Round four of the 2009 Formula One World Championship got underway earlier today with the first practice session at the Sakhir circuit. Like in Shanghai last weekend, the McLarens are showing revitalised pace with Lewis Hamilton going fastest and team mate Heikki Kovalainen breaking for lunch in sixth. The Williams of Nico Rosberg was high up the order as well, as were the Brawns and BMWs. Even the Ferraris managed to get both cars into the top ten.

Hamilton led comfortably and even a late surge from the BMWs of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica couldn’t displace the Briton. It is unusual to see the Swiss-German team so high up the tables in a practice session; Mario Theissen preferring to hide pace of his team until later in the weekend. However, with perhaps not the greatest of cars in comparison to others, both BMW pilots utilised the 90 minutes of running well and finished just 0.3s shy of the leading McLaren, albeit on the soft compound.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello weren’t as close to the top of the table as they are used to, and Button suffered an upshift problem with his gear box. So far the box hasn’t been replaced and Brawn will want to avoid changing it as the result would be a 5 grid slot penalty. Both Ferraris showed signs of some improvement, with Felipe Massa finishing in P8 and Kimi Raikkonen in P10, although Raikkonen was lucky to escape a meeting with the barrier after he lost the F60 on the exit of T2.

Uncharacteristically, Fernando Alonso was well down the order, as were both Toyotas. This allowed the Force India cars to move up, with Adrian Sutil ending his morning in P14 and Giancarlo Fisichella in P16. The times set for the bottom ten were very close and should hopefully mean a close qualifying session tomorrow. Mark Webber and Kimi Raikkonen also set identical lap times to within a thousandth of a second, the Australian being ahead due to to setting the time first.

Bahrain 2009 Friday Free Practice One		Lap Time Fastest Time Set	Laps Set Number Laps Set
1.	Lewis Hamilton McLaren	1m33.647s	19 Laps
2.	Nick Heidfeld BMW	1m33.907s	17 Laps
3.	Robert Kubica BMW	1m33.938s	17 Laps
4.	Nico Rosberg Williams	1m34.227s	24 Laps
5.	Jenson Button Brawn	1m34.434s	15 Laps
6.	Heikki Kovalainen McLaren	1m34.502s	24 Laps
7.	Rubens Barrichello Brawn	1m34.531s	18 Laps
8.	Felipe Massa Ferrari	1m34.589s	17 Laps
9.	Mark Webber Red Bull Racing	1m34.827s	21 Laps
10.	Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari	1m34.827s	19 Laps
11.	Kazuki Nakajima Williams	1m34.880s	24 Laps
12.	Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Racing	1m34.938s	21 Laps
13.	Nelson Piquet Jr. Renault	1m34.974s	21 Laps
14.	Adrian Sutil Force India	1m35.021s	18 Laps
15.	Jarno Trulli Toyota	1m35.036s	22 Laps
16.	Giancarlo Fisichella Force India	1m35.042s	16 Laps
17.	Timo Glock Toyota	1m35.333s	20 Laps
18.	Fernando Alonso Renault	1m35.348s	24 Laps
19.	Sebastien Bourdais Scuderia Toro Rosso	1m35.353s	22 Laps
20.	Sebastien Buemi Scuderia Toro Rosso	1m35.369s	15 Laps