Sebastian Vettel set the pace once again for Ferrari in the second Formula 1 practice running for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but lost track time after a complete shutdown on his SF70H car midway through the session on Friday evening.
Vettel topped the timesheets for Ferrari in FP1 ahead of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, and continued to set a rapid pace in FP2, turning in a best lap of 1:31.310 during the 90-minute session.
Vettel headed up a close-knit group at the top of the timesheets, with less than three-tenths of a second covering the Ferrari driver, Valtteri Bottas, Daniel Ricciardo, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton in fifth place.
Hamilton was left frustrated by traffic on his super-soft qualifying simulations, with the stewards set to investigate an incident involving Nico Hulkenberg that sent the Briton off-track.
Just as Vettel began to prepare for his long runs in the second half of the session, the German suffered a loss of power coming out of Turn 13, causing him to slow. Despite his best efforts to reset the car, Vettel required a push from the marshals to get back to the pits, costing him track time.
Ferrari was able to resolve the issue with relative ease, with Vettel staying in his car the entire time as it was fixed, losing around 10 minutes of running in total.
Behind the top five, Nico Hulkenberg put in an impressive display for Renault to finish sixth, with Williams’ Felipe Massa following in P7 ahead of Max Verstappen, who suffered damage after hitting debris that limited his FP2 running.
Haas driver Romain Grosjean wound up ninth ahead of Daniil Kvyat, who rounded out the top 10 for Toro Rosso.
Vettel was not the only driver to hit trouble, with Carlos Sainz Jr. also suffering a stoppage on-track that brought his session to an end with just five laps on the board.
Following his engine problem in FP1, Stoffel Vandoorne was forced to miss the first half of the session, but eventually emerged to complete some much-needed running for the ailing McLaren team.
Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.
Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.
On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.
One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.
After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.
The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.
Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.
Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports
“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.
“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”
As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.
But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.
A block pass by Haiden Deegan led to a series of events that eventually led to Jordon Smith failing to make the Main. – Feld Motor Sports
“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.
“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”
Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.
“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.
“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”
The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.
