Massa on top with his Williams

Williams’ Felipe Massa has set the fastest time up to now with a 2014 car in Bahrain, less than 1 second slower than Nico Rosberg’s pole position last year.

Good news for the Mercedes engine, which seems to be the fastest as Massa (Williams) and Rosberg (Mercedes) have finished on top today. 99 laps for the Brazilian without any problem, while Mercedes have been able to do 103 laps even though they lost some time in the morning changing the engine of the car. Rosberg’s time has been just 0,2s slower than Massa’s, both of them on supersofts.

Kimi Räikkönen has not spent much time on track in the morning, but finally Ferrari have been able to do a race simulation, which has been interrupted by a red flag. The Finnish has set the third fastest time, 2,2s behind Massa, and has done 87 laps. Sutil’s Sauber has stopped on track on its first outing and has not been repaired on time to go out again.

Renault-powered teams have had different luck. Daniil Kvyat has been 5^th with the Toro Rosso and has been able to do 81 laps, while Marcus Ericsson’s Caterham has done 117. It was the first time Romain Grosjean drove the Lotus this week and he’s not been able to do more than 33 laps, which considering the car ended up on fire yesterday it’s not very good news for them. Worse part, however, was for the Red Bull, which couldn’t bring Vettel further than the 4h corner of the circuit.

Result:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Car	Lap Time	Dif.	Laps
1.	Massa	Williams	FW36	1:33.258		98
2.	Rosberg	Mercedes	W05	1:33.484	+0.226	101
3.	Räikkönen	Ferrari	F14 T	1:35.487	+2.229	82
4.	Magnussen	McLaren	MP4-29	1:35.894	+2.636	85
5.	Kvyat	Toro Rosso	STR9	1:36.113	+2.855	76
6.	Hülkenberg	Force India	VJM07	1:36.205	+2.947	113
7.	Bianchi	Marussia	MR03	1:37.087	+3.829	76
8.	Ericsson	Caterham	CT05	1:38.083	+4.825	117
9.	Grosjean	Lotus	E22	1:42.166	+8.908	33
10.	Vettel	Red Bull	RB10	–	–	1
11.	Sutil	Sauber	C33	–	–	1