Some Bits Of F1

The 2024 season is here! This week we have seen the cars around the Bahrain International Circuit during the pre-season testing. Let's see the most highlighted news:

Will Carlos Sainz have another smooth operation before leaving?

During day 2 of testing Carlos Sainz was on track with his SF-24 trying to get used to the car, which, by this and by many other things, feels better than the 2023 one, and he achieved the absolute best lap of the whole testing sessions, even faster than Max Verstappen.

He went to make a lap wearing the C4 tyre, the second softest tyre they had available, and he achieved a time of 1:29:121. If we look back to the 2023 pole position lap, by Verstappen, he only was 2 tenths faster than Sainz, with a 1:29:708

Haas has used their time

While Williams has been, by a surprising difference, the team that has made the least laps around the circuit, having done 299, Haas has been the team that has made the most laps around the Bahrain International Circuit, with a total of 441 laps.

It's followed closely by Ferrari, having achieved 416 laps, and on third place is Red Bull with 390 laps.

Let's see if that extra laps affect on their understanding of the car.

Is Alpine going to be weak?

That's the question a lot of people are asking themselves after watching the three days of testing. Alpine has been highlighted in none of them, it has been hard for them to set a decent lap on the time table, and there were time that people were wondering if they'll be able to pull off something to save the season.

For now, these tests have not impacted positively on the social media's thoughts about Alpine's 2024 car. Let's see if they are able to save the season somehow.

Teams hiding in the shadows

There are teams, such as Aston Martin, Mercedes and McLaren which seem to not have the required pace to follow closely Red Bull, as some of them have struggled to set a nice set of laps, others have done them, but the results are very premature, and we can't extract conclusions right now from that data.

The true pace of those cars will be shown this Thursday with the official beginning of the 2024 season, with the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Next week's schedule

Next week is the beginning of the true action, and let's review the appointments we have:

Bahrain Grand Prix

* All times are in UTC format.

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Miguel, Co-owner of SBOF1