The Bahrain International Circuit is a pretty tough track at the best of times, but Friday was unseasonably hot, even for Bahrain. As a result, it was a brutal day for the Mercedes team.
However, despite the heat, the Brackley based squad had a very good look at their car on a really hot track, before running through their normal FP2 programme in conditions more like those that they can expect to see here today and tomorrow.
Looking at the times, it certainly looks as if it is going to be another really tight weekend between Mercedes and Ferrari - a weekend where the smallest of mistakes could make the difference between the outcomes.
Valtteri Bottas finished the second session in P2, behind the Ferrari and he wasn't concerned about the heat at all.
“Today overall went well. Obviously, it's difficult to learn much in FP1 with the extremely high temperatures, as the main sessions are under the lights in the evening when it's much cooler,” he said. “But we got some good data out of FP2 with short runs and long runs. The car was feeling good.”
“We can definitely make it better but it was a positive start and I'm looking forward to qualifying. It was very hot today and the track normally improves quite a lot as you lose some of the sand, so I'm sure tomorrow we will go a lot quicker. How quick, we will find out.”
“It's definitely tougher than before, driving in the heat with these new cars. But I'm used to being in a Finnish sauna, so it's no problem! "
"It seems like the same trend continues here with it being so close with Ferrari. But Red Bull are looking good too and the whole pack is pretty close, if you look at the top six particularly. It looks like every little thing that we are going to be fine tuning today with the setup and anything extra we can find is going to be crucial for qualifying and the race.”
