F1 Fanatic

There's not much to choose between the two McLaren drivers so far

The second practice session at Bahrain brought further evidence of Ferrari’s long-run pace but Mercedes and McLaren are up there with the on one-lap performance.

We look set for an entertaining qualifying session tomorrow. Here’s how all the teams got on in second practice today:

McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari

FP2 times: McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull

The McLaren and Mercedes drivers set their fastest times on qualifying simulations, as did Felipe Massa. But it looks like Alonso hasn’t shown his hand yet with a low-fuel run.

Massa’s long run looks good compared with those of the McLaren drivers:

Early in the session Hamilton aborted one run on the medium tyres having quickly destroyed them – a problem with tyre allocations so tightly restricted this year.

Mercedes one-lap pace looks promising, at least in the hands of Nico Rosberg. Although Michael Schumacher admitted afterwards to being “rusty”, his long-run pace compares favourable with Rosberg’s.

Red Bull, however, lost a lot of running the afternoon changing Mark Webber’s driveshaft and Sebastian Vettel’s brakes – the latter losing his car under braking for the final corner early in the session.

Williams, Force India, Renault, Toro Rosso and Sauber

FP2 times: Williams, Renault, Force India, Toro Rosso, Sauber

Although Force India topped the times in the first sector it was the VJM03′s pace over long runs that Vitantonio Liuzzi praised following the second session. He felt the car’s one-lap performance wasn’t quite there yet. Both his and Sutil’s long runs looked very consistent.

Sauber showed better pace than they did in the morning but Pedro de la Rosa complained of poor grip and described the turn seven bump as “dangerous”. Kamui Kobayashi suffered a puncture and had to curtail one of his runs.

Rubens Barrichello lost early running due to an electrical problem and finished both sessions almost one second slower than new team mate Nico Hülkenberg. Hülkenberg also looked quicker on his nine-lap stint than Barrichello did on his ten-lapper – of course we don’t know whether they were running the same fuel loads.

Renault said they were happy with the stability of their car under braking. As is to be expected Vitaly Petrov looks some way of Robert Kubica’s pace.

Jaime Alguersuari described the new section of track as “nothing special and very slow” – perhaps that was his revenge for being caught out by the complex where he spun in FP2. Team mate Buemi missed the entire session (apart from a single installation lap) due to car trouble.

Lotus, Virgin and HRT

FP2 Times: Lotus, Virgin, HRT

Bruno Senna logged 17 laps in the HRT and by the end of the session he’d finally managed to beat the best time set during the GP2 Asia practice session.

Worryingly, wheel nut failure brought his car to a halt at the first corner at the end of the session. Team mate Karun Chandhok didn’t do a lap at all despite hopes he would be out during FP2. He has just one hour to complete his first lap in the car before qualifying tomorrow.

Virgin were almost a second off Lotus’s pace in the second session but neither of their cars did low-fuel running and Timo Glock hasn’t tried the super-soft tyres yet.

Top 50 lap times

The top 50 times set during the session:

Fastest laps

Extended data on the times set by all the drivers.

NB. ‘Within 1%’ refers to the number of times a driver set a lap time that was within 1% of his best.

Analysing practice

This is a new series of articles analysing the lap times from practice. If you have any suggestions for improvements or changes you would like to see, please post them in the comments.

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