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Valtteri Bottas failed to complete a timed lap during the first free practice session in Bahrain on Friday due to a mechanical issue that left him in the pit lane, but the Finn felt he recovered well in the evening session as he ended an encouraging sixth fastest overall.

An engine concern, possibly a misfire, restricted him to just two installation laps during the first session, but he completed thirty laps under the floodlights at the Bahrain International Circuit, with his best time just over a second off the best time of the day set by Max Verstappen.

Bottas feels Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN team have a lot of potential with its C42-Ferrari, and being so high up the running order despite a lack of running time shows the team are on the right track with the car.

“We recovered strongly from FP1, ending the day with an important session and plenty of laps, so I can say we saved the day,” said Bottas.  “There’s still lots to improve, like for everyone else so early in the season, but you can definitely tell the potential is there: in the running we did in the evening session, the car felt really nice, especially on high fuel.

“It feels we’re not far off where we want to be, which is really positive. It will be interesting to see how it will be tomorrow, in qualifying, when everyone puts out everything they’ve got: now, however, it’s time to look at the data we collected together with Zhou and the team and learn from it.”

Alan Permane says it was a ‘sensible and steady’ Friday for the BWT Alpine F1 Team, with the only real setback being the loose sidepod on Esteban Ocon’s car earlier during first practice.

Fernando Alonso showed a good turn of pace to place inside the top ten in both sessions, the Spaniard ending the evening session fifth fastest, while Ocon ended both sessions with the twelfth quickest time.

Permane, the Sporting Director at Alpine, said the team had identified the cause of the failure of Ocon’s left-side sidepod and are not expecting any more issues with them going forward, and the rest of the weekend will be about helping both drivers find more traction and some additional balance around the low-speed sections of the Bahrain International Circuit.

“It’s been a sensible and steady Practice day for us in Bahrain,” said Permane. “It’s good to be back at a Grand Prix weekend preparing to race and nice to be back in the routine.

“Conditions here are a little different to testing last week. It’s cooler and it seems that the tyres are behaving themselves better. Today, we ran the Softs and Mediums, working through some balance and set-up options in FP1 and then focusing on tyre work in FP2.

Fernando Alonso says there are still plenty of questions left to answer for the BWT Alpine F1 Team ahead of Saturday’s running at the Bahrain International Circuit, even though the Spaniard felt it was a good opening day for the team on Friday.

Alonso finished inside the top ten in both sessions, placing eighth in the afternoon despite completing only fourteen laps before improving to fifth in the evenings running, completing an additional twenty-four laps in the process.

The two-time World Champion said it was important Alpine adapted to the conditions in Bahrain, which were considerably cooler than they had been during pre-season testing just over a week ago, and they will look into how to further improve the car overnight before heading into Qualifying.

“It was a good day for us today and we completed our programme efficiently,” said Alonso.  “It was a lot cooler today than last week at testing, so we tried to adapt to these different conditions and learn how the tyres work at these temperatures.

“Obviously some tweaks are still needed on the setup of the car. We’ll look at this all tonight and digest all of our information. There are many questions left for us to answer tomorrow, but I think overall it was a positive day for us.”

Andrew Shovlin, the Track Engineering Director at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, says the team are doing everything they can to stop the ‘porpoising’ that has been affecting the speed of the W13 during the opening day of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were seen to be ‘bouncing’ on the straights at the Bahrain International Circuit, which has meant they were not as confident with the car, particularly heading into the braking zones.

Russell ended both sessions on Friday with the fourth quickest time, while seven-time World Champion Hamilton was only seventh in the afternoon and ninth in the evening as he also struggled with braking issues on his W13.

However, Shovlin says they have learned a lot on day one in Bahrain that he hopes will help the team across the rest of the weekend, even at this point it appears Mercedes are not at the same kind of performance level as the likes of Oracle Red Bull Racing or Scuderia Ferrari.

“Our first session made use of the fact that we had two cars for the first time this year and chose to run them in different specifications,” said Shovlin.  “That was a useful test and we got a clear read on which setup and floor specification was best for the bouncing.

It was not the opening day of the 2022 Formula 1 Season the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team were hoping for on Friday, with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton both feeling they are off the pace compared to the likes of Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari.

Russell had the better of the day of the two drivers, with the former Williams Racing ace placing fourth quickest in both Friday sessions.  He was also the busier driver as he completed twenty-three laps in the afternoon and twenty-five laps in the evening.

The Briton says Mercedes are doing everything they can to improve their W13, and they will need to look closely into Friday’s running to see where they can find time ahead of Saturday’s running at the Bahrain International Circuit.

“It’s all about lap time and we’re certainly not where we want to be,” said Russell.  “We made progress on solving some of our issues but the pace isn’t there at the moment.

“We need to go over the data tonight to understand where we’re struggling with the car. We’ve got lots of work ahead of us to get the car where we want it but if any team can, we can.

