Chapter 380: 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix | Saturday | Qualifying

"The car felt more stable and grounded out there, and much better than it was in yesterday’s free practice. There are still problems, but they are things I can drive around until we have a solution. Still, the platform itself felt very stable," Gasly said following the third and final free practice after the setup changes they had come up with in the simulation were implemented on the car before the session."The temperature problem is still going to punish us in the long run if we don’t find a way to deal with it," he added, as he knew that the team had redesigned the cooling loop, but the problem still seemed to be there even when they opened an additional cooling louvre on the engine cover.

"We are still in the middle of the redesign round after seeing what our changes solved or exacerbated, and we should have a good solution by the second, and at most the third, round.

These are teething problems that we expected by changing the rear end and updating it, but that same decision has already given us a major improvement compared to the platform we had last year," Franz said, not at all mentioning that had it been under his control, he would not have gone ahead with taking the compact gearbox cover and the updated rear end from Red Bull.

But since that was a decision already made, he wasn’t someone who would use that as an excuse, considering what they got in return for those things being forced upon them.

"...." Fatih, hearing the problems the team was facing due to the changes he made them implement, was silent as he listened to the post-practice session debrief.

He had done all he could to make the car competitive, so he wasn’t feeling bad at all, considering he had already achieved that even amidst the problems. He was now looking forward to the car’s first qualifying session, where it would finally be let loose, and they would remove the sandbags that had been slowing it down during the entire free practice.

........

A few hours later.

"Formula One in 2021 is a go, and it’s time to get serious. Only three teams have kept the same driver lineup from last season. We’ve got three new rookies on the grid as well, and we’ve got the return of a former two-time world champion after a couple of years’ absence from the sport.

And here we start in Bahrain for the third time ever. Situated between the Qatari peninsula and the north coast of Saudi Arabia, it’s about 160 km around the coastline of Bahrain. So, the race distance tomorrow is 57 laps, which is about two laps of the Bahraini coastline.

We’ll get on to the race in less than 24 hours’ time, but for that to happen, we need a qualifying session, and it is time for that tonight. It’s 3.36 miles around this Bahrain International Circuit, with three DRS zones and plenty of overtaking opportunities here as well.

But what will happen in 2021? On new tires as well, though the same compound: C4, C3, and C2. But they’re three kilos heavier per set, and they’re a brand-new construction as well. The teams have had to try and get a handle on that over three practice sessions and only three days of testing.

Fittingly for a desert, we are now about to find out who’s been sandbagging over the winter. And if Mercedes has been hiding anything, well, it’s not just going to be a Formula One world championship. It’ll be the hide-and-seek world championship as well. Because so far, Martin, based on the evidence we have seen, it’s Red Bull all the way based on their pace," David Croft said as he opened the qualifying session with his commentary, providing as many important details as possible.

"Very much so. The sun is setting as the floodlights take over, and we enter a whole new season of Formula One racing. The times have been all over the place, and so have the cars on occasion, especially when it’s windy. This is a very, very unpredictable qualifying session."

As Martin Brundle took over, Fatih, sitting inside the race operations room with his headphones on so as not to disturb the engineers who were focused on the session, was still connected to everything happening on the radio network. This allowed him to watch the qualifying session through both the world feed and the eyes of the team.

From his peripheral vision, he could already see an engineer whose screen was constantly being updated with where the drivers on track were, where they would be on what part of the track based on their current pace, the wake they would create, the time that would be lost if their car drove behind them at a certain distance, and when the perfect time was to let the driver leave the pit and join the track with enough space in front for him to not suffer interference, and more.

All of this was updating in real-time based on all changing conditions. Another engineer was focused on watching the feeds of two drivers from Mercedes, noting down everything they were doing but also looking out for any infringements while listening to the radio communication between the drivers and their team to discover any problems that might be helpful to their driver or that they could use as evidence to report to the stewards for investigation to their advantage. The same task, but for different drivers, was being done by eight other people.

There were engineers who were looking at engine data from the hundreds of engine sensors, the same for the gearbox, and some were focusing on other things, but everyone had a job to do. Even if done well, it might not increase the pace of the car, but if done badly, it would definitely cost it, since they are the reason the car is allowed to go as wild as it can without worrying about something going wrong, both from the car and from external things like the other cars’ positions on the track.