Bahrain – Day 2 – History Repeats Itself… Less Reliably

Kimi Räikkönen once again set the fastest time today in Bahrain. The Ferrari driver has been dominating since the first day on the Sakhir circuit with only Ferrari and Toyota present.

The young Finn, reigning world champion, set the lap record in an F1 and outpaced his teammate Felipe Massa in the second F2008 by about 0.2 seconds.

The two Scuderia single-seaters suffered from reliability issues despite their good lap times during a race simulation.

Räikkönen had to stop in the morning due to an oil leak, while Massa suffered an engine failure late in the day, still managing to complete 70 laps under good conditions.

Toyota, for its part, remains in the last two positions of the ranking despite an improvement in the lap times of Trulli and Glock, who were working this Sunday.

“It’s a good day,” said Jarno Trulli, third fastest. “We did a lot of laps and successfully completed the simulation, covering the distance of a race without difficulty.”

« We tested different setups today. The car made good progress, which shows that we are heading in the right direction. However, there is still work to be done. »

The chief engineer, Dieter Gass, also expressed satisfaction: « It was encouraging to see the good progress made by the TF108 compared to the TF107 during last year’s times. »

Glock was much less enthusiastic: « I’ve done a qualifying simulation for a long time. It went very well, but when I did my race simulation, I didn’t have the ideal setup at all! »

« It’s frustrating to know that I could have set better times, but obviously, we’re making progress. »

Private Testing Bahrain – Day 2