Bahrain GP: Williams Martini Grand Prix Preview

Brace yourselves for Bahrain, host of the second round of the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship, where the midfield battle resumes in the Middle East. Williams Martini Racing travels to Sakhir off the back of a challenging weekend in Melbourne with Lance finishing 14th meanwhile Sergey retired with a brake failure on his Formula One race debut. Bahrain presents the team with a new opportunity to to extract the full potential of the Williams Mercedes FW41. With poor weather limiting track time at the Barcelona pre-season tests, teams are still learning about their 2018 challengers, and Bahrain will be sure to throw up some surprises. The twilight race certainly isn’t one to miss! For Bahrain, Pirelli has made available the medium, soft and supersoft tyres.

PADDY LOWE:
Bahrain is a great track with a unique atmosphere under the lights as darkness falls in the desert. It is a tricky race for car setup, as FP1 and FP3 occur in the afternoon with very high track temperatures and do not represent the cooler conditions seen in the twilight sessions for qualifying and the race. Therefore, FP2 is extremely important for our preparation. It will be interesting to see how the 2018 tyres perform in Bahrain and if they throw up more variety in race strategies. It is the first normal race track of the 2018 season with more predictable weather, so we should get a more representative comparison of the underlying performance of each team. After Sergey’s unfortunate DNF in Australia from a freak plastic bag, we hope to get him to complete his first race distance and that Lance can show well at his second year at this circuit.