SAKHIR, Bahrain – Only days after re-joining the Haas F1 team, Kevin Magnussen was the fastest driver on the track at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Magnussen posted the top speed in day two of Formula One’s pre-season testing at the facility.
The Danish driver recorded 60 laps and posted a best lap of 1 minute and 33.207 seconds. Magnussen re-signed with Haas in a multi-year deal on Wednesday, replacing Russian driver Nikita Mazepin, who had his contract terminated by the team as part of the ongoing fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“It was so good to be back in a Formula 1 car and so good to be back with the team – I think it went really well,” Magnussen said in a team release. “We had a good day of testing. I spent the first couple of runs getting back up to speed with a Formula 1 car but other than that it felt like I hadn’t been away. I could feel my neck at the end of it though – it kind of broke – but that’s expected. I’ll do another day tomorrow, break it even more, and then hopefully get in a little better shape for next week.”
Magnussen was followed in testing by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz with a lap time of 1:33.352.
Third on the chart was defending champion Max Verstappen at 1:34.011. Despite multiple red flags, the Red Bull Racing driver recorded 86 laps during the day.
“I think we did as good a job as we could today, it was very warm and there were quite a few red flags,” Verstappen said. “It was quite a good day, all pretty standard and we put quite a good amount of laps on the car. We won’t really use these tyre compounds for the race so again, it’s not really representative. It was fun to have a little battle with Carlos, I think he was on a long run with more fuel and I was on a shorter run and once I caught him he started using DRS, I think he wanted to race as well. So far the car is pretty good but there are always areas to work on.”
The top five in testing was completed by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll (1:34.064) and Lewis Hamilton (1:34.141).
