The Aston Martin team was delighted after the third day of testing in Bahrain, the last before the start of the Formula 1 World Championship the following weekend. Pedro de la Rosa, the British team’s point man, described Fernando Alonso’s race simulation and long-run exercise as “spectacular.”
Although Alonso clocked the ninth fastest time of the day, he was steady and voracious in pushing his AMR23 to the limit, going a second faster than the Ferraris on the track. De la Rosa highlighted the low degradation of the car but also emphasized that preseason is about feelings, not facts.
During the morning test, tester Felipe Drugovich climbed into the Aston Martin due to the high temperatures, but Alonso waited in the garage until the night covered the Persian Gulf to get into his car. After some testing and fast lap simulations, Alonso began to squeeze the Aston Martin into long runs and a 16-lap race simulation, first on C3 and then C1 tires, recording a time of 1:36 in the third run on C2 tires.
Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc posted the fourth and fifth fastest times, respectively, but dropped in performance as the laps went by. The duel of the day was between Red Bull’s Checo Perez and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, with the Mexican taking the top spot on the timesheets. The preseason ended and the battle for the World Championship began.