Verstappen Closes a Perfect Friday: Tops FP2
Once again, Max Verstappen showed he is the man to beat for the 2023 season. He secured yet another first position during the second, and final practice session of the day. Red Bull is looking strong in terms of race pace. Both cars ran the different tire compounds and lapped quickly and consistently around the circuit.
Verstappen made the quickest lap with a 1:29.603 with a new soft compound. Alonso was a couple of hundredths below with used tires of the same color. Sergio Perez completed the top 3 with a time of 1:29.902. It seems that the preferred compound is the soft, red tires. Everyone used a total of 44 sets, and ran almost 3000 kilometers combined on Friday.
Alpine moving uphill
The big surprise of the FP2 session was to see both Alpines high above the top 10, which in itself, was quite compressed, meaning the gap between first and tenth was less than one second. This can add extra pressure to drivers like Leclerc, Sainz, Russell, or Hamilton who are expected to perform highly, and secure the front rows during qualifying.
It was evident, given the circuit’s characteristics, that the grid was going to be closer than in Bahrain. We can expect a very close qualifying session on Friday. The race itself is going to be exciting for the rest of the grid, except Red Bull, whose pace alone is above the rest.
Mercedes placed both of its drivers in fifth (Russell), and eleventh (Hamilton). Aston Martin who got second row on FP1, placed Alonso in second, and Stroll in seventh. The team is looking stronger and stronger every time they hit the track.
Ferrari's Ghosts
Ferrari placed Leclerc in ninth, and Sainz tenth. As mentioned before, they are less than a second from the fastest time set by Verstappen. Leclerc had a bit of an incident when he slowed down the car all of a sudden, and radioed his team, asking what was going on. Everyone’s heart skipped a bit because of Ferrari’s reliability recent reliability woes; the Monegasque has a 10-place grid penalty for changing its third Control Electronics. Let’s hope this unexplained issue does not carry consequences for qualifying and during the race. The ‘tifosi’ would hate to see another DNF in a row.
Nico Hulkenberg was the final surprise of the session by placing himself and Haas in eighth place, just over half a second from Verstappen’s time. His teammate, Kevin Magnussen, finished in fifteenth, 1.2 seconds from the top, and around half a second from his teammate.
Saturday is going to be fun
Everything is set for Saturday. Teams will push a bit more during the final practice session; the drivers will push the cars to the limit, and close to the wall. FP3 will serve as a rehearse session for the Qualifiying session later during that day.
Verstappen and Perez are bound for another front row lock, but the compressed top ten might force more than one driver to push the limits above the threshold. Let’s hope no one crashes come Saturday. Today we saw the drivers ride the kerbs aggressively and produce scintillating sparks, more noticeable during the night.
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