De Vries provides AlphaTauri with 'useful data' during first day

Jody Egginton, British technical director of AlphaTauri, has commented on the first day of winter testing in Bahrain. In an interview with Sky Sports, he expressed his "satisfaction" with the performance during the drivers' first winter tests.

So Egginton sees it as a good first day, saying the following about day one: "It was a solid first day with no issues on the car." He does add, however, that it still did not go completely smoothly because a red flag occurred. This, according to the Briton, didn't hamper anything. 

De Vries experienced good first session

Egginton also highlighted a good session by Nyck de Vries. "Nyck continued with the various test items, making good use of both the C2 & C3 tyre compounds to also gather some very useful tyre data in the afternoon." De Vries completed 85 laps on the first day of testing, in this he kept improving his own times more and more, himself telling F1 tv: "In terms of performance and confidence, it was a good day. The weather conditions were very challenging, with high temperatures on the track." Nevertheless, De Vries finished above his teammate, Yuki Tsunoda.

Tsunoda with important first tests

In addition, the Japanese driver was highlighted in Egginton's interview. "Yuki drove first, with the early part of the morning given over to running the sidepod rakes and conducting several related aero tests. The data gathered from this is an important part of the correlation process." Tsunoda's tests were therefore more about the car itself, with De Vries's mostly about the different compounds. Egginton continued: "Following these tests, Yuki moved on to work on a number of test items and some basic set-up work, before handing over to Nyck for the afternoon session."

Friday is the second day of winter testing, so it remains to be seen what tests AlphaTauri will do today.