Red Bull and regaining world champion Max Verstappen set the early tone in the season opener at Bahrain GP with the fastest time in FP2.
Max finished Free Practice One in P5 with the fastest lap of 1:34.742, he managed to complete 22 laps, whilst Checo finished in P10 after completing 23 laps with best lap of 1.35.050.
In FP2, Max used a fresh set of soft tyres to put in a blistering 1:31.936 lap, which put him at top of the timesheet.
Checo completed 21 laps in the session and his fastest time on the softs was 1:32.958, 1.022s behind his teammate. It saw him finish the session in P7.
Max Verstappen
“The car felt good today, testing here last week means we’ve all started in a good place. We had quite a straightforward and smooth day so I’m pretty happy, we also tried a few things on the car in each session and they seemed to work well. You can see that Ferrari are pushing hard and are very close so that’s exciting.
Looking ahead, we’ll have to wait and see with different teams’ engine modes, no one is in quali spec yet so I think everyone still has a lot more to give. It’s good to see the teams are all closer together, in general that’s what everyone wants and I think over time teams will get even closer together.”
Sergio Perez
“It’s nice to be back out on track for a new season. We have some work to do overnight to find a good compromise with the set up. We tried some different settings across the two cars, so I think we have good data to look at and then we can pick out the best bits for qualifying tomorrow.
We are learning a lot about the tyre degradation and overall, there is some work to do but I am hopeful we will have a positive day tomorrow. FP2 will be the most useful session before qualifying because the conditions should be similar and I think it will be interesting to see where everyone is come Saturday evening. The pack is really close and I think the race will be even tighter so there will be some good racing all around.”
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