Theissen: BMW starting to worry top teams

Nick Heidfeld took his third consecutive fourth placed finish at Sakhir, but more encouraging for the team was that his speed matched the cars ahead of him - and he was able to pull off a thrilling overtaking move past world champion Fernando Alonso.

BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen was delighted with the performance, and feels that the German manufacturer are closing in on both McLaren and Ferrari.

"Certainly it is a good feeling right now, and I think the guys in front are starting to worry about us," Theissen told autosport.com.

"We are happy because on the one hand it was just another fourth place, but it was also a very special fourth place because it was for the first time we could match the speed of the top teams.

"And Nick was the only guy out of the top six who overtook competitively on the track, so that was very special and our strongest performance so far."

Theissen admits, however, that he is unsure why his team were so competitive against Ferrari and McLaren in Bahrain, but had struggled to show similar pace in Malaysia the weekend before.

"I don't know why we were more competitive here," he said. "Maybe the others were struggling a bit, or maybe we were struggling a bit the week before.

"It was true that we did not have developments for this race and I am curious myself to see in Barcelona if it was track specific. If we are competitive in Spain we should be competitive almost everywhere."