Bahrain GP Free Practice 1 - Hamilton fastest

The opening practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend saw Lewis Hamilton return to the top of the timesheets for the second time this year. The McLaren Mercedes driver set the best time of 1:33.647s mid-session and until the closing moments, was an impressive seven-tenths clear of the field.

Practice times are always hard to read as we don’t know what relative fuel levels the teams are running, but as the Woking-based squad continue to evaluate aero enhancements to the MP4-24 package they will be encouraged by the early pace at Sakhir.

While the majority of the field completed the session on the harder prime tyre, BMW Sauber opted to run both Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica on the softer option tyre. The result was immediate with Heidfeld finding 1.2 seconds to vault second fastest while Kubica also found time to record the third best time. Prior to the switch in tyre, Heidfeld and Kubica were 14th and seventh fastest respectively with both running KERS today.

Nico Rosberg was again impressive in his Williams Toyota as he set the fourth fastest time. Rosberg has run well in most of the practice sessions so far this year and generally it seems the team opt to run with slightly less fuel on board than its rivals.

Championship leader Jenson button was fifth fastest in his Brawn Mercedes with team-mate Rubens Barrichello a tenth slower in seventh position. Button only completed 15 laps however as his BGP 001 suffered from a minor gearbox problem.

Heikki Kovalainen split the Brawn duo in the second McLaren while Felipe Massa led the Ferrari challenge with the eighth fastest time in his KERS-equipped F60.

Mark Webber was ninth in the leading Red Bull Renault while Kimi Raikkonen ran without KERS on his Ferrari and was tenth fastest. It was largely an uneventful session, but Raikkonen did suffer a high speed spin exiting turn two early on and very nearly made contact with the unforgiving tyre wall.

Kazuki Nakajima was 11th best in the second Williams Toyota while Shanghai winner Sebastian Vettel was just 12th this morning in the second Red Bull Renault.

The under pressure Nelson Piquet will be mildly encouraged by his 13th fastest time in the updated Renault but the session was a difficult one for team-mate Fernando Alonso as he struggled to 18th as he evaluated KERS on the R29.

Adrian Sutil was 14th best in his Force India Mercedes with team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella 16th but it was a surprise to see Toyota seemingly struggling for pace with Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock just 15th and 17th respectively.

Toro Rosso Ferrari brought up the bottom of the timesheets with Sebastien Bourdais two-hundredths of a second clear of Sebastien Buemi who was forced to pull his STR4 to a halt late in the session with a mechanical fault.

1.7 seconds cover the entire field as the teams now prepare for the afternoon practice session.