Report 5th day of 2022 Pre-season testing
Event: 2022 Pre-Season testing
Track: Bahrain International Circuit
The pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit continued on this second day of three with another hot and breezy one. Pierre Gasly finished on top on Day 1 in the AlphaTauri AT03.
Daniel Ricciardo was still feeling unwell and won't be driving this morning. Lando Norris was back in the McLaren MCL36 and will be hoping to build on yesterday where he only managed 50 laps across the full day of running.
The Haas team have been granted permission to run slightly longer sessions today and tomorrow. They missed yesterday morning through no fault of their own - freight delays meaning parts of their car arrived 48 hours later than planned and leaving the engineers short on time to build the car. Mick Schumacher was in the car for the normal four hour session this morning. Comeback kid Kevin Magnussen gets an extra hour of running this afternoon. Tomorrow, the Dane is up first and will start an hour early and then Schumacher will run a lengthy six hour session in the afternoon and evening.
Morning test session - 5th day
77 BOTTAS Valtteri (fin), Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN C42, action during the Formula 1 Aramco pre-season testing Photo Diederik Van Ver Laan / DPPI
Valtteri Bottas leaded the way out of the pit lane in the Alfa Romeo as the lights flick to green, having sounded positive after his strong afternoon of running yesterday.
Until 10:30 there was no sign of Haas and Williams yet. The other eight teams had already been out and were starting to work through their run plans. Leclerc had locked up the Ferrari into turn 10. That corner was causing all sorts of issues yesterday.
Max Verstappen got he first taste of testing in Bahrain. The Dutchman was on the harder compound tyres. He still was getting a purple (quickest of all) first sector, but is seven tenths off in the second. A decent final sector, and he gone P2, half a second back, 1,5 hours into the session.
Nicholas Latifi had joined the fray for the first time this week at Williams. Alex Albon was driving yesterday and had a fairly decent day. Although his was running somewhat curtailed by a steering issue late on in the evening.
Around 11:20 Alpine driver Esteban Ocon had gone to the top of the timesheet with a 1:34.276 min. Half an hour later Nicholas Latifi had suffered a brake fire with the Williams FW44, bringing out the first red flags of the day. His rear right brakes seemed to be on fire and Latifi had to helped the marshals to put out the fire.
With 52 minutes to go Sebastian Vettel's had parked the Aston Martin somewhere around turn 4. The German driver got out and walked back to the pits. No red flags were needed to recover the car.
At the end of the session two red flags caused the session to stop earlier then suppose too.
Afternoon test session - 5th day
Carlos Sainz testing the Ferrari F1-75 on the first day of testing in Bahrain
At the start of the afternoon test session It didn't look like we would see Norris anytime soon though, as the screens are up at McLaren so some pretty serious work was going on in there. Their brake issues were preventing long runs at the moment, but Norris was able to get out for a few laps at the end of the morning session which was encouraging.
An hour into the afternoon session and Zhou has headed out for Alfa Romeo. 54 laps for the Chinese rookie yesterday was a decent opening after a tricky Barcelona. The team was losing out on running on a number of days, although Bottas got the worst of the luck there.
Kevin Magnussen got out with the Haas and he is out on track for the first time with the 2022 beast. A few moments later the news got out that the Williams would not come out any more today after it was on fire this morning.
Around 16:35 the wind was starting to pick up out there and that it was also filling the air with a fair bit of sand. No sand storm yet, but certainly enough to deposit on certain exposed areas of the track. It also finally was cooling down a bit, much to the relief of drivers and crews alike.
The Alpine A522 broke down around 16:20 with Ocon in it. The French driver parked the Alpine at turn 12 and the test session was stopped by a red flag.
At 16:42 Carlos Sainz was leading the afternoon session in front of Stroll, as Hamilton returned to the fray. He completed 19 laps up till then. He was sporting medium compound tyres but didn't seem to be pushing overly hard. He did jump up to fourth.
Quickest Lap Times 5th day of testing
| P | No | Driver | Team | Time | 1st Gap | Laps | Tyres |
| 1 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas | 1:33,207 | 60 | C4 | |
| 2 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | Ferrari | 1:33,532 | +0,325s | 60 | C4 |
| 3 | 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 1:34,011 | +0,804s | 86 | C4 |
| 4 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 1:34,064 | +0,857s | 70 | C4 |
| 5 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:34,141 | +0,934s | 47 | C5 |
| 6 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Alpine | 1:34,276 | +1,069s | 111 | C4 |
| 7 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:34,366 | +1,159s | 54 | C3 |
| 8 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas | 1:34,532 | +1,325s | 45 | C3 |
| 9 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:34,609 | +1,402s | 60 | C3 |
| 10 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Aston Martin | 1:36,020 | +2,813s | 46 | C3 |
| 11 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | AlphaTauri | 1:36,802 | +3,595s | 120 | C4 |
| 12 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Alfa Romeo | 1:36,287 | +3,080s | 25 | C2 |
| 13 | 47 | Mick Schumacher | Haas | 1:37,846 | +4,639s | 23 | C2 |
| 14 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:38,585 | +5,378s | 67 | T |
| 15 | 6 | Nicholas Latifi | Williams | 1:39,845 | +6,638s | 12 | T |
| 16 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | Alfa Romeo | 1:39,984 | +6,777s | 48 | T |
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