Image courtesy of Scuderia Ferrari
Mercedes and Ferrari are set to make it a 4-horse race in Bahrain. None of their drivers had perfect laps in FP2 – Hamilton locked up into Turn 8 and lost a few tenths, the Ferrari’s needed to have more than one flying lap as they struggled for turn-in on Turn 14, and although cameras didn’t pick it up Rosberg’s lap was also not clean according to the team.
Mercedes then posted this on their Twitter, a sum of both teams’ best sector times revealing the gap would not be so different after all:
Don't be fooled by the times. @MercedesAMGF1 ideal lap so far: 1:34.406; @ScuderiaFerrari, 1:34.667. It's going to be close 🙂 BahrainGP
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) April 17, 2015
Impressive times also came from Felipe Nasr to split the Ferrari cars early on, but not too much can be deduced from the fastest laps of the rest of the picking order. Williams tend to hold back on Friday, more so than today, so expect them to close the gap. Especially as Felipe Massa is showing good pace so far this year – and Bottas will want to re-prove his worth after a slow start.
Alonso also popped McLaren up in the midfield time and time again, however the team will be reluctant to target Q2 after last week.
Sunday is where the points are dished out though, and Ferrari’s FP2 times compared to China’s seem to be more competitive to Mercedes’. The hotter temperatures, as in Malaysia, are playing into the Scuderia’s hands.
When looking at the graphs below, remember that the teams split their long-run strategies in FP2. HAM and RAI were the two on the medium tyre in Bahrain, but last race in China ROS and RAI were on the medium tyre. I have also not included outliers – times that are clearly not representative such as in/outlaps and traffic affected times.
I should also point out that Kimi’s long run in China turned heads but the Ferrari’s were 15 seconds behind Hamilton before the race-ending safety car. The Mercedes still had a big advantage so these times are not going to decide the result. Although Mercedes do hide some pace in FP2, it is clear Ferrari have made a gain in Bahrain. Raikkonen had a very strong stint on the medium tyre before switching to the soft – but his times climb faster than the option compound runners.
Nico Rosberg was consistently half a second slower than Sebastian Vettel on the option compound, but this deficit is not unusual to see on a Friday – however the Mercedes dropped off due to either traffic or loss of grip soon after.
It looks as though Hamilton approached the run with a different more conservative style. His times are slow but are consistent. The reason behind doing this could be because in China, FP2 times didn’t reflect his race pace at all. In fact the times were around 1-2 seconds a lap slower – on the same compound.
| Lewis Hamilton – China | |||
| Lap | FP2 | Race | Delta |
| 1 | 42.328 | 44.678 | -2.350 |
| 2 | 42.481 | 44.317 | -1.836 |
| 3 | 42.259 | 44.317 | -2.058 |
| 4 | 42.404 | 44.149 | -1.745 |
| 5 | 42.459 | 44.102 | -1.643 |
| 6 | 42.421 | 44.234 | -1.813 |
| 7 | 42.841 | 44.178 | -1.337 |
| 8 | 43.084 | 44.230 | -1.146 |
| 9 | 43.390 | 44.492 | -1.102 |
| 10 | 43.646 | 44.399 | -0.753 |
| 11 | 43.935 | ||
| 12 | 43.689 | ||
We’ve also seen from previous races that Ferrari are strong on the soft tyre, and so the preferred strategy therefore would be a 2-stopper, using the soft compound twice, as it was last year. It is hard to pick an outright favourite due to the lack of long running in FP2 but whoever goes into the first corner in the lead will be able to exploit this year’s turbulence-affected cars to wear out the tyres of the drivers behind him, if they can’t overtake using the circuits 4 long straights.
