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When will Nico Rosberg translate his practice performance into race pace?  The Williams driver has been consistently at the top of the time sheets in practice this year but so far has failed to deliver on race day.

While Lewis Hamilton went quickest in the first practice session for Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, Nico Rosberg set the fastest time in the second session.

Fernando Alonso had been running high fuel loads and concentrating on race setup and so had been at the bottom of the order but he put in a flying lap at the end to go second fastest as Pat Symonds, Renault’s Executive Director of Engineering, explains:

The Bahrain circuit is our first hard braking circuit of the year and ranks among the hardest for the total braking system. In view of this, we spent a lot more time today on heavier than normal fuel loads, concentrating on our set-up for Sunday.

Here are the times from the first two practice sessions:
First Practice

Second Practice

Image: LAT

Andrew points to a tweet by James Allen saying that sandstorms could disrupt the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend.

In February, Ferrari, Toyota and BMW headed to the Sakhir circuit hoping to escape the storms that had washed out winter testing in Europe.  Instead, they found themselves twiddling their thumbs waiting for a different kind of storm to pass.  It wasn’t neccessarily that the track was undrivable in the dusty conditions but visiblity was such that the medical helicopter was grounded and therefore testing was red-flagged until the sandstorm passed.

Let’s hope it is a clear day on Sunday.  We are yet to see a ‘normal’ race this year and, while rain always has the potential to make an interesting race, if sandstorms hit the Sakhir circuit the race would have to be red-flagged until the air cleared.

Bahrain could also face the same problem as Malaysia in that the race starts at 3:00pm local time.  With the sun setting at about 6pm that doesn’t leave much time to delay the race before running out of light.

This weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix looks set to be the first ‘normal’ Grand Prix of the season; Australia finished under the safety car, China started under the safety car and Malaysia was a total wash-out.  The weather forecast for Bahrain though is hot and dry which should favour the Brawn GP cars.  As long as there are no sand storms…

Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber had the measure of Brawn in the wet last weekend but Button and Barrichello were faster in qualifying so they go to Bahrain as  favourites.

Ferrari tested in Bahrain over the winter so they will be hoping that experience will give them an advantage but if the Red Cars finish out of the points again it will make for Ferrari’s worst start to a Grand Prix season in history.

Force India are the only other team yet to score a point but they will be taking a new diffuser with them to Bahrain as well as some other aero updates.  Even so, team boss Vijay Mallya isn’t confident of scoring on Sunday:

As usual, we know points are going to be very difficult to achieve and we should not set this as a goal for Bahrain. Instead, we need to focus once more on reliability and consistency and look to be there if circumstances allow.

Will Brawn GP return to their winning ways or will Red Bull score their second win?  Will McLaren continue their improvement from China or will they suffer some crazy penalty from the race stewards?  Will Ferrari remember how to go fast or will Kimi Raikkonen not even bother to race and sit in the garage eating ice creams and looking bored?

To have your say in round 4 of the f1buzz prediction game, just leave a comment on this post with your driver predictions for the race in the following format:

Pole:
First:
Second:
Third:
Fastest lap:

The deadline is start of qualifying on Saturday.  Good luck!