Ferrari storms first practice

Ferrari showed its dominance in the opening practice session of the Bahraini Grand Prix with a convincing one-two. Kim Raikkonen went fastest with a 1m33.162s, half a second quicker than team-mate Felipe Massa, whereas the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were almost a second adrift of the Finn's pacesetter in third and fourth.

Jarno Trulli led the rest of the field in fifth place ahead of the two BMWs of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica. Just behind in eighth spot was an impressive Vitantonio Liuzzi in the Toro Rosso whilst the two Williams of Nico Rosberg and Alexander Wurz made up the top ten.

Jenson Button will be encouraged by eleventh fastest after a difficult start to the season for the Honda team whereas the Renault drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fisichella will be disappointed to be more than two seconds off the pace in twelfth and fourteenth. However, with just seven tenths of a second between seventh and seventeenth fastest the midfield battle this weekend to get into the top ten looks very open. Meanwhile Mark Webber and David Coulthard were a lowly nineteenth and twentieth down the order and will be hoping to do much better, as will Christijan Albers, who was even a second off his team-mate's best lap as the Spyker drivers brought up the rear.

The session was dry with an air temperature of 33 degrees Celsius. There were no incidents but many hairy moments for almost all of the drivers as they struggled to acclimatise to the difficult humid conditions. Moreover, overnight storms made the track very slippery. Alexander Wurz spun at turn 7, where Massa almost went off too after riding the kerbs. Scott Speed went off several times early on in the session as did Fisichella and Albers as they both looked to struggle with a bit of understeer. The McLaren drivers also had a few off moments, battling with the MP4-22's handling around the Sakhir circuit, as they tried to match the pace of the Ferraris.

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