Sahara Force India in Trouble at Sakhir

Today will be remembered as the first official participation of Alfonso Celis Jr in a session during a Formula 1 weekend. While it is obviously an important step for the young Mexican driver, his final ranking will not go down in history as he had to settle for the second-to-last time. But he justifies such a ranking by the safety margin he took to avoid damaging his car: “The team assigned me an aerodynamic program to gather data on the new parts at the front of the car. I therefore took some margin with my driving as the priority was to collect information for the team.”

Sergio Perez was able to recover his car in one piece for the second session, where he managed to complete 35 laps. But the final result is not up to expectations: « Even though I missed the first session today, I think we managed to catch up this evening with a very busy FP2. The lap times are not up to our expectations, even though we are very early in the weekend. We will have to work hard tonight to ensure we are competitive in qualifying. »

The day was much calmer for Nico Hülkenberg, who was able to complete his full program during both sessions. The first session offered hopes of good things, with a final 6th place, but the second session may be more concerning: « It was routine for both sessions today for free practice sessions. It’s a good thing, especially early in the season, to complete two sessions without any problems. It means we have a lot of information to help us find a bit more performance tonight. »

It can be assumed that the two drivers will try to replicate their performances from Melbourne, where they positioned themselves at the top of Q2, which put them in an ideal position for the race.

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr