Red Bull recorded the fastest time of the Bahrain Formula 1 test so far as Sergio Perez went quickest on the morning of the final day of running.
The Mexican was out of the garage 50 minutes after the start of the collective session, his Red Bull sporting a new sidepod arrangement, and was straight to the top of the timesheets.
After trading fastest times with Alfa Romeo rookie Zhou Guanyu, he fired in a 1m33.105s on the C4 tyre just short of the two-hour mark.
With the other teams all appearing to focus on long runs, none would get close to Perez’s effort for the rest of the session – and Zhou himself stayed a comfortable second, eight tenths adrift of Perez but nine tenths up on the rest of the pack.
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly logged 88 laps, more than anyone in the field, en route to third place, ahead of the field’s two Spaniards – Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Alpine’s Fernando Alonso.
Lando Norris, amid his third straight full day in the McLaren given Daniel Ricciardo’s COVID-related absence, placed sixth as the team introduced new parts to address the brake temperature problem that had kept it from doing any meaningful long runs.
The fixes are understood to have had an impact, but McLaren will have further tweaks in place for next weekend’s opening race, the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Canadians Nicholas Latifi (Williams) and Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) completed the top eight, Latifi is set to get some extra running in the afternoon alongside team-mate Alexander Albon to make up for him being limited to just 12 laps on Friday, as a result of a minor fire on the FW44.
Mercedes’ seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton was ninth, focusing on high-fuel work before team-mate George Russell is slated to do some low-fuel runs in the afternoon. Hamilton was among the drivers deliberately trying to follow another car in the session, presumably in order to understand how this aspect has changed under the 2022 regulations.
Despite the extra hour of running it got before the official start of the day – as part of the compensation for the session it skipped due to a freight delay – Haas entered the mid-day break with the lowest lap total.
Friday pace-setter Kevin Magnussen recorded 17 laps during that early hour but only an extra 21 since, with his Haas VF22 developing a water pressure leak that was supposedly swiftly fixed – yet, though Magnussen soon returned to the track, he then came back into the pits and wasn’t out for the rest of the session.
Like in both of yesterday’s sessions, the running was interrupted by a red flag – the first of the morning – with 15 minutes to go, as the FIA trialled a standing start procedure.
This involved Gasly, Perez, Stroll and Zhou – and, after an initial aborted start, the cars did indeed simulate a proper starting start, in which Gasly retained the lead from pole position, before another red flag – presumably procedural again – signalled the start of the mid-day break.
Day three times
1. Perez (Red Bull) 1m33.105s, C4, 43 laps
2. Zhou (Alfa Romeo) 1m33.959s, C4, 82 laps
3. Gasly (AlphaTauri) 1m34.865s, C4, 91 laps
4. Sainz (Ferrari) 1m34.905s, C5, 68 laps
5. Alonso (Alpine) 1m35.328s, C4, 54 laps
6. Norris (McLaren) 1m35.504s, C3, 39 laps
7. Latifi (Williams) 1m35.634s, C3, 73 laps
8. Stroll (Aston Martin) 1m36.029s, C3, 53 laps
9. Hamilton (Mercedes) 1m36.217s, C5, 78 laps
10. Magnussen (Haas) 1m38.616s, C2, 38 laps
