Bahrain Friday Practice: Rosberg fastest as usual

First practice sessions for the fourth race of the season has been completed today. Nico Rosberg topped the time sheets at second practice while Lewis Hamilton was fastest at first session. Conditions very were hot and windy. Track was very dusty at the beginnings of both sessions. As this circuit is the first hard braking circuit of the year, teams worked mainly on the brakes and we have seen many lockouts from drivers especially at turn 1 and turn 10. Teams evaluated the available tyre compounds for the race as usual on a Friday. Most of the teams struggled to heat their prime tires while the option tires seemed better.

Teams will study the data that they have collected today and will be ready for tomorrow’s free practice session. As the competition is very close it will be interesting to see who will make it to Q3 tomorrow.

Driver Quotes after Chinese Grand Prix

BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica and Toyota’s Jarno Trulli on their dramatic collision; Force India’s Adrian Sutil on being less than six laps from scoring his team’s first points; and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber on their spectacular one-two victory. All 20 drivers and senior team personnel report back on Sunday’s race…

It’s time to wake up for Ferrari

After two back to back races in Melbourne and Sepang, it’s now clear that Ferrari is not the fastest car anymore. In fact they are not even a contender to win the races. But it seems they are still not aware of that. They continue to behave like they are the strongest team as they were before. Yesterday they destroyed Massa’s chances for race, in the first session of Qualifying by not leaving pits for the last time to save tires and today they put extreme wet tires on Raikkonen’s car, while its still bone dry. I cannot believe how Ferrari management came to this point. Even Force India would not do the same in similar conditions. It was clearly a gamble that didn’t work, but usually you gamble when your chances are poor. But it wasn’t the case at that moment. Raikkonen was fifth and he had a good chance of scoring some points or even be at podium with a good strategy call, if you think even Button did four pit stops and still won the race. I could understand if they put the intermediates but it was obvious that the extreme wets cannot survive more than a couple of laps in bone dry conditions. Massa’s case was also a big disappointment. He was on extreme wet tires while everybody was in a hurry to change to intermediates. Only 40 seconds after he changed his tires to intermediates the rain increased and he had to pit again for extreme wets. He would have been in a very strong position if he could wait one more lap. But it was again a wrong call by Ferrari’s pit wall.

This is not the first time that Ferrari doing strategic errors. It’s started to happen just after Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher left the team. Remember Fuji 2007, Silverstone 2008, Hungary 2007, etc. None of these errors were unavoidable and even small teams do not do this kind of basic errors at any time. But it seems like this is becoming a habit for Ferrari. When they find themselves to chose one of the ways in an unpredictable condition no matter what, they always chose the wrong way. This shouldn’t be the case in a team like Ferrari with very high standards.