F1 | Pirelli, 0.4 seconds between medium and soft after FP2 in Sakhir

Interesting information collected by Pirelli at the end of the first and second free practice sessions valid for the Bahrain Grand Prix, the inaugural event of the 2021 world championship formula 1.

Despite the dirt on the track and the different weather conditions between the morning and afternoon sessions, the teams managed to collect numerous data on the compounds, an aspect that will allow the engineers to perfect the set-ups in view of tomorrow afternoon's qualifying ( 16.00 pm on Sky Sport F1 HD).

FP1 and FP2 summary

– Max Verstappen (Red Bull) was fastest in both free practice sessions today, with the best overall time in FP2 on P Zero Red Soft tyres. The second free practice session took place after sunset in conditions similar to those expected for qualifying and the race, with 29 degrees of ambient temperature and 33 asphalt.

– FP1 took place in much hotter conditions, with asphalt temperatures reaching 54°.
As both Friday practice sessions were shortened to an hour each this year (compared to 90 minutes last year), the teams had a total of one hour less to test. This forced them to condense their programmes, with plenty of action from start to finish and less time than before to work towards a fast lap.

– From the data seen so far, the performance gap between the White hard and the Yellow medium is 0,4 seconds per lap, while the gap between the Medium and the Soft is approximately 0,9 seconds per lap.

“We saw two challenging, exciting and hard-fought sessions, with three teams in the top three positions after each hour of testing,” declared Mario Isola. “From a tire point of view, we are satisfied with the performance, which is very similar to what we expected given the recent tests in Bahrain.”

“The teams focused their work in particular on the C4 soft tyre, having already collected a lot of data on the C2 and C3 compounds two weeks ago during testing,” he continued. “The performance gap between medium and soft here is a little higher than we would have expected, while C2 and C3 are very close. This means that all tires can play a key role from a race perspective."