Pre-Season Testing: Day 1 Recap

Paired together for a second consecutive season at the American squad, the experienced duo – with 366 combined F1 starts to their credit, logged a total of 148 laps on the opening day of the three-day test.

Magnussen ran the morning session, the Dane back on-track having completed the team’s second and final promotional filming day at the same venue on Monday. Working through a series of baseline runs on Pirelli’s C2 and C3 tires, with a focus on tire management analysis, Magnussen enjoyed a solid program completing a total of 66 laps.

Hulkenberg’s afternoon run-plan utilized the same tire compounds with the German working on longer stints with the same goal of gaining further data on tire usage. Running into the evening, and eventually under the full glare of the lights around the circuit – a foretaste of next week’s Bahrain Grand Prix, Hulkenberg banked 82 laps to add to Magnussen’s earlier tally. Day two of testing on Thursday sees Hulkenberg first up driving the VF-24 with Magnussen returning for the afternoon session.

Ayao Komatsu – Team Principal:

“For our first day of pre-season testing, overall, I think it was a pretty decent day – it wasn’t perfect, but it was a really decent start. We focused the whole day on long-run tire management, we generated really good data. Both drivers ran a few different strategies, and we can see the results of that. We’ve learned quite a lot as a team. I’d say we managed to achieve most of our objectives for the day, which is good. For tomorrow we’ve got another big set of objectives – knowing what we’ve learned from today. We have a few operational things to sharpen up as well, just so we run slightly better, but with 148 laps recorded, we now have plenty to build on for Thursday.”

 

Kevin Magnussen:

“I feel very good. Physically, it was a good morning as it’s always fun getting back into the car after the winter. I think we had a pretty positive morning, we just focused on long runs and we’re really trying to address the issues that we had last year with the tires. That’s going to be our main focus and we’re happy about what we saw this morning, but there’s clearly a lot of work to do but everyone’s fired up to investigate and learn about this new car.”

 

Nico Hulkenberg: 

“Our afternoon was mainly about high-fuel, long runs and the objective was to learn about the car and try some things with the tires. We know it was our weakness last year so that’s really been the focus today. It was all good and positive, there were no issues on the technical side and with 82 laps on the board, everything was achieved.”

 

Today's Data

Event: Bahrain Pre-Season Test – Wednesday February 21
Location: Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir
Layout: 5.412-kilometer (3.363-mile), 15-turn track
Drivers: Kevin Magnussen (MAG) / Nico Hulkenberg (HUL)
MAG: Time / Laps / Distance: 1:35.692 / 66 laps / 357.19 kilometers (221.95 miles)
HUL: Time / Laps / Distance: 1:35.906 / 82 laps / 443.78 kilometers (275.76 miles)
Most Laps: 143 laps by Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing