F1 Bahrain GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying
Friday's action from the first round of the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Lewis Hamilton led a surprise Mercedes 1-2 at the end of practice on the opening day of track action, but many expect Red Bull to surge back to the front come qualifying.
FP3 begins at 12:30pm GMT (3:30pm local time) with qualifying at 4pm GMT (7pm local time).
Norris is also on a quick lap, as he sets the fastest middle sector of anyone, but he can only manage third overall with a 1m31.118s. Piastri follows his McLaren team-mate and goes fourth, one tenth of a second off.
Now it is the turn of Mercedes, as Hamilton goes seventh with 0.487s to find to match Verstappen's top time. Replays catch Hamilton going wide at Turn 4 so if this was qualifying he would have lost that lap for track limits.
Russell slots into fourth with a 1m31.190s, just 0.225s off Verstappen. But what of Ferrari? Neither Leclerc or Sainz has ventured out to join in with this mock quali.
Practice starts are the final order of the session as the sun starts to dip in the Bahrain sky. Next time out it'll be a night sky covering the track for the first competitive running of 2024. How exciting!
After all that, what are your predictions for Bahrain GP qualifying? Who will get pole and what will the grid look like? We'll take a breather to mull over predictions, and James Newbold will be back for the build-up ahead of qualifying. Until then, go well!
After three days of testing, and one day of official practice, this is where teams will finally start to show their hand. And in that regard, what Red Bull does will be eagerly anticipated. After all, it's thought that its real pace was hidden in practice yesterday with a conservative engine mode.
Yesterday's FP2 session was held in much more representative conditions for qualifying than FP3 earlier, when Carlos Sainz edged Fernando Alonso to the top spot. In case you missed it, here's Jake Boxall-Legge's recap of what we learned on Thursday, as Mercedes said it surprised itself.
Lewis Hamilton may have topped FP2, but Mercedes isn't getting carried away yet. That was the view of George Russell yesterday. But if the Silver Arrows can continue its Thursday form, then that will be a very positive sign to the engineers back at Brackley who have moved away from the very sidepod concept Red Bull has now adopted. Which team will be in the right?
One team that won't want to see a repeat of the FP3 times from earlier is Alpine. Esteban Ocon was 18th and Pierre Gasly 20th, in a discouraging session for the Enstone team that took back-to-back Bahrain wins in 2005-06 with a certain Fernando Alonso.
Alonso was second in FP3 and third behind the two Mercedes in FP2. At the scene of his dramatic debut for Aston Martin last year that yielded a podium, will the Spaniard be able to once more throw a cat among the pigeons? And, in this tortured analogy, who will take the guise of said pigeon?
The safe bet based on F1 testing form is of course Red Bull. That the RB20 has yet to top a session this weekend isn't necessarily a reason to discount anything (Daniel Ricciardo's RB was quickest in FP1). But Ferrari come into the weekend quietly confident too, with Charles Leclerc stating he had "no bad surprises, no good surprises either" in an FP2 session that his car was "just exactly as we expected the car to be".
Less than five minutes to wait now before qualifying begins, so time for a weather update. The air temperature is 18.1 °C, with track temperatures slightly higher at 22.0 °C.
We're completely under the floodlights now as we approach 7pm local time. Just about time to catch the first F2 race report of the year, as new Sauber junior Zane Maloney carried on where 2023 champion Theo Pourchaire left off as the Swiss team's representative by opening his account, before qualifying action begins.
Sainz's opening gambit is quicker than Leclerc's, putting the Spaniard top of the pile so far on a 1m31.208s. That time will surely not stand for long.
"They are all stopping. Can I go, or not? I don't want to stop," says Verstappen who is crawling down the pitlane as the crocodile of cars trickles out of the pit exit.
Gasly, Ocon and the Ferraris have now returned to the pits after their initial foray on the medium. But Gasly's first timed lap has been docked for running too wide at Turn 13 that it caught the stewards' attention. Not a good start to the session for the Alpine driver.
Norris now storms to the head of the pile on a 1m30.143s, with Alonso slotting into second. But Verstappen goes quicker than both on a 1m30.031s to occupy top spot.
But I wonder what Carlos Sainz has had for tea, because the Ferrari has just gatecrashed the top spot and elbowed Verstappen back into second place. It's the first sub-90s lap of the session too, as Sainz logs a 1m29.90s with fastest middle and final sectors.
Leclerc by comparison was sixth on his first timed lap with softs, which put him just behind Perez. So it's Sainz-Verstappen-Norris-Alonso the top four. Russell is seventh, then Hulkenberg, Albon and Piastri round out the top 10.
Everybody now heads back to the pits before preparing for their final timed laps. Crucially, the five facing Q1 elimination from P16 down are Zhou, Bottas, Magnussen, Ocon and Gasly.
