Vettel fastest in first practice in Bahrain

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Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel was easily fastest in first free practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix on Friday, in a generally quiet session that saw problems for his team mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Vettel was a full four tenths faster than Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, whose team mate Max Verstappen was a similar distance further back. Having topped the times early in the session, Mercedes put their feet up and opted not to show their qualifying pace.

After the dramas of seven days ago in Shanghai, practice this week was very much business as usual. Ricciardo was the first man to post a time in the 90-minute session, the first half of which was given over to long runs

The Mercedes drivers traded places back and forth at the top of the timings. Anything Valtteri Bottas was able to do was quickly bettered by his team mate, Lewis Hamilton.

After the midway point, attention turned to qualifying simulation. Force India's Sergio Perez enjoyed a brief moment out in front with a lap of 1:34.095s ahead of a brace of Williams drivers.

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With 30 minutes remaining, it was Vettel who produced a step change in the laptimes. He posted what would prove to be the session's best effort of 1:32.697s, 1.4s faster than anyone up to that point. Even so, that was slightly slower than FP1 times in 2016, indicating there's a lot of improvement to come.

The Red Bull boys responded and were able to slip into the yawning gap between Vettel and Perez, but there was no attempt by Mercedes to try and set session-best times. Hamilton ended in tenth place, while Bottas was in 14th. However the team insisted that their programme was going according to plan and there were no issues causing concern.

In the second Ferrari, Raikkonen was unable to match Vettel's performance. He was forced to park in a run-off area on the backstraight with smoke coming out of the rear of the car. Also suffering technical issues was Stoffel Vandoorne, whose McLaren came to a halt at turn 10 with 20 minutes remaining the end of the session with an MGU-H problem. The team hopes to replace the engine in time for FP2.

There were no stoppages during the session, but Felipe Massa suffered a scary high-speed spin at turn 13 in the final ten minutes. Massa was able to limp back to pit lane despite reporting that he had completely lost the brakes on the Williams.

Free Practice 1 results

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:32.697s		21
2	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:33.097s	+ 0.400s	22
3	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:33.566s	+ 0.869s	23
4	Sergio Pérez	Force India	1:34.095s	+ 1.398s	22
5	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:34.246s	+ 1.549s	24
6	Lance Stroll	Williams	1:34.322s	+ 1.625s	25
7	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1:34.332s	+ 1.635s	23
8	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:34.372s	+ 1.675s	14
9	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:34.564s	+ 1.867s	21
10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:34.636s	+ 1.939s	28
11	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:34.838s	+ 2.141s	13
12	Nico Hülkenberg	Renault	1:34.927s	+ 2.230s	13
13	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	1:34.997s	+ 2.300s	10
14	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:35.002s	+ 2.305s	27
15	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:35.068s	+ 2.371s	19
16	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1:35.579s	+ 2.882s	21
17	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:35.888s	+ 3.191s	24
18	Pascal Wehrlein	Sauber	1:35.959s	+ 3.262s	23
19	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:36.079s	+ 3.382s	16
20	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:42.333s	+ 9.636s	6

GALLERY: All the pictures from Friday in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.