Mercedes fly but Ferrari’s true pace was hidden

The headline times painted a picture of overwhelming Mercedes superiority at the end of the first day of practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix. But the situation may not be quite so one-sided.

For much of Friday Ferrari seemed content not to play their hand. When they eventually did, we still didn’t get a clear read on their pace. Sebastian Vettel didn’t make the most of his clear lap on super-soft tyres and Kimi Raikkonen didn’t get one. “I had some traffic in my lap with the super-soft tyres,” he reported afterwards.

The upshot was the team which is widely expected to fill the second row of the grid behind the two Mercedes tomorrow ended practice an alarming 1.45 seconds slower than the silver cars. However we can probably gain a truer impression of the gap between the two by comparing their soft tyre times – on which Vettel got within half a second of the W07s.

The other remarkable development on Friday was the sheer pace being demonstrated by the cars. At a time when the sport is pursuing a controversial plan to reduce lap times by five seconds by relaxing aerodynamic rules, 12 months of car development plus softer tyre compounds yielded year-on-year improvements of 5.5 seconds in first practice and 3.6 seconds in second practice.

If we assume a second of that has come from the softer tyres, where has the rest been found? Thursday’s rain has probably left the teams with a much less dusty surface than they normally find on arrival in Bahrain. That would explain why when track evolution from first to second practice was over three seconds last year it was just 1.2s today. Most of that will be accounted for by the fact no one used the super-soft tyres in the first session.

Even so, with the fastest soft-tyre time of the day being Nico Rosberg’s 1’32.173, that still indicates around two seconds’ performance gain have come from the cars. If – and it’s a big ‘if’ – teams gain as much lap time tomorrow as they did from Friday to Saturday last year, Mark Webber’s 2005 track record of 1’29.527, set with a V10 engine and much looser aerodynamic rules, could fall.

Track temperature will play a significant role in determining whether that happens and, more importantly, how close Ferrari and the rest can get to Mercedes. This year’s race is being held slightly earlier than last year’s, and a cloudy day meant the asphalt was just 24C at the start of second practice – 12C lower than the same session last year.

“We’ve had some very unusual weather in Bahrain this week which has made this quite a different Friday,” reflected Mercedes’ Paddy Lowe. “It’s been very cool. We didn’t see anything like the high track temperatures normally experienced in FP1 at this circuit.”

In these cooler-than-expected conditions Ferrari took the opportunity to further their knowledge of the medium tyre. The significance of this is that in Australia their reluctance to switch to the tyre during the race stoppage arguably cost them victory.

Raikkonen’s run on the medium tyre at the beginning of second practice (reflected in the graph below) will have given them some encouragement. He used this tyre to superb effect during the race last year and tyoday he quickly got up to speed on it again. On Sunday, when warmer air conditions and cloudless skies should produce higher track temperatures, Ferrari should be in good shape if they decide to use this tyre for a long stint.

McLaren’s performance was another major talking point. Last year they were 2.67% off the pace in Bahrain which was fairly typical of their season. Today they were just 1.41% down, and while it’s doubtful they will see out the weekend as ‘best of the rest’, it’s clearly cause for encouragement at Woking.

Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

Complete practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2			Total laps
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’32.294	1’31.001			62
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’32.799	1’31.242			56
3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda	1’35.440	1’32.281			60
4	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’34.860	1’32.406			50
5	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’34.128	1’32.452			54
6	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’35.073	1’32.650			40
7	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’34.541	1’32.703			64
8	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1’35.174	1’32.792			60
9	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’34.461	1’32.870			50
10	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1’35.006	1’32.873			55
11	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren-Honda	1’36.392	1’32.999			55
12	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas-Ferrari	1’35.309	1’33.129			50
13	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’34.793	1’33.177			57
14	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’35.000	1’33.384			41
15	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes		1’33.406			35
16	Kevin Magnussen	Renault	1’35.490	1’33.447			61
17	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’34.601	1’33.570			65
18	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1’36.939	1’33.640			63
19	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor-Mercedes	1’36.371	1’33.953			47
20	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1’35.728	1’34.224			61
21	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	1’36.719	1’34.477			58
22	Rio Haryanto	Manor-Mercedes	1’37.714	1’34.562			60
23	Alfonso Celis	Force India-Mercedes	1’37.287				23

2016 Bahrain Grand Prix

• Haas mechanic credited for saving Grosjean’s race
• Grosjean takes back-to-back Driver of the Weekend wins
• Another decent race despite qualifying gloom
• 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix team radio transcript
• 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix Predictions Championship results

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