The data that shows F1 is much closer in 2021 - with Red Bull ahead

Formula 1 is almost there. The championship is now just one day away from qualifying for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix – the point at which everyone has endlessly been saying will be the moment when each team’s true potential will be revealed.

But before reaching the PR promised land, the 10 teams and 20 drivers still had to negotiate the opening practice running of the season, with the usual pair of sessions taking place on Friday. For 2021, however, these have been cut by 30 minutes down to an hour each. But the teams still have the same number of tyre sets available as they did in 2020, which meant the two practice sessions today were nice and lively throughout.

The headline results unfolded in the following manner. Testing-time-topper Max Verstappen was again fast in FP1, finishing with the top spot by 0.298s over Valtteri Bottas, but immediately in the afternoon session today, Mercedes already looked much stronger than it did in testing two weeks ago. The difference year-on-year is that normally Mercedes is in control at this stage of the season while Red Bull is playing catch-up…

In FP2, Red Bull again had an edge on single lap pace, with Verstappen winning out by 0.095s over McLaren’s Lando Norris and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton ending up third, 0.235s slower than his Dutch rival. Once the fast times in the second session had been completed, the teams switched to the traditional FP2 long-run data and here it appears that Red Bull is also a lick in front.

“It’s been a good day again,” said Verstappen.“With the heat and the wind it is not easy to find a perfect balance around the whole lap, but overall I would say it was a positive day.

“There are still things to improve and look into for tomorrow – tyre wise and a bit of balance tuning – plus I think it will be even more windy, which is a challenge for everyone in these cars. I am pretty happy with the start of the weekend, but tomorrow is a different day and we have to see whether we can do it in qualifying when it counts.”

One key takeaway from the reduced practice time is that, particularly when it comes to the long run part of FP2, any disruption will have a significant impact on the teams’ preparations and the data they gather, while also infuriating Autosport grand prix editors everywhere…

Lando Norris, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I thought having an hour session instead of 90 minutes meant it would be a bit easier, with less time on track – but it was pretty chaotic actually,” said Daniel Ricciardo, offering a perspective to respect.

“You feel the half-hour. It goes quick. I think it was quite fortunate that we were here a couple of weeks ago, so we could hit the ground running. I think you need to make the most of that track time.”

2021 FP2 overall order

Returning to the single lap pace (above), data seen by Autosport suggests that almost nothing separated Verstappen's best lap with Hamilton's, until they arrived at the Turn 13 right-hander – the corner that starts the final sector and is where Hamilton slid off into the gravel in testing. From there (and at the final corner too) the data suggests the Red Bull pulled clear.

“There are still things to improve and look into for tomorrow – tyre wise and a bit of balance tuning – plus I think it will be even more windy, which is a challenge for everyone in these cars"Max Verstappen

This is likely because Mercedes is still struggling to reach the ideal car balance window with the W12 and neither Hamilton nor team-mate Bottas are fully happy with it. In the later long-runs, Bottas’s handling ended up so off he called it “undriveable” on his team radio, after being so sideways coming out of Turns 4 and 8 he may as well have still been competing in the Arctic Rally.

The balance issue means Mercedes is moving around more compared to the Red Bull and this has a significant impact on the new tyres, which the team says are much more sensitive to balance problems compared to their 2019-2020 equivalents.

Valtteri Bottas, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

This more than likely explains the one-lap pace gap between Verstappen and Hamilton, because the tyres were giving up on the world champion as he entered the crucial final two real corners of the Bahrain track, which will have cost him momentum all the way to the line.

Intriguingly, McLaren split F1’s two leading teams on one-lap time today thanks to Norris’s 1m30.942s, but the data Autosport has seen indicates that it was reaching a much greater top speed compared to its rivals in FP2, so was likely running in a higher engine mode.

Medium tyre long-run average times

*N/A Alfa Romeo, Haas

Looking at the long run times, Red Bull appears to be fractionally ahead at this stage of the weekend. But it and Mercedes appear to be very evenly matched on the mediums, remembering that the latter’s drivers are still unhappy with their respective car balances.

There are good points for both teams at this stage, though.

Mercedes stands to gain from a balance breakthrough, assuming it can find one, while it has been suggested that Red Bull apparently did not run with its engine turned up on any of its flying laps on Friday. Plus, the data Autosport has seen suggests Verstappen started his long run in a faster engine mode before turning the engine down, which isn't allowed in the race. And here we provide the first reminder that there are all the classic fuel load and engine mode caveats to consider when looking at practice times…

“The car wasn't where we wanted it by this weekend,” said Hamilton. “It's looking better, but still not perfect so we're working as hard as we can. We still have a hill to climb but we're staying positive. We thought Red Bull would be as fast as they are, so we know they are leading at the moment.

“It's all about having a stable car and being able to make the tyres last. That's going to be key in this climate and with the wind we have here.”

Lewis Hamilton, 2021 Bahrain GP

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Behind the top two teams, the fight is again incredibly close, and it seems as if the testing picture has largely been transferred over at this stage.

McLaren appears to be slightly artificially high on one-lap pace, if it was indeed running more power than its rivals today, but it is still right there with AlphaTauri on the medium long runs. Yuki Tsunoda’s strong start to life in F1 continued, but his day did end on a down-note when the team spotted a so far unspecified issue in his telemetry and called him into the pits right at the end of his long run.

