The Autosport Podcast

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso emerged as the fastest driver in the second practice session for the 2023 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. The session saw the top 13 drivers finish within one second of each other, with Charles Leclerc of Ferrari in fourth place. Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg produced an impressive effort to come fifth. Temperatures were down to 22C in the evening running under lights, prompting several teams to immediately head out on the soft tyres. Alpine's Esteban Ocon used the softs to take first place, followed by Lance Stroll of Aston Martin, who had set the first-place benchmark on the mediums a few moments earlier.   The first round of performance runs saw Leclerc surge ahead of his teammate Carlos Sainz and take the lead, which lasted for 20 minutes. Perez then shot into first place before Alonso took over the lead with a time of 1m30.907s, which remained unbeaten for the rest of the session. The drivers then completed the typical l