Mercedes chased by surprise dark horse

With Mercedes a second clear at the top of the Friday timesheets, and looking strong on long-run pace, the question is: who will be best of the rest?

Red Bull? McLaren? Ferrari? Well, based on what we saw during Friday practice, it seems that Force India is well placed to fight at the front of that group on race pace.

The Silverstone-based squad was nowhere on headline laptimes, as neither Nico Hulkenberg nor Sergio Perez hooked up a strong qualifying simulation lap on their first run on soft tyres. This left it well down the order.

FP2 headline times
1. Mercedes, 1m34.325s
2. Ferrari, 1m35.360s
3. Red Bull, 1m35.433s
4. Williams, 1m35.442s
5. McLaren, 1m35.528s
6. Toro Rosso, 1m35.640s
7. Force India, 1m35.802s
8. Sauber, 1m36.962s
9. Lotus, 1m37.259s
10. Marussia, 1m37.800s
11. Caterham, 1m38.257s

So far, so unspectacular for Force India, but take a look at the long runs and things look far more promising. It's always difficult to compare long runs across different teams and programmes but, making the dangerous assumption that all things were equal in the evening session in Bahrain, the Force India was the second-fastest car.

The following averages are based on long runs on the soft tyre. In order to get comparable data, this is based on analysing each driver's run after their qualifying simulation run on softs. As the soft will be the tyre of choice in the race, this is the most meaningful stint.

Not surprisingly, Mercedes set the pace © XPB

To get a fair comparison, the following figures are calculated using the first 12 counting laps of a run.

Counting laps are all those at a genuine race pace, with outliers (significantly slower laps) eliminated. Because Williams restricted its running, it is not included in this data set.

Long-run averages
1. Mercedes, 1m40.120s
2. Force India, 1m40.822s
3. Red Bull, 1m41.029s
4. Ferrari, 1m41.363s
5. Toro Rosso, 1m41.707s
6. McLaren, 1m41.887s

The Force India long run was not set by Nico Hulkenberg, but by team-mate Sergio Perez, who has had a difficult start to the season. His total stint was 17 laps and, while well off the Mercedes, was two tenths faster than the Red Bull.

GARY ANDERSON: "Watching trackside, the Force India looked very good, especially Perez. Hulkenberg looked a bit messy by comparison, but both had good traction, which is one of the keys to pace on this circuit. History says the car looks after its tyres very well, and the long-run pace suggests that could be the case in 2014."

WHAT ABOUT RED BULL?

Sebastian Vettel's long run was relatively brief, short of the 12-lap mark, so instead team-mate Daniel Ricciardo's run is used.

Vettel's shorter run, compared to the first part of Ricciardo's run, was slower anyway so, while you might expect him to emerge as the quicker driver, the data on the runs in question does not support that.

GARY ANDERSON: "Red Bull is going to struggle to be at the front of the challengers. The lack of engine performance will hurt the Renault-engined cars here, especially in qualifying when you really need that performance. The Red Bull has lots of grip and the tyre life looks good, though.

"Watching trackside, Ricciardo looks good. I wouldn't say he's got the upper hand over Vettel, but it won't be long before Vettel has to start thinking about him. Into Turn 10, a slow left-hander with a difficult approach, he was much more consistent.

"He didn't make any mistakes either, whereas Vettel was making a few. It reminded me of Michael Schumacher in 2005 when Bridgestone struggled and Ferrari wasn't competitive. He wouldn't back down to the level of the car and perhaps that's what we are seeing from Vettel right now."

FERRARI TYRE WORRIES

Ferrari was quick, but suffered degradation © XPB

Ferrari was second fastest overall, and fourth fastest on long-run pace. But most concerning will be the fact that tyre degradation seems more of a problem.

This could hurt a lot over the stints in the race and also force Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen to drive conservatively in the race.

GARY ANDERSON: "Alonso and Ferrari will be happy to be third on pure pace, but it will be depressing to be a second off Hamilton. At Turn 10, it's interesting to see what is happening with Raikkonen, as he looked so much smoother than Alonso, who seemed to be making a few more mistakes, but wasn't able to be as quick."

TORO ROSSO IMPROVING; McLAREN STRUGGLING

Daniil Kvyat was eighth fastest, 1.315s off the pace, on his soft-tyre flier and his pace was backed up by team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne's long run, which was quicker than either McLaren driver could manage.

This suggests that McLaren may have a fight on its hands to make Q3, with Toro Rosso very much in the mix.

GARY ANDERSON: "Kvyat deserves a pat on the back today because he looked very good out there in the Toro Rosso. Yes, there were a few errors, which is to be expected when you are a 19-year-old pushing to the limit, but the STR looks good."

WHAT ABOUT WILLIAMS?

Williams kept a low profile during Friday practice in Bahrain. While Felipe Massa was fifth fastest overall, 1.117s off the pace, the team kept running to a minimum.

During the two 90-minute sessions, the Williams drivers (including third driver Felipe Nasr, who took over Valtteri Bottas's car for first practice) completed just 47 laps.

This was a conscious decision to save the cars based upon the fact that the team completed plenty of long running during the eight days of testing here in February and early March.

As Massa only did a short long run, which continued directly after his qualifying simulation, all you can do is compare this to the first seven laps of the other cars.

This suggests Williams could be best of the rest, but realistically his fuel load was probably lighter and this can only be treated as an aside to the main long-run analysis.

Seven-lap long-run pace
1. Mercedes, 1m39.691s
2. Williams, 1m39.793s
3. Force India, 1m40.397s
4. Red Bull, 1m40.896s
5. Ferrari, 1m41.018s
6. Toro Rosso, 1m41.281s
7. McLaren, 1m41.612s

Williams didn't run much, but it showed good pace © LAT

GARY ANDERSON: "It's good to see Williams repeating its testing performance with Massa's fifth-fastest time. The team has made a good start to the season, but really should have scored more points.

"Williams limited the laps for reliability and obviously feel the car is pretty good. It will be interesting to see if the team revises its fuel strategy after short-fuelling in Malaysia."

HAMILTON VS ROSBERG

To nobody's great surprise, Mercedes was fastest but, while Hamilton came out on top on raw pace, 0.213s faster than Rosberg, the German was slightly faster on his long run.

But you have to be careful about reading too much into this, especially as Hamilton's second lap was relatively slow, meaning his average arguably should be a tenth faster.

After all, Rosberg looked potentially better on long runs on Friday in Malaysia, and look how that turned out...

Long run averages
1. Rosberg, 1m40.120s
2. Hamilton, 1m40.417s

STRATEGY

The soft will be the tyre of choice for the race as it's significantly quicker than the medium and stands up well in terms of degradation and wear. Pirelli believes that the most common strategy will be a two-stopper, using soft/soft/medium.