Raikkonen, Ferrari, dominate FP1

Kimi Raikkonen dominated the first practice session in Bahrain this morning, topping the timesheets from start to finish as he prepares to fight for the top spot in the championship table.

Team mate Felipe Massa was second, half a second off the lead, followed by the McLaren duo of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso who traded places in the last five minutes, almost a second behind the lead Ferrari. The only real losers in the practice session were test drivers. None of the teams opted to use them. That was good news especially for Nick Heidfeld, who had complained about his BMW team’s initial decision to put tester Sebastian Vattel in one of the cars on Fridays. Heidfeld’s public criticism of his own team has fueled speculation that BMW may not take up an option on the German next year and promote Vattel to partner Robert Kubica for the races, but Heidfeld seems to be strengthening his position, coming fourth twice so far this year and accounting for all of BMW’s 10 championship points. The positions at the end of the first practice session were: Raikkonen 1:33.162. Massa (Gap: 0.517). Hamilton (0.948) Alonso (0.999), Trulli (1.734), Heidfeld (1.914), Kubica (2.086), Liuzzi (2.130), Rosberg (2.213), Wurz (2.236), Button (2.283), Kovalainen (2.312), Schumacher (2.411), Fisichella (2.535), Speed (2.564), Sato (2.694), Barrichello (2.749), Davidson (3.081), Webber (3.321), Coulthard (3.351), Sutil (3.922), Albers (5.096).

Massa achieved a best time of 1:29.9 on this track during testing a month ago, but one cannot really make comparisons because it was cooler then; cars may have been running different fuel loads this morning, and the track was still dirty.

Last year Nico Rosberg set the fastest race lap at 1:32.408. Michael Schumacher was on pole with 1.31:431.