The Morning After: Ferrari Join the Party

Oh, hey there Ferrari, nice of you to finally show up.

Maybe it's due to track suitability, maybe it's from further development of the car, or maybe they finally discovered the discarded sandbags Mercedes had hidden in the SF90's air ducts. Either way, the Scuderia suddenly look like the team we were promised a month ago in Barcelona, and that means that unlike in Melbourne, Bahrain could see the Silver Arrows have an honest-to-goodness fight on their hands.

Sure, Friday's figures can't be taken as gospel, but if you're hoping for a turnaround, Sebastian Vettel's six-tenths gap to Lewis Hamilton (which is at least comparable to Hamilton's own 0.873s advantage at this stage in Melbourne) is a pretty good start. Adding to that, the long-run pace would only seem to further the intrigue, with Vettel (10 laps, 1:35.396 average) between Valtteri Bottas (6 laps, 1:34.995 avg) and Hamilton (9 laps, 1:35.522 avg) on medium tyres, and Charles Leclerc (10 laps, 1:35.571 avg) leading all comers on the softs, albeit with both Mercedes drivers within a tenth.

That said, if you don't want to take Mercedes' performance and their usual remarks at face value, I won't blame you, but at the very least, they've got something to prove coming into Saturday, and that has to be chalked up as a win, however minor, for Ferrari. A day of running down, and the race is still wide-open to interpretation? That's certainly more than we could say two weeks ago.

1.179s. The gap from Nico Hulkenberg to Daniel Ricciardo. I know it's practice and all, but still… ouch.

1:35.222. Ten lap average of Max Verstappen on his medium tyre stint, faster than all but Valtteri Bottas. It might be too early to expect Red Bull to fight for pole, but don't be surprised if the Dutchman gets seriously amongst it on Sunday.

22%. Chance of rain during qualifying. Not much, I know, but on the off-chance we get a shower in

Bahrain, that would make for a hell of Saturday.

Besides getting Kimi Raikkonen to record a promotional video, is there anything more pointless than daytime practices in Bahrain? The difference in conditions make it little more than a glorified test, and most of it is just spent clearing dust! I know it's important to have time between sessions for maintenance/repairs, but moving FP1 forwards an hour would still leave 1.5 hours to FP2, and give the teams something of a closer facsimile to race conditions.

Big thumbs up to Antonio Giovinazzi, who managed to get his angry gesticulations to Nico Hulkenberg out of the way before

Suffice to say, Daniil Kvyat isn't living down his 'torpedo' moniker any time soon.