Sakir, Bahrain: Free Practice 1&2

*Beep beep beep*

Hunt's alarm went off and Hunt groaned. He stretched his hand onto his hotel nightstand and blindly felt around for his clock. His hand collided with sometime and sent it crashing of the nightstand.

Hunt groaned as he sat up. His clock lay face down on the floor.

'At least it isn't ringing anymore' he thought. To his surprise he started laughing about his situation.

He stepped out of bed and reached over to pick up his clock, and set it back on his nightstand. To his shock, (btw Hunt uses the clocks with and hour and minute hand) that the plastic cover over the hands was cracked. Hunt sighed as he continued on with his day. After changing into his Jaguar t-shirt he made some bacon and eggs and quickly wolfed it down. While he was filling up his water bottle, someone knocked on his door.

"Come on mate! Were gonna be late!" Someone shouted.

Hunt recognized the voice and replied "I'm coming George!"

As Hunt opened the door, one very surprised George who was leaning on the door, yelped and crashed onto Hunt's floor. Hunt jumped back in surprised.

"Woah! You okay George?" Hunt asked

George groaned and said "I've been better"

Then people started laughing. Hunt looked up to see Lando and Leclerc dying of laughter. Hunt gave them a deadpan face and the two laughed even harder.

"How long have 2 two been standing there?" Hunt said, smiling.

In between their shouts of laughter Lando managed to choke out "We came here with George and when he fell we were trying to hold back our laughter."

Hunt rolled his eyes and offered a hand to George who thankfully accepted. As the 4 of them walked to the paddock, George lightly shouldered Hunt, he lost his balance and stumbled into Verstappen.

Verstappen gave Hunt the WTF look and Hunt pointed to George. Russell turned around and Verstappen gave him the finger. George started laughing hard. Hunt rolled his eyes and lightly smacked on the back of his head. It only made George laugh harder. Hunt glared at him and walked away.

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FP1

As FP1 in Bahrain rolled around, Hunt was the first driver to get out onto the track in an attempt to get to grips with the track. This year the with the new style of cars the FiA chose to run the shorter layout of the track which was used in 2020. (I was gonna use the F1 2020 game short layout but there wasn't a track map.) This layout had not been used often and combined with the decreased downforce of the 2022 cars meant that the track was much more slippery then Hunt was used to.

Speaking of slippery, as Hunt got on the power for the exit of turn 10, the rear end snapped and he nearly pulled an Albon coming out of the last corner, drifting out of turn 10 and as he let of the throttle the car caught itself and he nearly put the car in the barrier.

After the near miss with the barrier, he set a P12 lap time.

His teammate faired better, having raced here before, set a P10 lap time.

Engineer to Russell: P10! P10! Good Job!

Russell: YES! That's at lap!

Engineer to Hunt: P13! P13! Great Job!

Hunt: YES! HA HAAAA! That was close out of Turn 10! What a session!

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FP2

After the first practice of the weekend ended, Hunt was very concerned about his pace. Given his teammate was nearly a whole second ahead of him. Granted Russell had raced here but still, you would think for a circuit with mostly flat out corners, he wouldn't be to far off his teammate.

As Hunt saw his car, Hunt shook his head and blocked out all his worries. For now, his only worry was to not bin the car in the wall.

As Hunt jumped in the car, the familiar warmth of the engine calmed him down.

Engineer to Hunt: Radio check! Radio Check!

Hunt: *Unidentifiable radio static*

Engineer: Check the backup radio?

Hunt: *more radio static*

Engineer: That's shocking.

Due to his radio issues Hunt was delayed. As he sat in the garage he started to get more and more anxious. At last, they had fixed his radio and Hunt was about the get out on track. Today the job was to find the perfect step up for the race and qualifying. As Hunt went out for his first lap he learned the hard way why you needed to warm up that tires as he locked up heavily going into turn 4 and ran wide out of the corner.

Hunt: Box! Box! I got flat spots! Sorry.

Engineer: Pit confirm.

After Hunt got his new set of tires he set multiple lap time on different set up. His worst lap landing him P19 and his best landing him P12. His teammate was also doing laps. Russell's worst lap was P17 and his best landed him P9.

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Post Practice

George ran up to Hunt after he got out of his car. Russell was ecstatic about his P9 lap time. Hunt turned around a broke into a smile.

"Congrats on the P9 lap time!" Hunt said, with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Thank you but you should be happy yourself! For you first time on this track P12 is nothing to be sad about!" George said, sensing his teammates disappointment.

Hunt smiled and thanked George. Just then Lando and Leclerc came by and the 4 started talking about their time in FP1 and FP2. During FP1 Lando had an moment where he got lost, and had to ask through his radio where he was, and in FP2 he didn't see Hamilton and blocked him by accident. Leclerc had a much calmer practice, pegging P5 in FP1 and P4 in FP2.

"How can you have such a calm session?!" Hunt asked. "With the slipperiness of the circuit with the low downforce of the cars, almost everyone had an incident with oversteer, and you had nothing?"

"Ahhh keyword: almost! I'm part of that almost." Charles replied.

Hunt and the other started laughing and Leclerc gave them a confused look. In between gasps of air Russell managed "The only people who didn't have issues were the backmarkers! Didn't know the Ferrari was that slow!"

Leclerc rolled his eyes and gave them a deadpan face which only made then laugh harder. Finally after they had calmed down (at least enough to talk without having to gasp for air) they met up with Alex and they all agreed to head over to Hunt's place to have some food and watch Drive to Survive.