Bahrain GP Practice Suggests F1 2023 Will Be Competitive

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso emerged as the fastest driver in the second practice session for the 2023 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. The session saw the top 13 drivers finish within one second of each other, with Charles Leclerc of Ferrari in fourth place. Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg produced an impressive effort to come fifth. Temperatures were down to 22C in the evening running under lights, prompting several teams to immediately head out on the soft tyres. Alpine's Esteban Ocon used the softs to take first place, followed by Lance Stroll of Aston Martin, who had set the first-place benchmark on the mediums a few moments earlier.

The first round of performance runs saw Leclerc surge ahead of his teammate Carlos Sainz and take the lead, which lasted for 20 minutes. Perez then shot into first place before Alonso took over the lead with a time of 1m30.907s, which remained unbeaten for the rest of the session. The drivers then completed the typical late-FP2 long-run data-gathering exercises. The stewards will investigate a pitlane incident where Nyck de Vries's AlphaTauri was released into Lando Norris's path.

Alonso’s time followed his impressive performance in the first practice session where he split the two Red Bulls. Despite attempts by Alonso and Aston Martin to downplay their impressive pace from testing, they continue to be strong contenders. Aston Martin had two cars in the top six, with Lance Stroll finishing sixth in his second session back in the car. However, there were some concerns about Stroll's mobility, as he replied "I can't" when asked to compromise his line for Turn 1 later on in the session. Red Bull's pace on long-run simulations still appeared to mark them out as the team to beat.

To discuss the action on track is Martyn Lee and the Editor of Autosport.com, Haydn Cobb.

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