Bahrain – FP2: The pace picks up and the Mercedes wake up

• Nightfall has done a lot of good for Mercedes. While they preferred to keep a set of soft tires during FP1 unlike the McLaren, RB or even Sauber, the Silver Arrows took advantage of the cool nighttime of the Sakhir track to continue their rise in power. This resulted in good progress on the timesheet.
• Respectively 9th and 7th in the first outing this Thursday, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell took advantage of the switch to software to accelerate the pace. Very active on the track with 24 and 22 laps covered each, the English monopolized the first two positions in the second free practice session. It was the seven-time world champion who had the pleasure of topping the rankings with a best time of 1'30"374, or 0"206 faster than his garage neighbor. For the moment, it is very difficult to draw conclusions but the W15 seems to behave better than Brackley's previous single-seaters, considered too capricious by both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
• Fernando Alonso also appeared in good form in the evening in Bahrain. The pilot Aston Martin who wants to move forward was active in these EL2 to grab 3rd place with a best reference in 1'30"660 (+ 0"286).

Verstappen doesn't show up yet

• We were waiting Max Verstappen at the front with the switch to soft tires, but ultimately this session turned out to be more complicated than expected for him. While everyone already saw him far ahead, the pilot Red Bull struggled to put everything together to set the best time, settling for 6th time just under half a second behind Lewis Hamilton. Enough to worry? Based on pre-season testing, not really. Unless there is a huge surprise, the Batavian will gradually increase in temperature.
• At the rear, it is still difficult to determine a hierarchy since the classification has evolved significantly compared to FP1. In the lead a few hours earlier, Daniel Ricciardo only hung the 12th time, interspersed between the two Williams while Nico Hulkenberg went from 19th to 7th. For Alpine, there was better but Pierre Gasly et Esteban Ocon remain stuck at the back of the peloton, 16th and 18th respectively.