set the early benchmark on C3 tyres on Friday morning with a time of 1m 32.486s, which remained at the top of the leaderboards until Max Verstappen emerged in the late afternoon. With his first flying attempt, the defending champion rocketed to second place, and 30 minutes later he was in first place. When Zhou used the soft compound and rounded the circuit in 1 minute, 31.610 seconds under floodlights, he beat the Dutchman’s time by 0.040 seconds. However, his session came to an early end because his car wouldn’t shift into first gear.
Just before dusk, Mercedes encountered trouble, with George Russell (P13) coming to a stop due to a hydraulic problem. The British driver completed 26 laps in the afternoon after Lewis Hamilton set a pace of 72 laps for P15, but did not resume racing. The floor damage and subsequent repairs briefly ruined the seven-time champion’s morning. For Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso completed more than 130 laps and came in third overall, ahead of Nyck de Vries of AlphaTauri in fourth and Nico Hulkenberg of Haas in fifth.
With 70 laps completed in the Ferrari during Sainz’s morning stint, he finished sixth overall. Teammate Charles Leclerc took over and completed more than 60 laps to place eighth overall. Williams’ Logan Sargeant, who also drove for the entire day with Alonso and Zhou, was positioned between the Ferraris. The rookie driver, who had completed more than 150 laps, placed seventh and held the mileage lead. With 15 minutes left, Sargeant arrived in the pits and extricated the car from what appeared to be an electrical problem.
Later it was discovered that the team had Sargeant practise getting out of the car in case of trouble, and that’s when a minor electrical problem did arise. After a successful morning, Oscar Piastri placed ninth in the afternoon while teammate Lando Norris placed 16th overall. After 49 laps in the morning, Esteban Ocon of Alpine and Kevin Magnussen of Haas completed the top 10, 1.5 seconds behind Pierre Gasly, who completed the top 10. After setting 76 laps in the morning, Sergio Perez of Red Bull split the Mercedes. Yuki Tsunoda of AlphaTauri, who managed a session-high 85 laps in the morning before handing the car over to Gasly, finished fourth in the standings.
Headline lap times in testing are meaningless, but Zhou finishing the day in first place and capping off a very smooth and successful preseason with a 132-lap run will do wonders for his confidence. The reliability gremlins that dogged the C43’s pre-season last year have not yet reared their ugly heads again, and the car has so far displayed an impressive turn of speed throughout the test. They share the reliability-revised Ferrari power unit with the works team and fellow customer Haas. They might be leading the charge to control the midfield if they have a chassis that adapts well to changes and performs in line with the data.
