Free Practice 3, Alonso and Ferrari take the honours

The last free practice session has finished and Fernando Alonso underlined the pace of the Ferrari by topping the times in the last free practice session for the Bahrain GP, he beat Nico Rosberg into second place in the Mercedes.
Red Bull finally move to the sharp end of the times taking 3rd and 5th places and pushing the McLarens down to 7th and 12th. The Mercedes still look strong with Rosberg their fastest driver. The Sauber still seems to be disappointing with only managing 13th and 17th after the pace that they showed in pre-season testing.
Karun Chandhok still didn’t get the HRT car out of the garage, hopefully he’ll be able to complete a lap in qualifying so that he can compete in the race otherwise it makes a bit of a mockery of the team getting to the race.
Times in full:
1. Alonso Ferrari 1:54.099
2. Rosberg Mercedes 1:54.368
3. Webber Red [...]

Practice 2 in Bahrain and Nico Rosberg takes the top spot for Mercedes

With the second practice session over Nico Rosberg sits at the top of the times for Mercedes beating Michael Schumacher for the second session. McLaren and Mercedes took the top spots for the session to show that they are the teams to beat.

There was also some good times for Nico Hulkenberg who hauled himself up to 6th place in the times. The Ferrari’s seemed to be concentrating on long runs and so don’t really feature in the times but don’t let that fool you – they are faster than that.
It seems that tyre wear is going to play a big part in Sunday’s GP with some teams treating their tyres nicely and some chewing through them extremely fast. The Red Bull seems to be hard on it’s tyres whereas the McLaren is able to look after them better. If this is the case it will play into the hands of [...]

Practice 1 in Bahrain, Adrian Sutil and Force India top the times

The first practice is now over and we have our first taste of F1 for 2010 and it is Force India with Adrian Sutil that take the top spot with Alonso and Ferrari second. Fourth spot also went to Ferrari to reinforce the general view that their car is fast.

Other stars were Kubica to haul the Renault up to third spot when it hasn’t looked that fast throughout testing. Jenson Button managed to get in front of Hamilton in the first session in their battle, it doesn’t mean that much but every little victory will help. Rosberg also finished ahead of Schumacher who was unhappy with the car setup throughout the session, how many times in the past have we seen Schumacher struggle all weekend to then take the Victory on Sunday though?
Liuzzi finished seventh to show that the Force India does indeed have pace but the Saubers somewhat disappointingly [...]

All the rookies of 2010, Senna, Hulkenberg, Petrov, di Grassi and Chandhok – what to expect?

The 2010 grid has five new drivers on it, that’s a lot for one season but there could have easily been more had US F1 made the grid. Nico Hulkenberg joins the Williams team, Vitaly Petrov joins Renault, Lucas di Grassi joins Virgin Racing and both Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok join HRT Cosworth. Most of these come directly from GP2 with Nico Hulkenberg the reigning champion.
Nico Hulkenberg has risen to stardom very quickly showing a talent that Willi Webber says reminds him of a young Michael Schumacher (who was it who said the same about Vettel?) and took the GP2 title impressively in his first season, will he have a similarly explosive start to his F1 career? Petrov and di Grassi have been around in GP2 for much longer and have finally made the leap into F1. Both need to prove that they are capable of competing at this [...]