Gasly, mixed feelings after the first day in Bahrain

Funny day we had Pierre Gasly this Friday near Bahrain. However, everything started very well for the Norman. At the wheel of an AT03 which seems to appreciate the heat of the Sakhir track, the Habs signed the best time of the first practice session with a lap in 1'34"193 relegating his closest pursuer Charles Leclerc more than 3 tenths. A good omen for the future, or not.

.@PierreGASLY at the provisional lead of FP1, that delights his engineer Pierre Hamelin 🔊🇫🇷#BahrainGP 🇧🇭

▶ https://t.co/7plkVVV12v pic.twitter.com/INR4zcYLI8

— CANAL+ F1® (@CanalplusF1) March 18, 2022

The fastest man in EL1, Pierre Gasly saw the second session of the day take a completely different turn. His AT03 more in difficulty in the Bahraini night, the winner of the 2020 Italian Grand Prix fell back in the hierarchy settling for 13^e chrono at 1“6 of Max Verstappen.

« We had two very different sessions today (Friday), recognized the Frenchman. We had the best time in EL1 and during the second session we finished 13th.^e, therefore contrasting results. I think the warmer track conditions helped us, the car seemed to like them. But we suffered a lot in the cold at night. We have to analyze everything to understand what happened knowing that qualifying and the race are being contested at night. I think our long runs were slightly better than the short runs but we still have a lot of work to understand our performance in these conditions."

Pierre Gasly will have one final daytime practice session to fine-tune his AT03 (13:00 p.m.) before tackling qualifying at the start of the evening (16:00 p.m.) for which he hopes to have found the right setting.

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