Ferrari and Massa dominate day one

Ferrari this afternoon continued its domination of the opening day of practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix with Felipe Massa lapping almost a second clear of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and leaving the rest trailing behind.

Massa saved his hot lap until the final minutes of the session, stopping the clocks with a best time of 1:31.420s, over a second faster than his own pole position at the circuit 12-months ago. Raikkonen topped the timesheets for much of the 90-minute session but will be content with his position.

Heikki Kovalainen led the way for the McLaren Mercedes team with the third fastest time while Lewis Hamilton ended the day fourth fastest and with a heavily damaged car.

Exiting turn six late in the session, Hamilton ran wide and with all four wheels on the kerbing, the MP4-23 swapped ends and shot Hamilton into the barriers on entry into turn eight. It was a fairly heavy impact on the right hand side of the car and the team will have plenty of work to prepare the car for Saturday practice.

Robert Kubica was a solid fifth fastest in his BMW Sauber while Nick Heidfeld again failed to show a great deal of pace in the sister F1.08 and was 17th of the 22 runners. Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima showed well for Williams Toyota with the sixth and eighth best times with the Red Bull Renault of David Coulthard in between.

Sebastien Bourdais impressed with the ninth best time in his Toro Rosso Ferrari, using soft tyres early on for a quick stint and a time that held up throughout the session.

Sebastian Vettel meanwhile struggled for pace and was 20th fastest.

Nelson Piquet rounded out the top ten for Renault while Fernando Alonso could have improved on his eventual 12th position had be not got himself into an unnecessary battle for track position with Adrian Sutil later in the session. Baulked by the Force India driver, Alonso proceeded to out-brake himself and then make contact with the side of Sutil. Still, it livened up the session.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello were 11th and 16th for Honda with Mark Webber and the Toyota duo of Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock in between. Given Toyota, like Ferrari, tested for six days at this circuit in the off-season, it is a disappointing start to the weekend for the team.

Towards the back and Giancarlo Fisichella edged out Force India Ferrari team-mate Adrian Sutil for 18th position while the Super Aguri Honda duo of Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson brought up the bottom of the timesheets behind Vettel.

Day one is complete and so far it is easy for Ferrari.

Earl ALEXANDER

4.4.2008   ▪ Formula One    ▪ Ferrari, Massa    ▪ en.f1-live.com