Practice 1: 3rd and 4th.


By Sam Cooper
April 13 2007

Since winning the Ferrari’s in Malaysia, McLaren finished behind the prancing horse in practice 1 today, finishing third and fourth, with Lewis Hamilton 3rd and Fernando Alonso 4th.

Don’t get too worried about McLarens performances we don’t know what fuel loads they were running, or what set up, or what tyres they were running on.

Unfortunately during the session, McLaren looked to be struggling with the handling of the MP4-22, with both drivers having a hard time keeping on the circuit, which explains why the team were slower than we anticipated, rest assured that McLaren won’t take Ferrari’s pace lying down.

During the night before the practice rain came to Bahrain and dampened the circuit making the surface green (no rubber on the circuit) therefore all the drivers found the circuit hard to drive on.

This is clear as times are much slower than they were in pre season testing. Kimi Räikkönen time a good 4 seconds slower than Felipe Massa’s time in the pre season testing at the same circuit, and we know that the teams have made improvements since then.

Pos.

Driver

Team

Time

Laps

1

K. Räikkönen

Ferrari

1:33.162

21

2

F. Massa

Ferrari

1:33.679

17

3

L. Hamilton

McLaren

1:34.110

17

4

F. Alonso

McLaren

1:34.161

15

5

J. Trulli

Toyota

1:34.896

26

6

N. Heidfeld

BMW

1:35.076

30

7

R. Kubica

BMW

1:35.248

24

8

V. Liuzzi

Scuderia Toro Rosso

1:35.292

23

9

N. Rosberg

Williams

1:35.375

19

10

A. Wurz

Williams

1:35.398

20

11

J. Button

Honda

1:35.445

24

12

H. Kovalainen

Renault

1:35.474

21

13

R. Schumacher

Toyota

1:35.573

24

14

G. Fisichella

Renault

1:35.697

17

15

S. Speed

Scuderia Toro Rosso

1:35.726

22

16

T. Sato

Super Aguri

1:35.856

15

17

R. Barrichello

Honda

1:35.911

20

18

A. Davidson

Super Aguri

1:36.243

6

19

M. Webber

Red Bull

1:36.483

18

20

D. Coulthard

Red Bull

1:36.513

7

21

A. Sutil

Spyker F1

1:37.084

27

22

C. Albers

Spyker F1

1:38.258

29