F1 racing, Saudi Arabia GP test run: Ferrari – Red Bull fight episode 2, crash after collision

(Sports news – F1 racing news) Charles Leclerc and Ferrari entered the second race in Jeddah with the hope to continue to show strength in Bahrain. They had what they needed on the first day of competition, but with that came a big disadvantage against Red Bull on the engine-powered track.

FP1: Bottas in the top 3, Haas continues to have hydraulic problems

Charles Leclerc continued his success after winning the opening race, taking first place on his first lap at the Jeddah Corniche. Monaco steering wheel only really works in the second half of FP1 because the track is still quite dusty, sandy with almost zero grip. He achieved 1 minute 30,772s in the last minutes on Soft tires. .

Haas’s car continues to have technical problems

Max Verstappen and Red Bull were determined to come back from the defeat in Bahrain, and had the second fastest lap, 0.116s slower on Hard tyres. Notable in the P3 position is Valtteri Bottas, when Alfa Romeo’s steering wheel continues to create a pleasant surprise, the Finnish driver ranks right above Carlos Sainz, who has a lot of difficulties on the F1-75. Top 4 is only 0.3s worse than each other.

AlphaTauri duo, Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda took advantage of the power of the Red Bull engine to take the next two places, and stand on Sergio Perez’s 2nd Red Bull car (P7). Esteban Ocon and Alpine ranked 8th, and Lewis Hamilton was the Mercedes car with the highest position in 9th, losing 1.6s to the leader. Fernando Alonso had the first internal combustion engine replacement of the new season due to suspicions that the old ICE had problems, being the last name in the top 10.

FP1 in the daytime doesn’t carry too much meaning

McLaren has more promising results when Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris are ranked 11th and 13th respectively – between Lance Stroll (Aston Martin). In the early minutes, Norris caused a red flag to appear by hitting a hanging board that fell to the road, leading to a lot of debris spread at the end of the straight near turn 1 and race staff had to quickly clear it up to make the turn. return.

Nico Hulkenberg has the 2nd stage to replace Sebastian Vettel, the driver is still undergoing treatment for COVID-19, and ranked 16th at FP1. At Haas, it seemed the team still couldn’t quite get the hydraulics out of the way as it once again arrived in Danish driver Kevin Magnussen’s car unable to get a timed lap. The US racing team “lost” when Mick Schumacher was the slowest driver of 19 drivers with achievements at FP1.

Alex Albon ranked 18th for Williams, the British driver had to receive a warning for obstructing Schumacher during a timed lap.

FP2: Crash in a row, Ferrari takes the lead but has many disadvantages

Both Ferraris hit the fence in FP2

The start of the run was delayed 15 minutes after an emergency meeting between the F1 board and the team leaders and drivers right before FP2. The reason is because of the missile attack by the Islamic extremist group Houthi on the energy facility of Aramco, one of F1’s main partners, in Jeddah and just over 10km from the racetrack. That makes stakeholders concerned about safety issues in the next runs.

Going back to the main event, FP2 will still run the full 60 minutes, helping racing teams have valuable racing data when the time is at the same time as the qualifying run and the main race. The riders did not waste any time and immediately began testing the Medium tire. Ferrari quickly showed strength when Leclerc set a lap of 1 minute 30,216s, faster than the rest to more than 1s.

Norris and McLaren make the top 10

But when the track gradually got better grip, Red Bull caught up with the “war horse” and even Max Verstappen temporarily occupied P1 with a record only 0.002s faster than Leclerc. Things were more difficult for the racers when they started running the test Soft tires for the qualifying round.

Leclerc could only improve more than 0.1s in the Soft tire lap, achieving the best FP2 – 1 minute 30.074s. However, just as he was about to move on to test for the main race, Leclerc made the fatal mistake of hitting the wall on corner 4. That situation left him sidelined for more than 20 crucial minutes remaining in FP2. Sainz also made the same mistake in crab 13 and suffered the same fate as his teammate

Verstappen failed to improve the results on Soft tires and accepted 2nd place. At the rear, the Mercedes duo once again occupied 2 positions P5 and P6 after efforts on Soft tires but still inferior to Red Bull’s performance. and Ferrari on Medium tires for more than 0.3s and the W13 still “shrinks” intensely when running on the road. McLaren broke into the top 10 for the first time in this year’s runs with Norris in 7th and Ricciardo in 15th due to a lack of record on Soft tyres.

4th Red Bull car with engine problems in 2 weeks

Ocon, Bottas and Tsunoda maintained stability and ranked in the top 10. Even so, AlphaTauri’s Japanese driver “followed” three other Red Bull-powered cars when having engine problems at the last minute. An image that makes “bull butts” have a headache. Behind, Magnussen and Haas completed 13 laps in FP2 but again car #20 had hydraulic problems and had to stop on the track, causing the virtual safety car to be activated.

Thus, the 6th day ended with a series of problems with many different racing teams. So no one really got an advantage after these two runs. Ferrari and Red Bull remain the fastest, followed by Mercedes, while the mid-race race is unpredictable with Alpine, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri, and most likely McLaren.

All are still waiting for us ahead. The race will continue with FP3 and qualifying runs on Saturday night.

Detailed results of the first two running sessions of Saudi Arabian GP 2022:

FP1

FP2

According to Roger Bui (Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Magazine)