Sergio Perez (1:35.570) has once again showed the field a clean pair of heels in F1 testing at Bahrain overnight. The Force India driver covered 108 laps in another productive day where several teams had problems of varying degrees.
“It feels very good to have another full day and to do so many laps,” the 24-year-old Mexican said. “It’s my last time in the car until we arrive in Melbourne and I’m feeling positive about how things are going.
“The set-up work today was very useful because we tried some different things to have a better direction for the first race. Everything went to plan and we managed to complete all the long runs in the afternoon.”
Fernando Alonso (1:35.634) got close to Sergio’s fastest lap and was the busiest man of the day, completing 122 laps. In very promising signs for struggling Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo (1:35.743) was third fastest and managed 66 laps, easily his best return this pre-season on his last day in the RB10 before the Australian Grand Prix.
Daniel was late out in the morning as the team fixed some issues from the day before and his early session was spent doing pit stop practice. In the afternoon things picked up for the young Aussie.
“It went a lot better today,” said Daniel. “In the afternoon we did some good stuff. We had a go on the soft tyre, which was nice, to see how the car responds with a bit more grip. We also did one long run at the end, which was very important, just to see how the car is behaving with the tyres.
“A big improvement everywhere over yesterday and a much more optimistic outlook now I think. We still have a lot to learn and understand, but we’re making progress and the past two days have been a big step in the right direction.”
Felipe Massa (1:36.507) went fourth fastest and valued every one of his 103 laps. On paper a return of 52 laps and the fifth quickest lap for Jenson Button (1:36.901) seems like a good day, but his schedule was interrupted with gearbox issues.
Jules Bianchi (1:38.092) put in a solid showing for Marussia, going sixth fastest and notching up a very respectable 75 laps.
Similar to Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton (1:39.041) had transmission problems and his day ended early, although the Mercedes driver still managed 89 laps.
Jean Eric-Vergne (1:39.636) and Esteban Gutierrez (1:39.976) were eighth and ninth fastest for Torro Rosso and Sauber respectively.
The Renault-powered cars of Pastor Maldonado (Lotus, 1:41.613) and Marcus Ericsson (Caterham, 1:42.516) were not only the slowest of the day, both drivers had early showers after their cars caught fire.
There’s now only two days of testing before the year’s first grand prix and you sense that no team is 100% confident at this stage. It’s going to be interesting reading between the lines of the teams’ reactions over the last days of winter testing.
