Alonso fastest in final Bahrain practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Bahrain, Bahrain International Circuit

Fernando Alonso went fastest in today's final free practice session ahead of qualifying for the Bahrain GP. Alonso was the only man late on in the session to beat Sebastian Vettel. Kimi Raikkonen set the third fastest time.

The first half of the session did not see any driver going out on medium tyres with everybody opting to do their first 5 to 10 laps on the hardest Pirelli tyre. At the halfway point, Sebastian Vettel emerged on top with a 1:33.348, a tenth quicker than Romain Grosjean who has a new Lotus E20 chassis at his disposal here in an attempt to resolve the issues he's had in the first 3 races.

Fernando Alonso is the third fastest man in the first part of the session with Di Resta also joining to confirm once again that the Force India VJM08 has some potential.

A few minutes later however Alonso spins off into the gravel at turn 2, fortunately for him without harm or any obvious damage to the car. He kept the car going and returned to the pits at the end of that lap.

At about the same time drivers started to emerge on track with medium tyres fitted on their cars. Mercedes runners Rosberg and Hamilton are the first to do so, with Rosberg going 5th on his first lap after setting the fastest first sector but going wide in the sweeping turn 13. His team mate on the other hand does get a fairly clean lap in and moves up into second place.

10 minutes later almost everyone is out on the mediums. Only Vettel and Chilton are in their garages.

5 minutes from the end Alonso ousts Vettel from the top, while Raikkonen moves up into third. Jenson Button meanwhile was a bit troubled by traffic on his quick lap, as well as Vettel a few moments later. Vettel in fact looked displeased by Pic and clearly made that obvious once having passed the slower Caterham. In any case, that lap didn't bring him any improvement at all, leaving him the second fastest man of practice.