Winter Test Day 2: Ricciardo again fastest in the morning
With only 3 days of winter testing, it's important to optimize the number of laps the drivers can do - alas, for some, minor problems prevented them from doing as many laps as they would have liked.
After a challenging first day of winter testing for the drivers where they had to discover their new vehicles while facing a sandstorm worthy of the best post-apocalyptic movies, this first morning turned out to be much calmer, although some drivers encountered some issues.
It was a complicated morning for Lewis Hamilton. Indeed, the current world champion was caught off guard by his car on the penultimate lap of the circuit. An unusual mistake for the Briton which clearly demonstrates the complexity of discovering a new Formula 1 car for the drivers. This small error, which occurred after 2 hours of the session, forced the marshals to trigger a red flag in order to get the Mercedes out of the gravel, and 13 minutes later the track was reopened.
This is not an ideal start to the winter testing for Mercedes, who before this spin had spent a good day of the first winter tests in the garage due to a gearbox issue. If the German team remains the favorite for the title, pay attention to the reliability which could offer a certain number of points to its competitors.
Lewis Hamilton was not the only driver to be caught off guard by his car. While pushing in the second sector, Carlos Sainz experienced oversteer which forced him off track, fortunately there were no gravel traps, otherwise we could have seen another red flag.
Complicated session also for Sebastian Vettel who was stuck in the garage for a large part of the morning and could only complete 8 laps, which is 9 times less than the number of laps Nikita Mazepin did at the wheel of his Haas. This did not prevent the four-time German World Champion from setting the 10th best time of the session.
After this second morning, it’s Daniel Ricciardo who leaves with the fastest time with a 1’32’215 which is strangely a few milliseconds slower than his time yesterday morning. The Australian is one tenth ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Alpine and leads Sergio Perez’s Red Bull by just under 3 tenths.
