AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly set the pace at the first practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix as the 2022 Formula 1 season kicks off with revolutionary new cars…
The Frenchman used soft tires to go 1m 34.193s, 0.364s ahead of Charles Leclerc in medium shoes, who spun 360 degrees on medium tires before recovering with Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz in third.
George Russell led the Mercedes in fourth place, 0.4 seconds behind the pace but a quarter of a second faster than his teammate and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton (7th).
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Reigning World Champion Max Verstappen started his defense with the fifth best time, the Red Bull rider covered four sets of tires but kept a soft compound for FP2.
1 Pierre | 1:34.193 |
2 Charles | +0.364 s |
3 Carlos | +0.418 s |
4 George | +0.436s |
5 Max. | +0.549s |
Lance Stroll finished sixth with Aston Martin and teammate Nico Hulkenberg, who replaced Sebastian Vettel after his compatriot tested positive for Covid-19, finished second in 14th place.
Fernando Alonso was eighth ahead of AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez rounded out the top ten. Zhou Guangyu started his rookie year on a high note, posting 11th in the fastest time since his first run on red-walled soft tyres. .
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The session lasted only a few minutes when Esteban Ocon’s Alpine dropped the upgraded body on the main straight. Given the significant amount of debris scattered around the track, the session was marked with a red flag.
Ocon returned to the track and finished 12th ahead of Williams leader Nicholas Latifi, who was two places and three tenths faster than new teammate Alex Albon (15th).
2022 Bahrain GP FP1: ride aboard with Latifi’s visor camera
McLaren, which had their front brake duct upgraded after they ran into so many problems in testing, had a very low-key session with Lando Norris (16th) and Daniel Ricciardo, who recovered from Covid-19 (17th). ).
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Mick Schumacher led Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen, who was called in late this season to replace Nikita Mazepin, in 18th place, three tenths separating the duo.
Valtteri Bottas had a difficult session, Alfa Romeo couldn’t fix the time. He retreated to the pits after reporting a misfire on his first set-up lap and exited once more and immediately headed back to the garage.
FP2 follows at 18:00 local time as we start to see teams stack up in Sakhir.
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