For the Sauber F1 Team both free practice sessions on the Friday before the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir went according to plan. Both drivers were able to complete their scheduled programmes. Kamui Kobayashi came 16th and seventh in the two 90-minute sessions, while Sergio Perez was 11th and tenth.

Kamui Kobayashi: "Technically we had no incidents but we are struggling on tyre temperatures. The lap times on the soft tyres in the short run didn't look too bad, but for qualifying there is still some work to do. Even more improvement is necessary for the long runs and for me this goes for both tyre compounds, soft and medium. We will evaluate the data now and see what we can do better for tomorrow."

Sergio Perez: "To me this was a very positive day. I am happy about having had a good Friday and I am very satisfied with the work we have done. We have learnt a lot and we managed the tyre degradation on the rear, which everybody has problems with, quite well. We still need to sort out a few set-up issues for qualifying, but I am very confident for tomorrow."

Giampaolo Dall'Ara, Head of Track Engineering: "The two sessions were okay for us. We were able to complete the whole programme with both cars. As we expected, the heat makes it difficult to keep the tyres consistent, but this seems to be a common issue for most of the cars. There we have some work to do. Apart from that we found a reasonable balance. Now we have to work for the race."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.