F1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Friday roundup

Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg set the pace during the second F1 practice session in Bahrain on Friday, despite a telemetry issue that brought his day to a premature end.

Coming into the weekend, Formula 1 approved a document under which the sport will recognize human rights at venues where it operates in. It wasn't surprising that the news broke in the run up to the Bahrain Grand Prix, held in a country that has seen significant uprisings against the Monarchical government in recent times.

The off-track news, however, did little to deter Rosberg’s ambitious to trounce Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, after three successive defeats. The German lapped the Sakhir Circuit in 1:34.647 to move to the top of the timesheets.

Hamilton finished 0.115s shy in second place, however, a lock-up at turn eight suggests the Brit hasn’t unleashed his true pace yet.

The 30-year-old came under severe criticism from various quarters of the media for spraying champagne to a podium hostess at last week’s Chinese Grand Prix. The 2008 F1 champion defended himself by saying his actions were out of excitement and that he was pleased to hear that the hostess didn’t herself take the issue seriously.

Meanwhile, 2007 F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen led the charge for Ferrari with the Finn half-a-second off the pace of the lead Mercedes in third, with Vettel another tenth adrift in fourth despite running wide in the final corner.

However, it is the long run pace of Ferrari that Mercedes should be wary of, with both Raikkonen and Vettel lapping consistently when fuel was poured in the SF15-T.

Behind the leading quattro, Valtteri Bottas finished fourth for Williams, ahead of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado was seventh fastest and comfortably ahead of the lead Sauber of Felipe Nasr - a team Lotus feels is behind them in the pecking order, no matter what the constructors table suggest.

Daniil Kvyat and Felipe Massa rounded off the top 10 for Red Bull and Williams respectively with Marcus Ericsson 11th quickest after 34 laps of the state-owned circuit.

McLaren had a bittersweet evening with Fernando Alonso 12th fastest and looking good enough to break into Q2 on Saturday and Jenson Button plagued with reliability issues that restricted him to just 17 laps all day.

Points hard to come for Force India

Force India F1 looked worse on the very track they recorded an excellent podium finish last year with Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez trailing in 15th and 17th places respectively, over 2 seconds behind the pace setting Mercedes.

At the time of writing, two separate incidents are under investigation by the stewards. The first one is regarding the contact between Sergio Perez and Sebastian Vettel in the final 10 minutes of qualifying that brought out the red flags. The other one is concerning Hamilton and Raikkonen for ‘failing to leave the pit lane correctly’ when the session resumed with five minutes to go.