[Deschodt]

some snippets from f1TV form day 2 of testing:

Aston Martin are struggling with porposing, with the car banging and sparking off the ground. Lots of teams are struggling with a similar issue, but not to that extent. Mercedes look much better than yesterday, but their 'porpoising' isn't fully solved - Hamilton looks like he is struggling with the car through the corners.

Palmer also mentioned the rumours that are swirling through the paddock about the weights of the cars. Some are over the minimum limit by quite a margin, and getting those weights down could prove to be a fair old issue before the first race of the season.

Regarding Haas - Mick had a good morning, racking up exactly a race distance. More importantly, he looked comfortable in the car, the car looked sharper than yesterday and that gives them more hope of joining the midfield.

Alfa Romeo are on the back foot. With a new generation of car, something that's so different - mileage is key, and that's been shown by all the other teams experiencing issues such as porpoising. At least they have the data to fix it, whereas Alfa will be behind on the learning curve considering they've already lost a lot of running. On top of that they have two new drivers who need to acclimatize to the team and to the engineers.

While testing isn't always indicative of a team's true form, looking at testing from across the last couple of years, Mercedes looked strongest in 2020, topping two out of the three days. And Red Bull returned the favour in 2021, also topping two of three.
All of which points to both McLaren potentially being one to watch - and the timing sheets lighting up in Bahrain for the test in a couple of weeks' time. (Ferrari look Ok too)

Lawrance baretto chatted to Carlos Sainz earlier. He followed Verstappen and then Alonso very closely yesterday to see if the new rules have made it easier to follow - and he noticed a positive difference versus last year, which bodes well for overtaking opportunities this year