F1 News
Statistics after day one: Red Bull Racing could hardly have started better
- GPblog.com
Red Bull Racing weathered the first day of winter testing extremely well. Whereas in previous years the Milton Keynes-based team had occasional start-up problems in winter, this time they came out of the starting blocks rock solid. Read more statistics from the first day in Bahrain here.
Red Bull start energetically
Testing is all about collecting as much data as possible. That data is collected by sending your car out on the track and analysing all parts of the car. The more laps there are, the more there is to analyse. Reliability is therefore a key issue in the winter test.
On that front, Red Bull had it right on Thursday. Verstappen came in with a total of 157 laps, single-handedly driving more laps than any other team. George Russell (69) and Lewis Hamilton (83) combined to 152 laps. Williams also came close. Together, Logan Sargeant (75) and Alexander Albon (74) drove 149 laps.
Ferrari drove 21 laps less than Red Bull Racing, totalling 136. Alfa Romeo came to two laps more, AlpaTauri drove 131. Nyck de Vries came to the most laps for the Italian team with a total of 85. Only Verstappen drove more laps around the Bahrain International Circuit.
Problems at McLaren?
The teams that collected the least data were Alpine, Haas, Aston Martin and McLaren. At Alpine and Haas, there were no real problems to note, but both in the timesheet and number of laps these teams lagged behind. Aston Martin lost a lot of time due to the electrical problem in the morning when Felipe Drugovich was in the car.
Yet Aston Martin still drove more laps than McLaren, which is surprising. The Woking-based team did not report any major problems, but a total of only 92 laps is not anything to write home about. With 40 laps on the clock, Lando Norris reached the same number of laps as Drugovich, who had stopped for two hours.
On day two, the teams at the bottom of this list will be looking to make a big impact. There are only three days to test, so every lap counts. Red Bull and Mercedes will want to continue Thursday's line, although there are shorter programmes to complete as well.
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