2024 F1 Round 1, Bahrain GP FP2: Hamilton Fastest in 1:30.374, Mercedes One-Two, Verstappen Only Sixth

Second practice for the 2024 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix concluded at Sakhir early on 1 March Beijing time. Mercedes impressed as Lewis Hamilton led the session with a 1:30.374 and team-mate George Russell finished second, 0.206 seconds behind, securing a one-two for the team. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was third.

FP2 is the most significant practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend because qualifying and the race take place at the same time of day. It is therefore the only practice opportunity to set up the cars in temperatures representative of those sessions. The track temperature was 22°C, more than ten degrees lower than in first practice.

Red Bull’s performance surprised observers. Verstappen, regarded as the leading favourite, was only sixth, almost half a second behind Hamilton. Based on the usual pattern of pre-season testing, however, Red Bull may well have been keeping its true pace hidden. The real gap would become clearer in qualifying.

Haas’ Nico Hülkenberg impressed in seventh, just 0.033 seconds behind Verstappen. Team-mate Kevin Magnussen also moved up to fourteenth. By contrast, RB dropped back markedly after its strong opening-practice showing: Daniel Ricciardo fell to twelfth, while Yuki Tsunoda slipped as low as fifteenth.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri continued his good form in fifth, but Lando Norris made a mistake on his flying lap and ended up only twentieth. Alpine continued to struggle, with Pierre Gasly sixteenth and Esteban Ocon eighteenth. Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were seventeenth and nineteenth respectively.

Pirelli brought the C1, C2 and C3 compounds to this event. In contrast to the frequent use of medium tyres in FP1, teams used the softest C3 compound for qualifying simulations in FP2, and almost all the long runs were also completed on C3 tyres. The Bahrain Grand Prix race usually features a two-stop strategy combining hard and soft tyres.