2024 Bahrain Pre-Season Testing Day 2 - Summary And Results

The timing sheets of the second day of pre-season testing at Bahrain International Circuit were topped by Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.

The afternoon session in Bahrain started an hour earlier than initially scheduled. The reason was that the morning session was canceled an hour earlier, and drivers and their teams needed that one hour to complete their testing procedures as scheduled.

Why did the morning session come to an end? There was a loose drain cover on the curb ahead of turn number 11, and Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc ran over it, the latter damaging his car.

During today's (Thursday, 22nd) two sessions, we've seen all the drivers on track except for George Russell, Max Verstappen, and Alex Albon.

Russell and Albon were not supposed to run today, but the triple-world champion was supposed to sit behind the wheel of RB20 during the afternoon session.

However, based on the interrupted first session and the schedule change, Red Bull decided to dedicate this whole day to Perez.

Perez, along with Hamilton and Logan Sargeant, were the only three drivers who completed both the morning and the afternoon sessions.

Consequently, these three drivers also completed the most laps. The Red Bull driver completed 129, the Mercedes driver 123, and the Williams driver completed 117.

Verstappen's fastest time from the first day of testing (1:31.344) was improved by four drivers today - Lando Norris, Hamilton, Perez, and Carlos Sainz.

The 29-year-old Ferrari driver also set the session's fastest lap (1:29.921) on the C4 compound. This lap is only two-tenths away from the previous year's best qualifying time in Bahrain.

The only two drivers who tried on this softer tire compound were Daniel Ricciardo on RB, who finished the session in fifth place, and Logan Sargeant in P11.