Formula 1 is richer by a curiosity. After a loose drainage caused an interruption of the test drives in Bahrain last year, it was a power failure on Wednesday that brought the hustle and bustle for more than an hour.
Two hours were completed in the afternoon session when the red flag was suddenly brought out. At first there was no reason on the TV monitors, but a look at the garages was enough to see cars and crews in complete darkness – well, at least with a little incident daylight.
Because the floodlight masts had also failed on the route, driving had to be interrupted. “I wanted to change the visor first because it was suddenly dark, but then I got that we no longer have floodlights,” says Mercedes-Pilot George Russell.
However, some power supply systems remained in operation during this time: the emergency lighting in the driver’s bearings and the television broadcasts continued. According to reports, not only the route from the power failure is said to have been affected, but the complete surrounding area in the south of the Bahrainian island.
Formula 1: Session was extended
It was only after 67 minutes that the driving operation could be continued on the clock with another 50 minutes. However, it was soon decided to extend the session by an hour to get the lost test time back in.
In general, the conditions on this first day of the test were unusual for Bahrain. The temperatures were only moving in the range of 15 degrees Celsius, whereby there were sometimes some isolated raindrops – but not so much that intermediate or even rain tires would have been necessary.
The best time on the first day, which can still be enjoyed with a lot of caution, went to McLaren-Pilot Lando Norris, who was a second faster in 1: 30.430 minutes than Andrea Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), who had achieved the best time in the morning, but was given back to seventh in the afternoon.
McLaren had long been a long time after the lunch break. The racing team made major renovation work on its car and only drove on the track for the first time after about an hour.
In the afternoon, all teams had exchanged their drivers. All drivers who were in the morning watched in the afternoon, so that there were basically two separate times lists.
The four top teams came at the forefront in the afternoon, because in addition to McLaren, George Russell (Mercedes, +0.157 seconds), world champion Max Verstappen (Red Bull, +0.244) and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari, +0.448) The positions two to four