Welcome to F1: Williams’ new recruit Lance Stroll had his first taste of what it means to be an F1 driver as he crashed after just 12 laps and the team did not have enough spares to run again. The Canadian teenager is a man of means, with a billionaire father bankrolling his racing career, that has expectedly got the tongues wagging about his abilities. But the 18-year old has enough in his CV to show that he is a serious racing driver. Stroll has been preparing for his foray into the big league, testing a 2014 Williams car on tracks across the world. Williams has lost a day’s running and run some repair bills but won't mind it as long as Stroll sorts his mistakes now rather than later.
Dreams losing power: There can be nothing more ironical than Honda’s tagline ‘Power of Dreams’ after its power unit lost power today early in the morning interrupting McLaren’s programme on the second day too. The team bolted another set of power unit and Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne could manage only 40 laps today and was four seconds off the pace. Even if timings don't matter, McLaren would rather be four-tenths slower than four seconds.
Worryingly for the team this means it will be spending more time on fixing reliability issues than optimising the car and finding performance. Just to put in context, Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas did 102 laps, and he drove only during the second session, with Lewis Hamilton driving in the morning. The dream McLaren-Honda alliance is definitely losing power by the day.
Scuderia notes: Ferrari topped the timings on day two with Kimi Raikkonen going 0.013 seconds faster than Hamilton. Ferrari over the last few years have topped headline times during pre-season testing only to deceive once the season starts. The Finn was reportedly under the weather today but still managed to clock in excess of 100 laps. On Monday, Vettel did most of his running on the medium tyres while Raikkonen focused on soft tyres on day two. The medium tyres was really troublesome for Ferrari last year and the team generally struggled compared to the Mercs that seemed to be in sync with mediums.
Interestingly, the team has had a media blackout for the first two days but Ferrari boss Sergio Marchionne couldn't stop himself from making a few comments. He was quoted saying the first impressions of the car was good and better than 2016 but still not enough to challenge the Silver Arrows. Whether he is tempering expectations or sandbagging, it is an intriguing comment nonetheless after just two days of running
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