Official F1 Journal Formula 1 Thursday Round Up- Bahrain

Welcome 1 and all to the 2024 Formula 1 season!! After what felt like an endless off season, that one could argue was as action packed as a lot of the on track escapades of 2023 and the 3 days of sandbagging that was 2024 testing, its great to be on track and enjoying the sights and sounds of the Formula 1 circus in all its glory.
So lets get into all the action from Practice 1 & 2 at Bahrain on a Thursday for the 1st time.  

Practice 1- Very Windy    All started on Medium Tyre

The HAAS cars lead the field out followed closely by the Mclaren's, Stake cars and both Alpines. Because of the none representative conditions of Practice 1 many of the teams will use this session to continue their testing from a week ago and this waas illustrated by the Stake Sauber car of Guanyu Zhou coming out of the Pitlane running aero rakes to gather data but unfortunately for him and the team he was only half way round the Sakhir track before he radioed saying his brakes were not working, this issue would hamper him for the whole session and meant he got very limited running. 
The wind was making running tricky for all the cars and we saw it catch out Leclerc at Turn 4 the lap before he topped the times, but that was short lived as Hamilton quickly beat his time by 0.034.

51 minutes remaining and we saw Verstappen take to the track for the first time and immediately top the times just as Sainz had beaten his team mates time. Leclerc went for another fast lap but could only mange 2nd but was quickly beaten by Perez in the number 2 Redbull.
51 minutes n the clock and we started to see the Mercedes find their speed and the top spot swap between Russell, Hamilton and Verstappen, while Alonso put his Aston Martin 4th. 

40 minutes to go and running was consistent and again we can only admire the reliability of the 2024 grid, although Verstappen was not happy with his gear changes complaining over the radio that his up and down shifts were making the whole car jump. 
As the track went quiet after some long running the Mclarens who had spent a fair amount of time in the garage making changes came back out and started their Soft tyre running with Piastri going top by almost half a second before Norris went faster yet also on the Soft tyre beating his team mates time by 0.212. The RB's also decided it was time for the Soft tyre runs and on his first run Ricciardo set the fastest time beating the Mclaren of Norris by jusy 0.032. Bottas had also done his first soft tyre run but could only manage 8th fastest. 

10 minutes left of the session and everyone was out on track with the exception of Bottas and most cars were doing their long run high fuel, data collection runs before they go into the darkness of Practice 2 a much more representative session of Qualifying and the Race(in the dark). Zhou came out briefly before returning to the pits. Sargeant had a very quiet but relaxed session and was faster over the session than both HAAS' and Alpine cars. Stroll couldn't find the time in his Aston Martin that team mate Alonso have.
The session ended and Perez found himself down in 12th with Sainz ahead of him in 11th while his team mate was still unhappy with the way his Redbull was down shifting. Bottas managed to put his Stake Sauber in to 10th behind former team mate Lewis Hamilton on the slower Medium tyres. Vertsappen finished the session in 6th behind Alonso and the Mclaren's & RB's and Russell & Leclerc finished in 7th & 8th.

Practice 1Result 

1 RIC           2 NOR 
3 PIA            4 TSU
5 ALO          6 VER
7 RUS          8 LEC
9 HAM         10 BOT
11 SAI         12 PER
13 ALB        14 STR
15 ZHO       16 SAR
17 OCO      18 GAS
19 MAG      20 HUL

Practice 2     Very Wind      all starting on Soft tyres 

Bottas lead the grid out of the pits followed by everyone except Max Verstappen who chose to wait in the garage for a further 8 minutes while the others started their data collection. 
Hulkenberg set the first time that was quickly beaten by Bottas, Magnussen and Sainz, Perez beat the time of the 1st Ferrari before being beaten by its sister car just seconds later but to every ones surprise Lewis Hamilton beat all of there time by over 8 tenths on the soft tyres. Alonso pushed the rest back further by going 2nd behind and Stroll went 5th as we saw the defending World Champion leave the pits. We all watched Max's first lap expecting him to do his usual job of setting the pace from the moment her touched the track, but that wasn't to be the case and the best he could manage in his Redbull was 4th a head of team mate Perez but a long way off the Mercedes of Hamilton. As the wind continued to pick up we saw Leclerc and Magnessen get caught out at the last corner hurting their lap times

36 minutes to go and we saw the cars begin their Qualifying simulations and it was our first glimpse of their true pace. 
Sainz was the first to go for a qualifying lap followed by Piastri and Norris, Hulkenberg set his time first and jumped upto 2nd in his HAAS, Norris made a mistake in the first sector so abandoned the only qualifying simulation he would attempt leaving him slowest of the fastest laps but team mate Piastri and Sainz in his ferrari were on great form, Sainz going 2nd fastest and Piastri 3rd as Hamilton increased his lead over the others in 1st. Verstappen could only put together a lap good enough for 4th behind Piastri until Russell went 2nd and Alonso took 3rd fastest leaving the 3 time world champion in 6th while team mate Perez was down in 10th behind Leclerc in 9th. 
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 After the excitement of the Qualifying preparation and getting to see some of the cars true pace it was onto the Race simulations on the soft and medium tyres and we didn't see the time change must more but the eagle eyed of you may have noticed that the 2 stand out cars on the long run pace were the Redbull and a little surprisingly the Mclaren of Piastri, who was matching the 1'36 second lap the Redbull's were managing, showing really strong race pace from the young Australian and his Mclaren. 
Hulkenberg's time put him well inside the top 10 in 6th but we sw last year that the HAAS had good 1 lap pace but needed to improve it's race pace, Albon and Sargeant had another positive, uneventful practice ending in 11th and 13th and showing the Williams is far from a back row car this year. The Alpines struggled again today but seem consistently faster than the Stake Saubers and on long runs the HAAS car.

But by far the biggest head line of the session was the one lap speed of the Mercedes car, Zak Brown inferred that they had turned the Mercedes engine up for Practice 2 a change Mclaren hadn't made....yet and there was more speed in the papaya car. 
Only Qualifying is going to show us the pure pace of the cars but its safe to say after P2 we are all far more excited about the possibility Redbull will not run away like we had all anticipated. 
On to tomorrow for Practice 3 and the 1st Qualifying of 2024.

Practice 2 Result 

1 HAM       2 RUS
3 ALO        4 SAI
5 PIA         6 VER
7 HUL        8 STR
9 LEC       10 PER
11 ALB      12 RIC
13 SAR     14 MAG
15 TSU     16 GAS
17 BOT     18 OCO
19 ZHO     20 NOR

Joanna Blackmore 

Writer @F1journal.co.uk