Fernando Alonso ended the second practice session at the top of the time charts as Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team continue their impressive form at the start of the first race weekend of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.
The first third of the session saw a mixture of tyre compounds used. Charles Leclerc was setting the pace on the soft tyre with a time of 1:31.843, with his team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. just a few tenths behind him. Having not used soft tyres at all in the first session, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team looked slightly quicker but even on their best laps, Lewis Hamilton was still four tenths back from the Scuderia Ferrari of Leclerc in the first part of the session.
Early on in the session, the BWT Alpine F1 Team duo of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon were impressing occupying fourth and fifth but that wouldn’t last for long with the whole grid going for qualifying-style runs on soft tyres.
A quick flurry of laps saw a number of different drivers set the session personal best, the first being Lance Stroll, who is starting to get to grips with the car after he missed the pre-season testing due to a cycling accident he suffered a few weeks ago. That time was soon replaced by the newly appointed MoneyGram Haas F1 Team driver, Nico Hülkenberg, who is back on the grid after a three-year break. Red Bull were looking to flex their muscles but despite the best attempts of Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen, they were unable to put times on the board faster than Alonso, who was once again impressing everyone.
The end of the soft tyre running left Alonso on top of the time sheets with a lap time of 1:30.907, with Pérez and Verstappen around two-tenths behind each. Ferrari had another difficult session, although Leclerc managed to go fourth, Sainz struggled yet again and finished the session down in fourteenth.
The session saw a significant change in fortune for Alpine, with Gasly managing to secure seventh place in the classification. It was the apposite for Mercedes, who once again struggled to make an impact. Despite looking like they had a good pace early on, they failed to put in any faster laps leaving Hamilton and Russell eighth and thirteenth respectively.
McLaren F1 Team fans have yet more reason to be worried ahead of the first race of the season, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri limited to ninth and fifteenth in the standings. Scuderia AlphaTauri once again showed a clear lack of pace with Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries once again struggling down in eighteenth and nineteenth.
The teams now just have one hour of free practice left on Saturday before the first qualifying session of the season round the Bahrain International Circuit.
