Alonso quickest in surprise-filled second Bahrain GP practice

Fernando Alonso beat the Red Bulls to the fastest time in second practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix as the hype surrounding Aston Martin’s 2023 Formula 1 car persisted.

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Key moments:

> Alonso sets fastest time of weekend so far

> Just 0.002s separates Red Bulls

> Pitlane near-miss between Norris and De Vries

> Disjointed start for Sainz continues

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Attempts from Alonso and Aston Martin to play down its impressive underlying pace from testing a week earlier were undermined when the two-time F1 champion split pacesetter Sergio Perez and defending champion Max Verstappen in first practice.

Alonso has now backed that up with the fastest time of the weekend in FP2, though the switch to performance running and qualifying simulations resulted in an incredibly tight lead order, with one second covering the top 13 cars and the whole field within 1.9s.

Aston Martin again had two cars in the top six as well, with Lance Stroll sixth in his second session back in the car, having missed pre-season testing through injury.

Stroll, who was 1.1s off his team-mate in FP1, halved that single-lap pace deficit to Alonso in the second hour-long session.

But there was a hint of mobility issues as he replied “I can’t” when asked to compromise his line for Turn 1 later on in the session, and was shown adjusting the position of his left hand on the steering wheel at the first corner on a replay later on.

Verstappen ended up pipping team-mate Perez to second place – albeit by a mere 0.002s – but Red Bull’s pace on long-run simulations still appeared to mark it out as the team to beat.

Alonso’s times, following a lock-up into the Turn 9/10 complex, began faster than Verstappen’s but the Red Bull ended up faster by between two and three tenths come the end of the session.

That still meant Alonso’s pace compared favourably to that of Ferrari, for which Charles Leclerc ended the session fourth.

His team-mate Carlos Sainz, who spun in FP1, was compromised for a second session in a row as he only had one attempt at a qualifying simulation. That left him 14th.

Nico Hulkenberg was a strong fifth in Haas’s VF-23 and within half a second of Alonso’s time, while behind Stroll there was finally a hint of pace from the Alpine – with new recruit Pierre Gasly seventh.

Lewis Hamilton was eighth in the best of the Mercedes, with team-mate George Russell three tenths further back in 13th and complaining of “aerodynamic disturbance” to the W14 at the end of the session.

Well, that was close 😰#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/S5WdLgkAud

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 3, 2023

Lando Norris was again in the top 10 for McLaren, placing ninth after avoiding a clash with the AlphaTauri of Nyck de Vries in the pitlane earlier in the session, with Zhou Guanyu completing the top half of the order in his Alfa Romeo C43.

Practice 2 Results