Let's not get ahead of ourselves!

Hulkenberg has beaten the fastest time of last season's Bahrain test...

Looks like Vettel's stopped on track after 10 laps. They seem to be close to the pace.

It could be said that Red Bull are really "on fire" this afternoon.

Well, Red Bull finally got a decent number of laps in the bag. Posted a decent time, considering today was really a shakedown for them. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with the car speed-wise at least.

They'll be mighty relieved just to put a few miles on the car.

Jenson has got engaged to his long time girlfriend Jessica. After the death of his father, I thought he might. Good lad.

Red Bull only got 28 laps done today due to a new mechanical problem.

As someone said yesterday (Vergne, I think) - the McLaren and Mercedes are quick, whatever tyres or fuel load they are using. Force India and Sauber are also looking in good nick, with Williams and Lotus looking like they have potential. Tough as ever for the lower-order teams. Red Bull and Toro Rosso must be getting a little frustrated, even if they aren't yet worried. Good news for Button on and off the track.

Forgot Ferrari: car looks pretty quick and neatly packaged and apparently needs less cooling than other power units, allowing sleaker body. But a few niggles are still hampering testing.

Force India and Sauber are a bit of an unknown in my opinion and Williams look to be in better shape than both of them, which I'm very happy to say. Sauber have a big aero package (almost a B-spec car) coming for the last test, but I personally think Williams would make a good bet for a podium in Melbourne. Lotus are still a complete mystery as they've yet to do a decent number of laps and they have lost a lot of good people jumping ship to other teams, with a fair few of them finding homes at Williams.

Yeah, Ferrari do look quite good, but they are around 0.2sec per lap slower at least than Mercedes and Mclaren on a race simulation run. I pointed out at the cars launch that it had noticeably smaller rad inlets, indicating that the Ferrari powertrain requires less cooling. The Sauber uses the same powertrain and they also have reletively small inlets too.

The pace of the Mercedes has been really impressive so far. Especially when you consider that it hasn't yet got anything really trick at the rear of the car like the Williams or Mclaren. I would expect most teams to adopt the Williams solution rather than Mclaren's, as the latter will require a hell of lot of work to retro fit.

I've been looking more into the Mclaren's trick rear suspension and it's really, really clever, especially as it drops drag as speed increases, by opening up the slot gap between the 'bell-shaped' rear wishbone arms. What none of the tech articles have picked up on so far though, is that in medium and high speed corners, a certain amount of 'drag steer' effect will be induced. It's obviously a secondary effect, but still worth having.

I think I would put my money on a Mercedes at the moment. RBR apparently running about 150bhp down on other power units. At least it will give a finger some rest this year!

A 1:33.2 from Rosberg in the Mercedes this morning. Hell's teeth...

Only 15 laps from Red Bull today. If it wasn't panic stations after Jerez, I think it's safe to say that is no longer the case. They (together with Lotus) have now lost two thirds of their entire preseason testing having done almost no meaningful running. Meanwhile, Mercedes and Mclaren are pumping in full race simulations. Although Rosberg caused two red flags today, so the Mercedes still looks slightly fragile.

Sauber, Toro Rosso and Force India have all had big reliability problems today.

And Kimi ends the day with a spin and has beached his car.

Slightly scary pace from Rosberg in the Mercedes today. I wonder if it was the first time the Mercedes powertrain has been ran at full power.

How does that compare with historical times?

Rosberg's 2013 Bahrain pole position time was 1min 32.330secs. The 2014 cars are actually looking quicker than last years.

Very interesting!

Some weird looks and noises..........

Testing footage

Someone stuck a sword through the Ferrari at 0:55...

I love the noise!
They sound like proper old school f1 cars.
It would be good to see a return to form for Williams and hopefully Caterham can bag a couple of points too.

4 more days of Bahrain testing starting Thursday. That doesn't leave the teams much time to sort anything.

I believe the engine development must stop soon too and builds frozen. How does this work with e new engine supplier joining, as Honda will be doing next year. I find all this freezing of specs rather stupid, isn't F1 supposed to be the pinnacle of engine technology and developments. Let them continue to drive development I say. All this cost saving stuff is a joke, how on earth do you regulate it.

Bernie takes all their budget, and then gives them back a million a week pocket money.

The answer is that unless you freeze engine development, there will be an all-out arms race, with only the top teams able to compete. Customer engine deals (already hard to ensure parity of information, etc) would become multi-tiered and uncompetitive. The costs of unfettered development would drive many manufacturers away and most teams out of the sport. It seems - and is - artificial, but then it is up to the teams to find other loopholes and ways to gain a competitive advantage. It's ingenuity engineering.

As for enforcement, that will come down to forensic accounting and really shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully it won't cost as much as the development it is designed to stop!

Ferrari lose Smoggy Smedley to Williams...

C'mon Felipe baby!

Good news for Williams.
I hope he and the other newcomers can make it a much better year for the team.

Interesting bit of background; one can only hope for better days...

Nigel Roebuck on the demise of FOTA

Some interesting reading on that site.

There is. I didn't used to like Mark Hughes' writing, but he has done some good stuff for Motorsport.

Just been reading the Bahrain test summary on the BBC website.
Apparently Lotus are "happy with the pace of the car".
It's 8 seconds off the pace .

Rumours that Renault are asking for a delay to today's homologation deadline...