Button on top in 3rd practice

A closely contested third practice session of the Bahrain GP weekend has seen Jenson Button top the times, with the Renault F1 Team taking third and fourth places. On a windy and dusty track, Yuji Ide was the first driver to venture out for Super Aguri. Running on a remarkably green track following sandstorms and blustery weather, he set a slow pace. The track conditions were clearly poor as Jacques Villeneuve trundled round in his BMW to set the initial pace on a 1:40.973.

As more runners took to the course and a decent line of rubber started to appear, Jenson Button put his Honda at the top of the pile with a 1:37.873, while Tonio Liuzzi in the limited V10-powered Toro Rosso popped up into third.

Then the session got really interesting… first Raikkonen went fastest for McLaren on a 1:35.629, before Button immediately responded with a 1:35.081, as Liuzzi and his team-mate Scott Speed lined up behind the battling duo in third and fourth.

Seeing that the laptimes were falling, and with only 20 minutes of the session remaining, the Renault F1 team sent their boys out. First Giancarlo went quickest with a 1:34.491, before Fernando took almost half a second out of the Italian’s best with a 1:34.014. The quickest men on the circuit were the two Renault drivers, Kimi Raikkonen, Michael Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld, but from out of nowhere Jarno Trulli set a 1:34 lap to show that maybe Toyota weren’t lagging as far behind as people may have thought.

As the minutes ticked away, Michael Schumacher went quickest on a 1:33.538, and immediately improved on his next lap to a 1:33.275. The Ferrari, while quick on its first lap, seems to see speed increase even further on their second lap on Bridgestone tyres… a factor which could be crucial in this afternoon’s qualifying sessions.

Schumacher’s team-mate Felipe Massa took to the track and was on an absolute belter of a lap, setting quickest first and final sectors but going wide in sector two to ruin his shot at the top spot. But with the second lap sweet spot evident in his tyres, he overtook Schumacher’s best with a 1:32.826

With 10 minutes left in the session the order was Massa, Schumacher, Raikkonen, Trulli, Alonso, Klien, Ralf Schumacher, Fisichella, Heidfeld and Webber. But things were about to change once again.

First it was Fernando who set the quickest time on a superb 1:31.975 but Michael Schumacher instantly came back to better it by 0.1 seconds, only for the German to see his time fall almost immediately to Jenson Button by 0.01 seconds…

And that was how it finished. Button took the top spot for Honda on a lap which stopped the clocks at 1:31.857, followed by Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari, with Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella slotting in third and fourth places. Felipe Massa finished fifth, with Jacques Villeneuve sixth for BMW, Trulli seventh, Raikkonen eighth, Ralf Schumacher ninth and Mark Webber tenth.

As we look towards this afternoon’s battle for pole position, it would seem that there are three teams running each other very closely… Honda, Ferrari, and the Formula One World Champions, Renault.

http://www.f1technical.net/news/2082