Hamilton tops charts in opening Bahrain practice

The pacesetting of the Mercedes team continued with Lewis Hamilton topping the opening two practice sessions for the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Hamilton outshone team-mate Nico Rosberg in both free practice runs with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso grabbing third best twice to make it a duplicate trifecta.

The gap Mercedes holds on the field appears to be significant as the Brackley team shoot for a third successive victory at the Sakhir circuit.

Hamilton was buoyed by the performance of the car on soft rubber.

“The softs in particular seem to be working well and we saw a fair difference in lap time between them and the mediums,” Hamilton said.

“The focus today was on the second session as the timing and conditions reflects that of the rest of the weekend and the difference in temperature between the sessions was quite large.

“The key was to not react too much to that change in terms of our approach to set-up and we seemed to manage that well.”

Australian Daniel Ricciardo, facing a 10-place grid drop from an ill-fated Malaysian GP, was fourth fastest in FP2, 1.1s off Hamilton’s pace and .1s behind Alonso.

Ricciardo’s Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel was seventh, behind the Williams of Felipe Massa and Jenson Button (McLaren) in sixth.

See below for Free Practice 2

1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:34.325
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:34.690	+0.365
3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:35.360	1.035
4	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-Renault	1:35.433	1.108
5	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:35.442	1.117
6	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:35.528	1.203
7	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1:35.606	1.281
8	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:35.640	1.315
9	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:35.662	1.337
10	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1:35.802	1.477
11	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:35.920	1.595
12	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:35.972	1.647
13	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:35.998	1.673
14	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:36.366	2.041
15	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.366	2.637
16	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.975	2.650
17	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	1:37.259	2.934
18	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:37.599	3.274
19	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:37.800	3.475
20	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	1:38.247	3.922
21	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	1:38.257	3.932
22	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	1:39.136	4.811

 See below for Free Practice 1 

1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:37.502
2	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:37.733	0.231
3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:37.953	0.451
4	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:38.122	0.620
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:38.636	1.134
6	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:38.783	1.281
7	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:38.949	1.447
8	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:39.056	1.554
9	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1:39.102	1.600
10	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1:39.389	1.887
11	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:39.533	2.031
12	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:39.862	2.360
13	Felipe Nasr	Williams-Mercedes	1:40.078	2.576
14	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-Renault	1:40.406	2.904
15	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:40.652	3.150
16	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	1:40.793	3.291
17	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:40.$89	3.387
18	Giedo van der Garde	Sauber-Ferrari	1:40.913	3.411
19	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:41.036	3.534
20	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	1:41.794	4.292
21	Robin Frijns	Caterham-Renault	1:42.417	4.915
22	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	1:42.711	5.209

 

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