What we learned from F1's first full race simulations
Formula 1 testing 2021 has passed its halfway point, with Mercedes finally getting back to its customary place at the head of the times, but Saturday’s running was still far from faultless for the reigning champion squad.
Both sessions took place in much cooler conditions than on day one, but without the dramatic sandstorm of Friday afternoon. The wind remained a challenging factor, with several drivers having off-track moments throughout the course of the action.
The middle day of the test was the cliched event of two halves for Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton was aboard the W12 in the morning and, although he was happier with the handling of the updated Black Arrows car on Saturday, it still looked difficult – particularly in the strong winds around the Bahrain track.
Mercedes also looked less at ease in the hotter conditions of the sunny opening session in which Hamilton lost the rear of the car going through the tricky medium-speed Turn 13, at the start of the final sector, just past the first session’s halfway point. The world champion was beached and had to hitch a lift back to the pits, where his body language suggested he was dejected at best and livid at worst.
But Hamilton at least logged significant laps in the first session - 58, which Valtteri Bottas matched in the second – as he concentrated on shorter, consistent efforts to work on set-up options and overall data gathering.
Bottas finally got some significant milage after Mercedes’ gearbox problem on the opening morning largely confined him to the garage. His afternoon was essentially split between carrying on Hamilton’s earlier work on set-up and data before switching to qualifying simulations towards the end of the day.
Armed with the C5 tyres – the softest compounds in Pirelli's range – he eventually worked his way up to a 1m30.289s – the fastest of the test so far. This put him 0.124s clear of Pierre Gasly in the AlphaTauri, but there is a sense that there’s more to come from a car that Hamilton says at the rear “doesn't feel particularly great with this new regulation change, but we're still trying to find the sweet spot”.
"The car is still a bit of a handful in the warmer and windier conditions of the morning and that's something we need to get to grips with tomorrow. It's going to be a busy day" Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes
“It was a better day than yesterday, and we were able to run to plan in both sessions,” explained Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. “We've made progress on the set-up today and the balance was more together by the end of the session, albeit in calmer and cooler conditions.
“But the car is still a bit of a handful in the warmer and windier conditions of the morning and that's something we need to get to grips with tomorrow. It's going to be a busy day; we've got more than enough to do so we're hoping for a trouble-free day.”
Overall best times on day 2
Pos Team Driver Time Laps Tyre
1 Mercedes Bottas 1m30.289s 58 C5
2 AlphaTauri Gasly 1m30.413s 87 C5
3 Aston Martin Stroll 1m30.460s 70 C5
4 McLaren Norris 1m30.586s 52 C4
5 Alfa Romeo Giovinazzi 1m30.760s 124 C5
6 Ferrari Leclerc 1m30.886s 73 C5
7 Williams Latifi 1m31.672s 132 C4
8 Red Bull Perez 1m31.682s 117 C2
9 McLaren Ricciardo 1m32.215s 52 C3
10 Alpine Alonso 1m32.339s 127 C2
11 AlphaTauri Tsunoda 1m32.684s 57 C4
12 Haas Schumacher 1m32.883s 88 C4
13 Ferrari Sainz 1m33.072s 56 C3
14 Haas Mazepin 1m33.101s 76 C4
15 Mercedes Hamilton 1m33.399s 58 C2
16 Aston Martin Vettel 1m38.849s 10 C3P
Red Bull fell from day one time-toppers to eighth place in the day’s best times table (above), but that doesn’t represent what was another very solid day of running for the team. For a start, it didn’t engage in the qualifying simulation runs on the softer rubber in the best conditions of the evening running, and it managed to get through a complete race distance (the results of which can be seen below).
Sergio Perez made his official test debut at his new squad, racking up 117 laps (Haas led the way with 164, with Williams’ Nicholas Latifi completing the most of a single driver on the day with 132).
Perez had probably the most dramatic moment of the day when his engine cover blew off and shattered into a cloud of debris on the main straight as he overtook Latifi early in the second hour of the second session. The Red Bull had closed in on the Williams using DRS and, when Perez moved out of the slipstream and hit the headwind again, the engine cover appeared to come apart.
The red flags – the first of two proper stoppages of the day (both sessions were red flagged a few minutes early before the drivers completed extra practice starts) – were required so the track could be cleaned, while Perez came back into the pits with his Honda engine’s architecture on display.
“Sergio got through a full race simulation today, including pitstops, which was very useful for him as he embeds with the team even more and gets up to speed with all our procedures,” explained Red Bull’s head of race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin.
“We had a couple of small issues – nothing huge and it didn’t affect our engineering programme, so in a way these are things you want to find out about in testing. Those niggles aside, it was another solid day. It is clear that we have not been chasing lap times and have only run one of the harder compounds.”
What first full race runs of testing taught us
Five teams did race runs of approximately 45 laps each in the afternoon session, while one did a similar distance in the morning – although only Red Bull in the afternoon and Alfa Romeo in the morning did their totals in one solid run without returning to the garage.
Red Bull appeared to be the fastest over three stints, but AlphaTauri performed very strongly too. Ferrari, which concentrated on its tyre management techniques with Carlos Sainz Jr in the morning, looked to be a slight bit further back based on these times – set by Charles Leclerc over three separate stints in the afternoon.
