SAKHIR, Bahrain — With one day of preseason testing remaining, F1 returnee Kevin Magnussen set the fastest lap of the week with a time set during an extended period of running for his Haas team.
Magnussen, who previously raced for Haas from 2017 to 2020, replaced Russia’s Nikita Mazepin at the team ahead of this week’s test. On his first day back in the car, he pushed Carlos Sainz off the top of the timesheets with a lap 0.325 seconds quicker than the Ferrari driver using the same compound tyre.
The time was set during an extended period of testing for Haas, which was laid on after the other nine teams had finished the regular test session. The extra hour on Friday — as well as a further three hours on Saturday — was granted to the team to make up for the time it lost on Thursday after its freight got delayed on the way to Bahrain.
During Friday’s regular eight hours of testing when all 10 teams were on track, Sainz set the fastest lap with an effort 0.4 seconds clear of the rest of the field. The time was also set on the C4 compound tyre — Pirelli’s second softest on offer — and was fast enough to hold off a comparable attempt by Max Verstappen in the Red Bull car on the same compound.
Fuel loads and engine settings are unknown outside each team’s garage in testing, so it’s possible that Verstappen’s time would have been in a similar ballpark had all things been equal, but it could also be the case that Sainz might have extended his lead — as shown by the impressive pace of Magnussen’s lap later in the evening.
Either way, another strong showing from Ferrari on Friday helped to enforce the growing opinion that the Italian team has made the strongest start to 2022 under F1’s new technical regulations.
And while Ferrari appears to be back at the sharp end of the grid, reigning constructors’ champions Mercedes could be in trouble.
The team debuted its heavily revised W13 car on Thursday but has struggled to extract performance from it over…
Source : espn