It was a strong-looking and productive opening practice day of the 2022 Formula 1 season for Scuderia Ferrari on Friday, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. placing inside the top three in both sessions at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Despite a spin in the afternoon session, Leclerc was able to finish second fastest behind Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in the first practice of the year, while he was within a tenth of a second of evening pacesetter Max Verstappen later in the day.

Leclerc completed twenty-two laps in the afternoon session, setting a best time of 1:34.557, before improving to a 1:32.023 under the lights, the Monegasque completing another twenty laps in the session.

Despite appearing to be competitive in Bahrain, Leclerc remains cautious and knows it is early days, although he hopes Ferrari are able to unlock more pace in the F1-75 before Saturday’s Qualifying session.

“Our first two sessions have gone rather well, without any issues,” said Leclerc. “We seem to be quite competitive, but we have to keep in mind that it is still early to draw any conclusions.

Mother Nature is back to spoil everyone’s fun. On the same day the FIA World Endurance Championship‘s 1000 Miles of Sebring in the neighbouring state of Florida was shortened for weather, NASCAR‘s Friday on-track activities at Atlanta Motor Speedway were cancelled due to rain. All three national series—Cup, Xfinity, Camping World Truck Series—consequently lost practice and qualifying sessions for the day, meaning the starting lineups were instead set using the qualifying formula devised for non-qualifying races during the COVID-19 pandemic seasons in 2020 and 2021.

Pending weather, all three series still intend to practice on Saturday. Such sessions will be important as NASCAR’s first excursions on a reconfigured Atlanta.

With no qualifying, Chase Briscoe will start Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 on the pole ahead of Team Penske‘s Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano for a Ford sweep of the top three positions. Briscoe is coming off his first career Cup victory at Phoenix.

“Car drove absolutely PERFECT in qualifying, proud of my guys,” joked Briscoe.

With only thirty-seven cars entered, everyone makes the race. Including the chartered cars, Greg Biffle and NY Racing Team will make their third start of 2022 after skipping Phoenix. Driver changes from Phoenix come in Spire Motorsports‘ #77 and Rick Ware Racing‘s multi-man #15, which respectively go from the hands of Landon Cassill to Josh Bilicki and Garrett Smithley to Georgia native David Ragan.

Victory at the FIA World Endurance Championship 1,000 Miles of Sebring never seemed in doubt for the grandfathered LMP1 Alpine Elf Team #36 despite the three red flags that caused the event to come to an early conclusion.

Starting from pole, Alpine had the perfect start to the race, beating the chasing second-placed Glickenhaus Racing #708 into Turn 1. The two Toyota Gazoo Racing machines got bogged down by the LMP2 United Autosports duo, leaving the run clear for Alpine to begin building on their race lead. Toyota managed to get back on the right foot and begin their chase of Alpine, but by time the #8 and #7 got to second and third respectively, the Alpine already had a 20 second lead.

It was still the early stages of the race so Toyota had time to play tactics and try to utilise a different pit strategy and longer stints to make up the time on the Alpine. Brendon Hartley, Sebasiten Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa looked like they were making some ground up when disaster struck the sister car. Jose Maria Lopez was on board when the #7 made contact with a Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche trying to lap it on the 3.7 mile circuit and spun into the tyre barriers at Turn 9. There was a lot of damage on the car, forcing Lopez to bring it back to the pits, but on his way back to the garage the Toyota veered off track again, hitting more tyre barriers at Turn 15 but this time flipping over and landing on its roof.

Lopez was fine and managed to extract himself from the car, passing the medical checks once he had returned to the paddock. He admitted on his TV interview that it had been his mistake that caused the second Turn 15 crash, stating he had misjudged his speed going through the corner in his haste to get back to the pits. The incident brought out the first red flag of the session and a 30 minute delay to repair the barriers.

Alas, the 1,000 Miles of Sebring was not destined to run its full course, for with three hours remaining on the clock threats of an electric storm crossing the track began to emerge. Due to safety laws in America, it is illegal to continue racing during an electrical storm, so as a precaution the race was red flagged once again to see if the storm would pass. A short delay later and the cars were back on track, but again it wasn’t to last.

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan has taken the two points of the season after setting the fastest time in the first round of FIA Formula 2 Qualifying in Sakhir.

After a thirty minute session under the floodlights of the Bahrain International Circuit, the Australian will start Sunday’s Feature Race at the front of the grid alongside ART Grand Prix’s Théo Pourchaire who could only put himself within a tenth of his rival.

Hitech Grand Prix’s Jüri Vips will start behind them after setting the third fastest time with the American racing driver, Logan Sargeant in a strong fourth place in the first F2 qualifying session of his career.

The windy conditions at the circuit made it difficult for the drivers, with Ayumu Iwasa bringing out a Red Flag in under a minute after spinning and stalling at turn two due to cold tyres.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Jake Hughes set the pace early on with a 1:41.469, a whole second faster than last year’s pole position time of 1:42.848 set by Guanyu Zhou, but had to settle for eighth place by the time the checkered flag fell. His time was half a tenth faster than Richard Verschoor in ninth place for Trident.

