Nico Rosberg returned to familiar territory this afternoon in sizzling Sakhir, as the German racer topped the timesheets in the second practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.Rosberg is no stranger to showing the undoubted pace of the Williams Toyota FW31 package in practice and like his rivals, the switch from the medium prime tyre to the super soft option tyre brought big gains as he stopped the clocks in 1:33.339s.
As ever, we do not know exactly what fuel levels the teams opted to run this afternoon, but there can’t be a great deal in it as the entire 20 car field is covered by just 1.451 seconds.
Renault looked to be struggling for pace for much of the 90 minute session as Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet lapped well off the pace and propped up the rear of the timesheets. The team however later took some fuel out of the R29 challenger and armed with the option tyre, Alonso was able to vault up the order ending the session just two tenths shy of pace-setter Rosberg.
Toyota really picked up the pace this afternoon with Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock recording the third and eighth fastest times respectively. Red Bull Renault continued to show well with Chinese Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel fourth fastest, a hundredth of a second quicker than team-mate Mark Webber.
Championship leader Jenson Button was sixth fastest, and as ever, the Brawn Mercedes package looked very well balanced. Team-mate Rubens Barrichello was ninth fastest.
Adrian Sutil was a surprise seventh fastest in his much updated Force India Mercedes ahead of Glock.
The Silverstone-based team has an extensively revised aerodynamic package on the VJM02 this weekend and ran well throughout the afternoon session. Italian veteran Giancarlo Fisichella was 12th fastest, making gains as the chequered flag flew. Kazuki Nakajima rounded out the top ten in the second Williams ahead of some of the big names.
McLaren has further aerodynamic modifications to the MP4-24 package this weekend as they look to close the gap to the front-runners. Lewis Hamilton lapped just over half a second off the ultimate pace to set the 11th best time while Heikki Kovalainen was eight-tenths off his team-mate and just 19th.
The Toro Rosso Ferrari duo of Sebastien Buemi and Sebastien Bourdais were 13th and 14th respectively behind Fisichella and ahead of Nelson Piquet in the second Renault. The Ferrari struggle continued again today with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen just 16th and 18th while it was another tough day for BMW Sauber with Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld 17th and 20th.
Clearly Ferrari and BMW Sauber are struggling, but it is still a surprise to see such quality teams so far down the timesheets. Today of course counts for nothing however as it is tomorrow that the serious business gets underway in Bahrain.
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