Bahrain GP 2010

MARCH 13, 2010

Practice 3 Report - Fernando Alonso quickest

Fernando Alonso, Bahrain GP 2010
© The Cahier Archive

Fernando Alonso sent out a signal to the rest of the Formula One field this morning in Bahrain, when his qualifying simulation saw the Ferrari run the fastest lap of the weekend so far, a 1m54.099s, in the final practice session before qualifying.

But it looks likely that the first qualifying session of the season will by tightly contended, as the top seven drivers were within one second of each other. Nico Rosberg was second quickest in his Mercedes, 0.269 seconds behind Alonso and he set the fastest first and second sector times.

Rosberg was followed by Mark Webber's Red Bull (0.401s), Michael Schumacher (0.434s) in the other Mercedes and Sebastian Vettel (0.547s) in his Red Bull. Felipe Massa (0.640s) in the Ferrari was sixth fastest, but he made a mistake on his final run and ran wide at turn 22.

Next up came Jenson Button (0.901s) in the McLaren, Robert Kubica (1.232s) in the Renault, Vitantonio Liuzzi (1.333s) in the Force India, and Nico Hulkenberg (1.362s) in the Williams rounding out the top 10.

Lewis Hamilton was not able to make a qualifying simulation, as the team was fixing a problem with his front left brake duct at the end of the session.

During the session Timo Glock in the Virgin Racing entry turned into a corner only to find that his left front wheel detached from the car - which was later identified as a problem with an air-gun. Glock's team mate Lucas di Grassi had a gearbox problem and did not set a time.

At HRT troubles persisted as Karun Chandhok's car was not able to find a gear, and he sat out the session.