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Formula 1
Bahrain March Testing
F1 Bahrain pre-season test - Day 3
Minute by minute updates on the final day of the 2022 Bahrain F1 pre-season test
Track action gets underway at 7am GMT and finishes at 4pm GMT. The day will be split by a one-hour lunch break (11am-12pm GMT) which can be reduced if requested due to lost track time from either red flags or poor weather conditions.
Haas has been granted extra time to catch up on the missed four hours of track running on Thursday, following a late arrival of its freight to the circuit. The US team was permitted an extra hour of track time after the chequered flag on Friday and will be permitted to run an extra hour this morning plus have two hours of further running this evening.
New signing Kevin Magnussen, replacing Nikita Mazepin, following the termination of his contract, made good use of this extra testing time by posting Friday’s fastest time courtesy of a 1m33.207s effort set on C4 tyre in cooler conditions.
AlphaTauri set the pace on Thursday while Ferrari led the way open Friday before Magnussen’s late show.
McLaren will head into the final day again without Daniel Ricciardo, who had been absent from the test due to feeling unwell before testing positive for Covid-19 on Friday night. Lando Norris will pilot the MCL36 in the Australian’s absence.
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Russell is also on softs, and posts a 1m36s lap when he comes across Norris who is apparently unaware of his compatriot's presence on the approach to Turn 8 - forcing Russell into a compromised line passing the McLaren around the outside.
Another driver running softs at the moment is Tsunoda, but he appears to be carrying some fuel because he's running laps in the 1m38-40s.
Speaking of the Williams driver, he's just headed out on a set of softs so we might now get a chance to see how the FW44 copes on low fuel.
Alonso is also out at the moment on mediums and has a ragged moment at Turn 11 where quick hands were required to prevent his bucking Alpine being pitched into a spin. No sign of any improvement from the Spaniard, who has logged 116 laps today - two shy of Latifi.
We've yet to see what Ferrari can do in directly comparable conditions as Leclerc's time on softs was earlier in the evening - he's currently running around on mediums in the low 1m38s.
Russell goes again on his softs after a cool-down lap and is firmly in the mid-1m33s, so stays third fastest.
Now Verstappen goes top! Having cooled off his tyres, he goes again and unleashes a 1m31.973s to put clear daylight between himself and Leclerc to the tune of 0.442s. Gauntlet laid.
Russell was unable to improve on his last lap with softs - it was a low 1m33s for the Briton.
He'd done a bit of weaving on the back straight to try and put some heat into his tyres, but clearly not quite enough to get the required temperature into the rubber. That will at least make Mick Schumacher feel a bit better about his earlier spin in the same place...
Well Verstappen won't be improving this time around - he loops it on the power exiting the final corner!
Remember, Verstappen currently sits P2 on the basis of a lap on medium tyres earlier on. Leclerc in P1 and Russell in P3 both set their best times so far on softs.
Looks like Verstappen and Russell have both headed out on soft tyres. This could be fun...
If ever there was a time to see what these cars can do in testing, this is it. Will anybody decide to show their hand and unleash a blockbuster time on low fuel?
Green flag
Now we're back to green for the final 25 minutes of F1 testing. Make it count chaps.
An update from F1 says the session will resume at 18:33 local time.
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Vettel is currently eighth on the timesheets, his best time so far coming on the mediums to put him 1.4s off the pace of Ferrari's soft-shod Leclerc.
During the lull in action, why not check out Ben Edwards' latest column for GP Racing? In it, he discusses the prospects of Sebastian Vettel and Aston Martin, now that the four-time world champion has been re-united with his first F1 race engineer - new team principal Mike Krack.
Red flag
The session has now been red-flagged.
It looks like Bottas might have got stuck in fourth gear - the car made a horrible noise as he exited Turn 4 before coasting all the way down the hill in fourth.
Mechanical problem
Yellow flags are out, and Bottas has vacated the cockpit. With just 40 minutes left of testing to go, Alfa didn't need that.
We were about to type that today was going better for Bottas, who had just posted a 1m32.985s to go fourth-fastest on his medium tyres, but he's just pulled off the track - and it's at Turn 8 again!
Tsunoda is also making friends with runoff areas and goes straight on at Turn 8, where Bottas stopped at the end of yesterday's morning session.
Meanwhile, another visit to the Turn 10 run-off for Latifi who is still having problems with locking up there as the tyre becomes unloaded. He's on a long run with the hard tyres currently, and has hit 112 laps for the day - now surpassing Alonso as the most of anyone.
Tsunoda just set a new personal best first sector on soft tyres, but fails to improve after a big snap of oversteer in Turn 11 that requires him to chase the car right along to the kerb and ride it, the AlphaTauri sparking big-time.
Vettel comes in for a pitstop and gets a new set of hard tyres before scurrying out of the pitlane again. So sign of any set-up changes in progress. On the subject of pitstops, we heard from Red Bull's Christian Horner today that he doesn't expect stops to be sub-two seconds this year. Here's the story on that.
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That said, Tsunoda's lap certainly wouldn't have counted in qualifying. He ran so wide at the final corner, he not only has all four wheels beyond the kerb but almost clips the wall before having a big snap of oversteer as he rejoins, kicking up a cloud of dust as he does so.
Sure enough, Tsunoda now springs to fourth on his soft tyres, clocking a 1m33.002s lap. Four different teams now adorn the top four places as Leclerc leads Verstappen and Leclerc, with the second Red Bull of Perez the fastest morning-only driver in fifth.
Bottas immediately improves, launching to sixth on a 1m33.253s with his medium rubber. Others around him are on course to improve though, including current seventh-placed man Tsunoda who is running softs.
For those of you out there who are fans of Alfa's newest Flying Finn, we'll have an exclusive interview with him tomorrow on our Plus subscriber area courtesy of GP Racing's Oleg Karpov. Keep an eye out, it's a good one.
Out of the pits now comes Bottas, with a set of mediums aboard his Alfa. He joins Tsunoda, Vettel, Alonso, Norris and Latifi on the track at the moment.
McLaren has had its fair share of problems over the past few days, with Norris forced to shoulder the burden alone in Ricciardo's COVID-enforced absence, and a fair few brake problems limiting the team's mileage. But he's quietly ticking away today and has clocked up 69 laps today so far, currently pounding around on hard tyres.
Latifi will hope this isn't a sign of things to come, but having been passed a few minutes ago into Turn 1 by Verstappen, this time Vettel uses DRS to get alongside and then barrel past under braking into the hairpin.
Tsunoda meanwhile has taken a very novel approach to Turn 10 - he's carrying far too much speed into the tricky downhill left, and elects to go straight on before turning right into the runoff and doing a slow 360. A bit like my dad when given too many choices in the carpark at Tesco.
Having abandoned his previous effort to save his tyres, Russell goes for another push lap and clocks a 1m32.759s - though stays third, behind Verstappen's earlier time on the medium.
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Russell was just lining up for another go on the soft, but had a big wiggle entering the Turn 2 left-hander and had to get out of the throttle.
After his embarrassing red flag-inducing spin earlier - when at the start of a push lap, he got over-excited with the throttle exiting the final corner - Schumacher has cast away the blushes and put in a good effort to go fifth fastest on the medium tyre. It's a 1m33.151s for the Haas driver.
Leclerc is now out on softs and was a tenth shy of his own personal best last time around.
By: autosport.com
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