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Inside the garage

Missing live commentary? Here’s what happened in qualifying

The Bahrain International Circuit comes alive when night falls. There’s real atmosphere generated as the sky turns pink at sunset, and the floodlights take hold – and after three fairly ambiguous practice sessions, there was just a whiff of drama in the air as qualifying began at 1800.

The MCL60 had worked reasonably well in practice, and FP3 had left the team content that they knew what to do – but the midfield gaggle of cars were very tight, with very little between elimination in Q1 and progression to Q3. The race engineers said as much in their pre-session brief for their crews.

Will Joseph (Lando’s Race Engineer): “It’s going to be incredibly tight. If you have time, clean the car between runs, anything to make it a little more slippery will be useful.”

On the other side of the garage, Tom Stallard, Oscar’s Race Engineer, was keen to de-stress the session, pointing out that this is a track where everything happens on Sunday.

Tom Stallard: “Difficult to know how quali will go – but the midfield looks very compressed. It is a very race-biased track, and the focus is on tomorrow not today, so we’ll try to keep this session fairly relaxed, and see what we can get out of it.”

1800: Green light on at the end of the pit-lane, signalling the start of Q1. 18 minutes of this session ahead, at the end of which five cars will be eliminated.

Pit > Lando: “OK, that is the start of the session. The AlphaTauri’s have gone out early. They’re probably doing three attempts.”

There wasn’t a huge amount of track action at the start of the session…

1804: Lando fires up and heads out on a new set of Soft tyres. Oscar waited 25s and then followed him down the pitlane.

Pit > Oscar: “Red flag, Red flag. Box this lap, drive to the delta, no overtaking.”

Pit > Lando: “We think it’s debris on the outside of Turn One, so we don’t expect it to be long. We’re going to stick with this same set. We’re going to stick with the plan. There’s time – but it will be tight.”

Bad luck for both drivers. They’d barely got as far as the first corner when the red flag came out – but at least they got to abort early enough to not do serious damage to the tyre.

Pit > Oscar: “Session restarts at 1812, which is in three minutes. We’ll have to do our best to get front tyre temperature on this out-lap. Tyres will have cooled a little.”

Pit > Lando: “There’s already five cars down there queuing. But I think we’ll go at the back.”

Pit > Oscar: “I’m going to let the queue go, so that you can get a good out-lap.”

1812: Green light on, session restarts.

1813: Fire-up. The pit-lane clears, Oscar heads out, followed by Lando, both on Used Softs.

Pit > Oscar: “Happy to overtake cars on this lap to ensure you get your tyres in.”

Lando’s out-lap, and to a lesser extent Oscar’s, was compromised by needing to stay out of the way of those cars that went at the green light and were now on their flying laps. He was more concerned with ducking and weaving than with preparing his brakes and tyres.

Pit > Lando: “This isn’t going to be the ideal out-lap but we’ve just got to get on with it.”

1817: Oscar’s first lap was a 1m32.633 – P18. Lando slotted in just ahead with 1m32.555 – P17.

Pit > Oscar: “Tyres were pretty cold opening the lap. Pretty confident with a new set there’s a good bit to come. HUL and Lando also ran a used tyre and they’re P16 and P17, so possibly we got that one wrong.”

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STATUS UPDATE: Four minutes remaining in Q1 at the Bahrain International Circuit. Lando P17, Oscar P18. Running order. 1. SAI, 2. RUS, 3. LEC, 4. ALO, 5. VER, 6. PER, 7. HAM, 8. OCO, 9. TSU, 10. ZHO, 11. BOT, 12. MAG, 13. ALB, 14. DEV, 15. GAS, 16. HUL, 17. Lando, 18. Oscar, 19. SAR, 20. STR.

1821: With three minutes and 30 seconds of Q1 to go, both drivers went out for a second run, on a new set of Soft Tyres. Six of the leading cars stayed in the garage, content they had done enough, creating a little more space than usual in the traditional scramble.

Pit > Oscar: “Cars behind are in-phase. You just need to manage the gap to ALO.”