Argentine debutant Franco Colapinto took the first pole position of the season at the Bahrain International Circuit on Friday.

Both he and Van Amersfoort Racing make their FIA Formula 3 Championship bows this weekend, and have shown their hand at the earliest possible opportunity, starting at the top of the order for Sunday’s Feature Race.

Roman Stanek topped Free Practice earlier in the day, and put his Trident just behind Colapinto, who went fastest with his first valid lap.

Kush Maini finished the session in third place, but was later ordered to start both the Sprint and Feature Race from the pits after failing to stop at the weighbridge, while Charouz Racing System‘s Ayrton Simmons picked up a three-place penalty for the Sprint Race for impeding Maini’s MP Motorsport team-mate Alexander Smolyar at the end of the Russian’s lap.

The ART Grand Prix cars impressed and locked out fourth through sixth position, with Gregoire Saucy leading Victor Martins and Juan Manuel Correa home.

World Champion Max Verstappen started the 2022 season the same way he ended it in 2021, on top. The Dutchman ended the opening day of the Bahrain Grand Prix as fastest, but it wasn’t the usual suspects close behind at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Verstappen enjoyed a smooth opening day, the World Champion was fifth after the first session before claiming his top spot in the afternoon, where conditions were similar to what they will be for Qualifying on Saturday. His best time was a 1:31.936, with both Scuderia Ferrari’s close behind.

Verstappen is happy with how the weekend has started, he does predict though that the true pace of each team is still unknown.

“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.”

Trident‘s Roman Stanek topped the times in Free Practice in the FIA Formula 3 Championship‘s first-ever visit to the Bahrain International Circuit.

The Czech driver enters his third season of F3 in 2022, and his best lap of 1:48.012 edged out ART Grand Prix‘s Gregoire Saucy by just two hundredths of a second.

BWT Alpine F1 Team junior Caio Collet went fastest in the early exchanges before the times tumbled in the circuit’s first running of the day.

Franco Colapinto competed in the LMP2 class of the Asian Le Mans Series and European Le Mans Series, and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2021, but steps back into single-seater racing with Van Amersfoort Racing this year and showed his hand to move ahead of Collet as the track developed.

No drivers were able to move into the 1:47s, but Stanek moved to the top of the times towards the end of the session, going a hundredth away from breaking the 1:48s barrier.

Max Verstappen led the second free practice session of the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.

Charles Leclerc finished in second position, just 0.087 seconds slower than the Dutchman. Team-mate Carlos Sainz finished in third position at the end of the session.

The second free practice session of the opening race at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir started with air temperatures at 17 degrees C and track temperatures at 22 degrees C. The conditions were chilly and the session was at a time more representative of the qualification session and race.

Most of the drivers came out on the medium compound tyres. The Scuderia Ferrari drivers set the early place with Leclerc at the top of the time charts with a lap time of 1m33.121s.

Verstappen was out on the track ten minutes into the session. Verstappen slotted into second position with his first effort with a lap time of 1m33.621s .

Pierre Gasly finished on top of the time charts in the first free practice session 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain.

Charles Leclerc finished in second position ahead of his team-mate Carlos Sainz at the end of the first practice session.

The first free practice session of the opening race of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship started at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir with air temperatures at 20 degrees C and track temperatures at 36 degrees C.

The brand new 2022 challengers under the new regulations looked strikingly different from the cars of last season. Each car was a unique interpretation of the regulations as the new 2022 season was underway.

Nico Hulkenberg replaced Sebastian Vettel, who has tested positive for Covid19, for the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team. Daniel Ricciardo was back at the wheel of the MCL36 after missing the second test with Covid19-related illness.

The third instalment of Chasing the Dream was released on F1 TV last week, showcasing the effort put in behind the scenes from the drivers and teams throughout the 2021 FIA Formula 2 season.

The show dives into the personal lives of some of the brightest talents on the grid over six episodes. This includes Formula 1’s latest recruit Guanyu Zhou and eventual F2 champion Oscar Piastri as well as Théo Pourchaire and Dan Ticktum.

Episode 1: Year of the Tiger

The first episode kicks off with Zhou, looking into his childhood and the impact that the Chinese Grand Prix had on single seater racing in China. Li Bing, a Chinese Formula 1 commentator, states that, “Formula racing in China started to grow rapidly” following the organisation of the Grand Prix.

We then see the grid in action at the first round of the season in Bahrain. Zhou and fellow Alpine Academy driver, Christian Lundgaard, battle for the first four points of the season which comes along with pole position.

The two of them were then joined by another fellow Alpine Academy driver in Sprint Race 2. Oscar Piastri incites an exciting last few laps going wheel to wheel to Zhou and Lundgaard to win his first Formula 2 race, later proclaiming over the radio, “If you don’t love F2, you do now”.