Back in business
2021 FIA Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix – Practice – Friday
The first official sessions of the 2021 season came and went – and they did it so quickly. With both FP1 and FP2 being reduced to 60 minutes (from 90), on-track action benefitted as teams sought to make the most of their time.
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN had a solid day of work, with Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Räikkönen finishing Free Practice 1 – the first official session of the new campaign – in P10 and P11, a very promising sign ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying.
The overall team tally of 76 laps delivered plenty of data for the engineers to touch up the set-up ahead of the rest of the weekend – and that’s when the real first battle of 2021 begins…
Kimi Räikkönen (car number 7):
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C41 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
FP1: 11th / 1:33.134 (18 laps)
FP2: 16th / 1:31.862 (15 laps)
“A regular first day in which we were able to try various things. Even though the conditions were quite different from what we experienced in testing, the feel of the car was similar, which allowed us to take up where we left off two weeks ago. We had a solid start and were able to work on the set-up. Of course, losing some time because of the incident was not ideal, but we have already so much data from testing that it wasn’t a big setback. We’re looking forward to seeing where we stand tomorrow: we still have to refine a few things tonight but we should be ok.”
Antonio Giovinazzi (car number 99):
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C41 (Chassis 03/Ferrari)
FP1: 10th / 1:32.786 (16 laps)
FP2: 13th / 1:31.740 (27 laps)
“It was a good start to build on the positive feeling we had after testing. Today’s conditions were quite different, it was way hotter in the day, but we are still happy with our pace in both the short and long runs. The field looks really tight, so we will need to put everything together to gain places in qualifying. The shorter practice sessions didn’t really affect us much: in the end, we spent a lot of time in the garage in FP1 in the old system anyway so now there is a bit more action on track. We now need to go and find another bit of time with the engineers and get ready for qualifying: the target is to get into Q2 and then see what we are able to fight for.”
