Pierre Gasly set the pace during first practice in Bahrain but admitted he was “struggling massively” during the second session, held in cooler temperatures in the evening.
The AlphaTauri driver said he experienced two “very different sessions” after falling to 13th place in the evening, 1.6 seconds off the pace set by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
He described how the car’s handling transformed in the second session. “It’s very clear that we were sliding a lot more, both axles, front and rear, and open balance,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “Just not going in the right direction.
“This morning it was just riding a bicycle, it was just very natural and very easy and the pace was there straight away. And straight from the first lap in FP2 I could feel ‘ah, okay, it doesn’t feel the same’.
“Obviously it’s very different conditions, tyres are behaving differently so quite a lot of things to go through tonight.”
However Gasly is confident…