Vettel: 'All of a sudden, everything went dark'

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Sebastian Vettel said he was lucky to escape so lightly after a mysterious glitch caused his Ferrari to shutdown midway through FP2.

Vettel said he has no warning before the car suddenly shut down. He was cresting the final hill and was able to put the car into neutral and freewheel back to pitlane.

"Some sort of glitch all of a sudden, everything was dark," he said after Friday's practice session was over. "We were lucky we could recover with the issue happening late in the lap.

"We were lucky to recover and get some laps in the end."

The engineers were able to roll the SF70H back to the Ferrari garage and check it over. No immediate cause for the shutdown was found.

"We saw after there was no damage," said Vettel. "We don't know yet. I'm sure we can fix it.

"Nowadays cars are just not cars, there's a lot of technology and software involved, so I think something went wrong on that side."

Otherwise it was a good day for Vettel, who topped both of Friday's free practice sessions.

“Today was not the best day for us, we still need to improve the car," he insisted. "The car feels good on one lap, I think it was quite okay. Long run I think we might be a bit behind, but I think we can improve for tomorrow."

Vettel survives shutdown scare to stay fastest in FP2

Vettel's team mate Kimi Raikkonen also suffered a technical problem on Friday. His car stopped on track midway through FP1, and the team fitted a new engine, turbocharger and MGU-H before FP2.

That put Raikkonen on the backfoot, but he bounced back in the evening and was fourth fastest by the end of the second session.

"I don't know, it's too early to say," Raikkonen replied when asked how he felt the weekend looked.

"It will be tricky conditions, probably hotter than in the past few years," he said. "There is a lot of work to be done to be ready. But it's always the same story after Friday."

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.