Fernando Alonso outpaced Red Bull’s defending double world champion Max Verstappen for the fastest time in the Bahrain Grand Prix second practice.
But ahead of qualifying for the season-opener, the Aston Martin driver cautioned he would not be getting too far ahead of himself as to target pole position.
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Aston Martin rips up Bahrain practice | 00:56
“No, no, no – not at all,” Alonso said when asked if he would be disappointed if he was not fighting for pole.
“I’m not thinking that high, to be honest. Actually, I don’t know exactly what position will be a good one for us.”
After all, it seems like Verstappen and Red Bull are still the ones to beat with Charles Leclerc admitting Ferrari “don’t have the performance for pole” on Sunday morning.
Sergio Perez was third in the second Red Bull, just 0.002 seconds behind teammate Verstappen, but six-tenths clear of Ferrari’s Leclerc.
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“On my side in testing, it’s been very, very inconsistent in the way we run the car, because we were testing loads of things, so I didn’t have much time to put the car to my liking, which I did today, and I think that went really well,” Leclerc said.
“On the other hand, it seems that – again what we thought was confirmed – Red Bull seemed quite a bit ahead compared to everyone. Aston seems very strong too. But let’s wait and see. “For now, we need to focus on ourselves, try to gain a little bit of performance overnight and hopefully have a great qualifying tomorrow.
“I don’t think we have the performance maybe for pole, but we can be in the mix.”
Leclerc was not the only one offering a realistic assessment of his team’s chances at the season-opener, with Lewis Hamilton conceding Mercedes were also “a long way off” Red Bull.
Hamilton finished 10th and eighth in the opening and second practice sessions respectively and said there was a “big gap” between the two teams.
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“I’m trying everything I can out there [but looking to] Red Bull, just looking at the long runs they are a second a half faster,” he said.
“So, we’ve got a lot to work on. I think I got the car to the best place I can get. Set-up-wise we can continue to tweak a little here and there, but it’s going to be small bits here and there, which is milliseconds.
“It’s not going to be the closing of the gap of a second [to Red Bull]. Nonetheless we’ll just keep our head down tonight, we’ll go through the data, continue to work, and try and progress tomorrow. But we’ve got to try and find out if there is any way we can find performance overnight.”
Hamilton added that he believes Mercedes can close the gap at some point but added it will be “quite hard with the concept we have”.
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