BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX
Venue:
Sakhir Circuit, Manama Dates:
24-26 April Coverage:
Comprehensive live coverage of Friday's practice sessions, Saturday's qualifying sessions and Sunday's race across BBC TV, radio and online.
Find complete listings here
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By Chris Whyatt
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Lewis Hamilton's testing season received a timely boost as he clocked the quickest lap of the first practice session in his fast-improving McLaren.
The world champion, just 10th in this year's drivers' championship, recorded a time of one minute 33.647 seconds early on in the dry heat of Bahrain.
BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica used their power boost systems to effect to finish second and third.
Brawn GP's championship leader Jenson Button came through in fifth.
Little, in truth, can be truly drawn from a session in which the dramas of the 2009 season did not flare up - and practice is rarely genuinely indicative of what will happen in qualifying or the race itself.
But Hamilton and his McLaren team will be pleased that their car is showing signs of life as they continue to recover from a disastrous start to the season.
The 23-year-old English driver again ran with an updated diffuser, although not with the new front wing he used in China to finish sixth, and was 0.260 seconds ahead of Germany's Heidfeld.
Hamilton also finished quickest in the first practice session ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix, in which he finished sixth, but was overshadowed in the second session.
Practice did give drivers the chance to test Bahrain's desert conditions after two races, in Malaysia and then China, in the wet.
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606: DEBATE
PhilSlocombe
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As well as an air temperature of 34 degrees, which ascended to 46 degrees on the track itself, they had to deal with a relatively strong wind whipping over the Sakhir circuit.
Along with their use of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (Kers), a new introduction for 2009 which just a few teams are currently experimenting with, BMW Sauber's speed can also be attributed to their use of super-soft tyres towards the end of the session.
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso is another driver using Kers in Friday's practice sessions - team-mate Nelson Piquet, the McLaren's Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen and Ferrari's Felipe Massa are the others - but he finished just 18th down the list of times.
English driver Button, winner of the season's first two races in Australia and Malaysia, suffered some early gearbox problems but came through in fifth with team-mate Rubens Barrichello in seventh.
Chinese Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel was 12th in the timesheets with Australian team-mate Mark Webber, second in Shanghai, finishing in eighth.
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