Bahrain F2: McLaren F1 junior Sette Camara tops practice for DAMS

Sette Camara, who finished twice on the podium in Bahrain last year with Carlin, was almost three tenths quicker than his DAMS team-mate, Williams-backed Nicholas Latifi.

The best time came mid-way through the session, and Sette Camara ended up almost one-second quicker than the best time from last year's equivalent session, which was set by Arjun Maini.

Latifi struggled in the first half of last season - something he put down to illness reducing his pre-season running - but completed the most number of laps in 2019 testing and made it a DAMS one-two.

Ralph Boschung end up third for Trident, while Luca Ghiotto took fourth in the rebranded Virtuosi Racing team, which used to be known as Russian Time.

Ferrari junior Callum Ilott put his Sauber Junior Team-backed car in fifth. His team was Charouz Racing System last year, and is still run by the Charouz operation.

Renault junior Guan Yu Zhou took sixth for Virtuosi on his debut F2 weekend, finishing ahead of pre-season title favourite Nyck de Vries who takes over George Russell's 2018 title-winning car.

There was plenty of attention on Ferrari junior Mick Schumacher as he started his first session in F2, but the 2018 European Formula 3 champion could only manage 12th, one spot behind his Prema Racing team-mate Sean Gelael.

Schumacher had topped a day of pre-season testing at Jerez but he struggled with tyre management in the subsequent Barcelona test.

Louis Deletraz had drama from the first lap in practice with his car appearing to be in some sort of safe mode, but he recovered to set the eighth quickest time.

Ilott's team-mate Juan Manuel Correa - Alfa Romeo's F1 reserve driver - and Honda junior Nobuharu Matsushita rounded out the top 10. Matsushita has rejoined the series with Carlin in 2019.

The cars visibly moved around significantly even on the first and second laps on the medium Pirelli tyre in Bahrain practice, teeing up what will likely be a degradation-heavy race on Saturday.

The majority of drivers focused on longer runs towards the end of the session, which meant few improved from their mid-session laps.

Practice results