Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mercedes superiority appears to have increased in Sakhir. The fastest laps came early as all the teams dedicated most of both sessions to dial their cars for the changing track conditions expected during the race. This year the Bahrain GP will have a late afternoon start to end the race under artificial lighting with track temperatures dropping drastically as the sun sets (up to 10 degrees cooler!). Both Nico & Lewis needed just a few runs early on both sessions to top the charts on soft compound to show everyone how much faster they are, over a second over their closest pursuer ALO. The second Ferrari wasn’t even close, RAI struggling again with brake issues. RIC was consistently faster than VET. Next came Williams and McLaren, but the Force India cars were in the mix thanks to their superior top speed (327 kph by PER, a bit faster than even the Mercedes). As usual this season, the surprising rookie KVY in the Toro Rosso keep making it comfortable in top ten.

P1 - HAM (1.37.502) ROS ALO HUL BUT RAI MAG KVY PER VET

P2 - HAM (1.34.325) ROS ALO RIC MAS BUT VET KVY MAG PER

Track conditions were very tricky today, some teams are blaming the wind and blowing sand plus the cooler surface temperatures for the slower lap times, much slower than during the recent testing days and definitely way off from the days of the V8 engines: WEB lap of 1.29.5 in 2005 seems like an eternity away. Last year’s pole was ROS in 1.32.3.

Let’s see which driver surprises us and ruins our picks, Let me start: Cato  HAM  ROS  ALO

Good luck!