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As a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, this year there will also be two Formula 1 races in Bahrain, the second of which will be held on the “outside” line this weekend. Already at the beginning of the week, a lot of interesting things happened that will affect his race weekend.
Lewis hamilton became coronavirus, George Russell took his place, while Jack Aitken took Russell’s vacancy. Haas replaced Romain Grosjean, who suffered burns at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Pietro Fittipaldi.
In FP1, George Russell was fastest ahead of the two Red Bulls, and even then the record for the shortest lap in Formula One was broken, and further improvement was expected in the second free practice.
At the beginning of free practice, Carlos Sainz, Pietro Fittipaldi and the two Alfa Romeos ran measured laps and, as time passed, the track filled with people, as usual. With about 1 hour and 15 minutes to go in training, the two Renault were already driving at Ocon, Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel were spinning the Ferrari into Turn 2.
Leclerc had a problem, presumably a shift error, while driving on the track, so he had to return shortly after, so the Italian stable training did not start well. 26 minutes after the start of FP2, Verstappen took the lead with a lap time of 55.043.
For the first time off the field, Sergio Pérez made a fast lap on soft rubber and was also replaced by the Racing Point driver with a lap of 54.866. And with Vettel spinning again, Magnussen’s big reflexes were needed to keep Ferrari and Haas from colliding.
Halfway through training, Russell was already in the lead with a time of 54.713, while Bottas’ fastest lap was taken away from him due to leaving the field, but the Finn kept trying: his lap was approximately 6 tenths of second slower than Russell’s at the time.
Albon came up in fifth place on the first lap on soft tires, and Verstappen, in third place, was not happy with Red Bull – he felt the car was understeering. Norris also struggled, so the young Brit had to waste more time than usual in boxing.
Verstappen, meanwhile, came in second with a time of 128 milliseconds behind Russell. Sainz also complained about his switch, saying it lost synchronization. After that, the teams ran race simulations, so the drivers didn’t really improve at their best so far.
Leclerc was unable to return to the track for the remainder of training, and in the final minutes a series of errors and ties could be seen by the drivers, and Gasly was hit by a pebble with his finger and said it hurt a lot.
The end result of the training was Russell, Verstappen, Perez, Ocon, Albon, Kvjat, Stroll, Ricciardo, Gasly, Sainz in the top 10, and Bottas ran the fastest time in the second and third sectors, only 11th.
A 10-minute recap of the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours, which turned out to be quite a twist and ended with a victory for the eighth Toyota.