For the second day, the Scuderia was not towards the top of the speed trap classification, which was lower anyway with the strong headwind blowing down the main straight throughout the day. Sainz also had a dramatic spin coming out of the fast downhill left of Turn 7 just before halfway through the morning session – the rear of his car looking particularly unsettled on the lap in question even before he lost control.
Pierre Gasly, who battled by Latifi during his third ‘race’ stint with a neat dive to the inside of Turn 1, lapped very consistently during his long stints and looked very comfortable at the wheel of the AT02, which he confirmed after the session.
The 2020 Bahrain GP was run over 57 laps, so it remains possible that these drivers could have been carrying more fuel than was necessary for these various 'races'
“I feel really good in the car, especially compared to this time last year, so it’s really positive for me,” he said. “There are obviously places we still need to improve upon, but I think we’re in a good place with one day left of running at this test. The Honda power unit is working really well so far, and we haven’t had any reliability issues, which is great.”
Full race sims on Saturday
Stint 1
Pos Team Average Time Tyres Laps
1 AlphaTauri 1m37.926s C2 17
2 Red Bull 1m38.155s C2 20
3 Ferrari 1m38.713s C2 14
4 Williams 1m39.670s C3 15
5 Haas 1m40.002s C3 12
6 Alfa Romeo 1m40.318s C2 20
Stint 2
Pos Team Average Time Tyres Laps
1 Red Bull 1m36.769s C3 16
2 AlphaTauri 1m37.464s C2 16
3 Ferrari 1m37.945s C2 14
4 Williams 1m38.505s C2 11
5 Alfa Romeo 1m39.079s C2 23
6 Haas 1m39.228s C3 19
Stint 3
Pos Team Average Time Tyres Laps
1 Red Bull 1m35.101s C2 9
2 AlphaTauri 1m37.058s C3 13
3 Haas 1m37.013s C2 17
4 Ferrari 1m37.760s C3 15
5 Williams 1m38.798 C1 18
* Alfa Romeo N/A (Did a one-stopper)
There are caveats too when it comes to these ‘race’ times (above) – in that all the teams executed different tyre strategies (and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi effectively did a one-stopper, which was completed in the hot, and therefore less than ideal, conditions of the first session).
Plus, the 2020 Bahrain GP was run over 57 laps, so it remains possible that these drivers could have been carrying more fuel than was necessary for these various 'races', and those that were wheeled back into the garage between stints may have been topped up or had set-ups tweaked.
Williams looks to be a step ahead of Haas based on the comparable stints completed by Latifi and Mick Schumacher, who lost a bit of time after his race sim when he appeared to be released too early from a practice pitstop and struck Haas’ front jack.
Alfa Romeo appears to be right in the mix with its 2020 ‘Class C’ rivals too, given its two stints were much longer and took place in the hotter morning session. Both Latifi and Haas’s Nikita Mazepin, who replicated Schumacher’s race sim programme in the morning session, both had brief off-track moments – with the Williams going off twice in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Now we come to the four teams that didn't complete a full race simulation on Saturday.
McLaren did a long stint on the C4s at the end of the evening session with Lando Norris, coming in approximately 0.8s slower per lap than Red Bull on softer rubber over a similar stint length (17 laps for McLaren to Red Bull's 16 on Perez's middle stint on the C3s). This is because the abrasive nature of the Bahrain asphalt means the softer rubber is worked that bit harder each lap.
Norris spent most of the first half of the second session completing short runs at slow speed, with McLaren later explaining that its programme on Saturday included “some tests to sign off aspects of our new power unit installation and operation with our colleagues at Mercedes HPP, which were completed as planned”, per technical director James Key.
Alpine's Fernando Alonso, who was returning to F1 pre-season testing duty for this first time in three years, shipped nearly a second a lap to Perez on his longest stint on the C3s in the evening session (11 laps), but that length suggests the team was assessing its pace over a controlled distance to see where it stacks up rather than trying a full race simulation, which Alonso didn't do in any case on Saturday.
The double world champion completed 127 laps and said afterwards that, while “the car did feel good today”, he thinks Alpine still needs to “understand the characteristics of the new aero package a bit better”.
Mercedes and Aston Martin, the two teams that lost the most running on Saturday, really lack long runs so far in testing – not that it's necessarily a major drama given the comprehensive data analysis capabilities all teams possess.
Hamilton's longest stint of 11 laps on the C3s came in at over 0.2s slower than Perez's average from the middle stint of the Red Bull’s ‘race’ run, but again the length of the Mercedes run means the times cannot be compared directly.
Alonso said afterwards that, while “the car did feel good today”, he thinks Alpine still needs to “understand the characteristics of the new aero package a bit better”
At Aston, which missed almost all of the morning due to a gearbox issue during what was supposed to be Sebastian Vettel’s time in the car, Lance Stroll's longest run of 10 laps on the C2s in the evening session came in over 1.5s slower than Perez's similar length run at the end of the Red Bull's full ‘race’ effort. But we can suggest that Perez would likely have been running less fuel given the circumstances he appeared to be simulating.
There's now only one day of testing remaining in 2021.
Look for Mercedes and Aston to try and shrug their difficulties off once and for all on the final day - ideally with full race runs to boot - while McLaren and Alpine will be looking to see where they stack up in the crowded midfield.