Talk to anyone at McLaren on Friday evening, and the mood might best be described as guardedly upbeat after Fernando Alonso set the pace in this afternoon’s second practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix. The Spaniard achieved a good chassis balance early on, and confirmed that the car has definitely been improved since Bahrain.
“A great start to my home Grand Prix with a trouble free Friday practice. We went through the usual programme of tyre evaluation and set-up work, but had a pretty good balance early on. We have definitely improved the car further since Bahrain. I look forward to the rest of the weekend and really want to do my best for all the supporters.”
After a thrilling Grand Prix in Sepang, the Formula One teams have packed up and now face the logistical challenge of reaching Bahrain in time to begin preparations on Thursday for this weekend’s race. Each of the 11 teams travelling to the Kingdom of Bahrain will bring 50-80 shipping cases, containing up to 40 tonnes of equipment. Of that total weight, over 30 tonnes will be taken up by the mechanical needs of the Formula One cars themselves - including three chassis, engines, spare parts, tools, wheels and pit equipment. The remainder will be made up of pit-garage branding and extraneous equipment - even the utensils used by the team chefs!
Formula One racing has an information superhighway all of its very own - there will be approximately 180 large computers and 300 laptops in use between the 11 teams over the race weekend in Bahrain, supplied by over 3.5 kilometres of power cable and sending information through 5.5 kilometres of data cable. The team members themselves - approximately 1,200 in total - will be equipped with 1,100 walkie-talkie radios and headsets.
With just one week between Malaysia and Bahrain there's no time for anything except to head for the next circuit and do it all over again. As with Sepang, most of the teams tested at Bahrain's Sakhir track during the winter so should be prepared for the challenges of the desert. It's another hot race but the humidity isn't quite so bad as Malaysia.
Just under five and a half kilometres in length, Sakhir requires a compromise between downforce and speed to deal with the slow corners and long straights respectively. If it's windy sand can be a concern but over the last couple of years it's never seemed to be a huge problem. A variety of pit stop strategies were used in last year's Bahrain race so it will be interesting to see who does what this time around.
The Bahrain International Circuit opened in 2004 and hosted its first Formula One Grand Prix in April of the same year. The development of the circuit was funded by the Bahrain Government and firmly supported by the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Shaikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a lifelong motor sport enthusiast. It is located in the city of Sakhir which is southwest of Manama, the capital of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The track is a complex mix of 15 slow and medium speed corners connected by three high speed straights, the fastest of which will see the cars peak at 320kph (approximately 198.84 mph) at the end of the pit straight going into turn one. With the lowest cornering speed registered at just above 100kph (approximately 62.14 mph) at Sakhir’s turn five, and taken in first gear, the number of extreme braking events is high so brake preservation is paramount. Due to the extensive, high speed stretches, each lap will demand a full throttle percentage of 62%; combined with the braking, cooling and sand variables, engine reliability will be a considerable factor in the race’s outcome.
McLaren went into the Malaysian Grand Prix in confident frame of mind, but even Fernando Alonso said it was a surprise as he and Lewis Hamilton turned on a crushing demonstration in which they left Ferrari for dead in the opening stages and swept to the team’s first one-two result since Brazil 2005. At the start Alonso sprinted alongside polesitter Felipe Massa and was able to take the lead, but in another brilliant display Hamilton dived inside Kimi Raikkonen to #### third place before going round the outside of Felipe Massa in Turn Two to move up to second. The Englishman then contained the Ferrari challenge, earning his spurs with a faultless drive, as his team leader went for the win.
Fernando Alonso: "I think one of our chances to win the race was to be first after the first corner and thanks to a good start, thanks to the car, I was able to arrive side-by-side into the first corner. I was on the inside part so I managed to be first and to be sure, to have my team-mate second makes things easier, for sure, to open a gap."
Lewis Hamilton: "That was the most difficult race I’ve ever had. To see two Ferraris behind you, two red blobs in the mirrors, knowing that they’re slightly lighter than you and slightly quicker than you, it’s very, very difficult to keep them behind. Felipe had a couple of moves, I think he tried into turn four a couple of times, but fortunately I was able to trick him into out-braking himself and get my car stopped and it was very fortunate that I was able to cut across and get back in front of him, to the point where he eventually went off, so I apologise for that but at the end of the day, we got the points, so it doesn’t really matter. And then I had Kimi hunting me down for most of the race and phew, I just can’t explain to you how tough it was.
It’s extremely hot in the cockpit, sweating a lot, I ran out of water halfway through the race, I didn’t have enough water and so it was tricky, it was tricky, and I was getting hotter and hotter throughout the race. It would have been nice to have been a bit further ahead in the last stint but I had to keep pushing to the last lap and that’s what I did. I didn’t make any mistakes. I think the team did a fantastic job preparing the car this weekend. They work extremely long hours, I think longer than most other teams and also back to the factory: you’ve done a fantastic job so well done."
Kimi Raikkonen: "Of course I’m happy to get some points but a bit disappointed how the race ended up. The whole weekend was quite difficult but I think we needed to compromise too many things and we lost too much speed because of those things, but it was one of those weekends where we needed to do what was most important and try to get as many points as we could. We just didn’t have enough speed today and couldn’t do much more.
Ferrari faced an afternoon of trying to salvage something from what was beginning to look like a disaster, for Massa failed on both occasions when he tried to oust Hamilton. Each time he was repassed easily by the British driver, and on the second occasion the Brazilian slid into the gravel on the exit to Turn Four and lost a crucial place to Nick Heidfeld’s BMW Sauber.
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