Based on today's times, it looks as if Ferrari is again in the midfield fight but compares well against AlphaTauri and McLaren on the medium long runs. But it’s well off on the soft average (below), however this is not expected to be a very durable race tyre, so it may be that the teams try and avoid using it if they can.

Soft average times

*N/A Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo

Aston Martin and Alpine both seem to have work to do against their midfield rivals based on their respective showings today, with Aston both missing one-lap pace and finishing well down the medium tyre table. As Aston had such a disrupted test it was very difficult to place, but it is likely suffering alongside Mercedes when it comes to the new rear floors, as they share the low-rake concept (more on this below).

“We still need to improve our pace over a single lap and that’s one of the priorities as we prepare for final practice and qualifying tomorrow,” said Aston team boss Otmar Szafnauer.

Based on today’s showing, Alpine isn’t looking quite as strong as it did on testing – particularly in comparison with McLaren.

Fernando Alonso, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

In 'Class C', the testing picture also seems to have transferred over at this stage, although Kimi Raikkonen's FP2 accident has kept that image somewhat clouded because he didn't do a long run afterwards. His Alfa Romeo team was also one of only two squads not to do a medium tyre race simulation.

Williams compares well against Alpine in the soft averages, with George Russell impressed by the team’s pace on high fuel, even if Williams' head of vehicle performance Dave Robson said the car’s performance was “still below what we would like”. Behind, Haas looked to be well adrift on both one-lap pace and long-run pace today.

In terms of predicting how things might things shape up for the race, (always fraught with peril!), there's the cliched potential for it all to change, as that’s just F1’s secretive nature. But this is also true because the rest of the weekend’s running - and especially Sunday - is expected to take place in very different weather conditions.

“The car wasn't where we wanted it by this weekend. It's looking better, but still not perfect so we're working as hard as we can"Lewis Hamilton

The best FP2 times today ended up much slower than the best from testing a few weeks ago (Verstappen was 1.887s slower today) because it was much hotter on Friday - even in the evening session - than on the final day of testing, where Verstappen was also running a softer C5 tyre.

On Sunday, temperatures are expected to drop by approximately 10-degrees, which could play havoc with the critical car balances the teams are all chasing. It is also set to be much windier, which will unsettle all cars but will particularly alarm those teams who need to work on getting their rear ends to behave more stably - such as Mercedes.

“[The wind being higher for the race is] not great for us,” concluded Hamilton. “The rear is unstable as it is but I'm sure everyone will be in the same boat - some a little more, some a little less.

“For people at home trying to understand, when you approach a corner and the rear moves, you're trying to find that tipping point. The tipping point used to be further away with more downforce on the car - now it falls away much quicker than normal. The performance we've lost on tyres this year doesn't help but we'll work away tonight and try to find a way.”

Mercedes garage, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Another alarming element for Mercedes to consider, particularly when it comes to a potential season-long fight with Red Bull, is that is has now confirmed that its low-rake aero concept has been harmed more in terms of downforce loss by the changes to the rear floor rules for 2021.

“Our analyses have shown that the high-rake concept has lost less downforce than the lower rake,” said Toto Wolff. But what is more concerning for the team is that it cannot undo this new differentiator because the W12 is pioneered around the low-rake concept, and F1’s rules are changing completely for next season. This will be an area to keep an eye on as the season develops, to see if Mercedes can find a way to overcome what it has apparently lost in comparison to Red Bull.

In terms of race tyre strategy for Sunday’s grand prix, the top teams all concentrated on seeing how the mediums performed with high fuel in FP2.

This suggests that is the tyre they will want to start the race on. But there's significant danger in potentially trying to get through Q2 on that rubber because Pirelli estimates that there is a 0.9s delta between the softs and mediums, while the medium-hard is 0.4s. So, the harder compounds are likely much better race tyres, but the midfield teams will likely still have to use the softs to ensure they get through to Q3 - hence why plenty of these squads did long run work on that compound.

With all that in mind, right now it looks good for AlphaTauri, less so for Alpine, while up front, Red Bull looks like its ahead of Mercedes. But it’s rarely so simple.

However, one really intriguing and encouraging data set stemming from what we saw today comes from comparing the one-lap pace deficits in FP2 with those set in the same session for the 2020 Bahrain GP (below).

Pierre Gasly, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

2020 FP2 order

Mercedes and Red Bull have swapped places, but most of the field is more closely packed (with Haas the outlier). In 2020, only six teams were covered by 0.8s in FP2, while today it was eight. And this year four squads fit into the 0.3s gap that was between just Mercedes and Red Bull last season.

"You can see clearly the Merc and the Red Bull having a bit of an advantage on the rest of the field. But [I was] also surprised with how tight the short runs were, in terms of performance” Carlos Sainz Jr

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr offered an explanation for this, saying: “Suddenly there was a big change in wind and track conditions going into FP2, and it made the cars and balance a lot more on the edge and it brought the field a bit together.

“And it was actually quite tricky out there. I think the long runs showed a bit better where everyone is, you can see clearly the Merc and the Red Bull having a bit of an advantage on the rest of the field. But [I was] also surprised with how tight the short runs were, in terms of performance.”

It of course remains to be seen whether this new condensed pack will be the same the sessions that matter this weekend, and through 2021 overall, but it really does seem as if F1 is a lot closer this year.

Sergio Perez, 2021 Bahrain GP practice

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images