1825: Chequered flag. Lando goes up to P13 with 1m31.652.

1826: Oscar improves – but only to 1m32.101. He’s eliminated.

Pit > Oscar: “Oscar, I’m afraid we’re P18. Eliminated are SAR, MAG, yourself, DEV, GAS.”

Pit > Lando: “Lando, we are through to Q2.”

STATUS UPDATE: Q1 completed at the Bahrain International Circuit. Lando P15, Oscar P19. Finishing order. 1. SAI, 2. RUS, 3. LEC, 4. ALO, 5. STR, 6. HUL, 7. VER, 8. TSU, 9. ALB, 10. PER, 11. BOT, 12. OCO, 13. HAM, 14. ZHO, 15. Lando, 16. SAR, 17. MAG, 18. Oscar, 19. DEV, 20. GAS.

Lando > Pit: “Much better tyres, much better grip. I think I made the same mistake as Oscar, clipped the corner at Turn Two.”

PIT > Lando: “Session starts in 90s. Still a lot of time to come from this.”

1833: Green light on at the end of the pitlane, signalling the start of Q2. 15 minutes of this session ahead, at the end of which five more cars will be eliminated.

It’s a long wait at the start of the Q2 session before anyone goes out.

PIT > Lando: “Cars are beginning to fire-up and get held.”

1836: Lando fires up and heads out, running on a Used Soft tyre – with only four sets of Softs for qualifying (including the one not available until Q3), he wanted to save his one remaining (pre-Q3) new set for the second run in Q2. Half of the field are doing the same. His banker lap is a 1m32.191, which leaves him P10 after the first run. He’s back in the garage at 1842, preparing for the second run.

STATUS UPDATE: Six minutes remaining in Q2 at the Bahrain International Circuit. Lando P10. Running order. 1. VER, 2. PER, 3. HAM, 4. RUS, 5. ALO, 6. SAI, 7. LEC, 8. HUL, 9. BOT, 10. Lando, 11. ZHO, 12. STR, 13. OCO, 14. TSU, 15. ALB.

Lando > PIT: “It’s not really doing what I want it to do at Turn One.”

1844: With 3m18s of the session remaining. Lando lights it up and heads out on a new set of Soft tyres. He’s four-hundredths of a second ahead of P11 and two-tenths off P8. Pretty close in the midfield at Sakhir…

PIT > Lando: “You are the seventh car in the queue. Lead car is OCO. Behind you is LEC.”

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1847: Lando begins his flying lap with 57s spare to the chequered flag. His first sector is green (personal best) but there’s a lot of green on the board. He’ll definitely have to improve on his earlier time to make it through to Q3. He’s green again in Sector Two, and also in Sector Three. 1m31.381 moves him up to P8.

PIT > Lando: “We’re P8… but still a few cars to go.”

1849. Ah, Lando is out. P11.

Lando > PIT: “OK, not my best lap but a good effort from everyone I think today.”

STATUS UPDATE: Q2 completed at the Bahrain International Circuit. Lando P11. Finishing Order 1. LEC, 2. VER, 3. RUS, 4. HAM, 5. SAI, 6. ALO, 7. PER, 8. HUL, 9. OCO, 10. STR, 11. Lando, 12. BOT, 13. ZHO, 14. TSU, 15. ALB.

And that was our Saturday in Bahrain. P11 and P18 isn’t the fleet-heeled start to the season the team wanted – but it also wasn’t entirely unexpected. It’s a long season and, as Tom Stallard said, Bahrain is a grand prix where everything happens on Sunday.

STATUS UPDATE: Q3 completed at the Bahrain International Circuit. Lando P11. Finishing Order 1. VER, 2. PER, 3. LEC, 4. SAI, 5. ALO, 6. RUS, 7. HAM, 8. STR, 9. OCO, 10. HUL, 11. Lando, 12. BOT, 13. ZHO, 14. TSU, 15. ALB, 16. SAR, 17. MAG, 18. Oscar, 19. DEV, 20. GAS.

We’ll be back following tomorrow's race, starting at 15:00 GMT, to give you insight on what went down.

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