The heat was rising at the Bahrain International Circuit today, where the Marussia F1 Team was greeted by air temperatures peaking at 32 degrees C and a track high of 40 degrees C for the opening two free practice sessions of the weekend.

The team began its day in the now usual fashion with a comprehensive aerodynamic and controls programme aimed at evaluating package revisions for this race and the longer-term and beginning basic set-up work, which continued into the afternoon session. In FP2 Charles Pic focused more on race pace, evaluating the set-up options at race fuel loads. Timo Glock, meanwhile, completed a more general set-up programme including race tyre runs on the option rubber.

Timo Glock: "A very difficult day today, especially in FP2. This morning we had a fairly normal programme developing and monitoring the new parts to help move the car forward. We completed a lot of aero work so we were getting good data and numbers out of the car, but it was looking ahead rather than specific to this weekend. FP2 was difficult with the tyres. They were dropping quickly and affecting the rear stability on the long run. The car is still a bit too difficult to drive at the moment, so we have to find a way to make it better. In general not the best start so far; in the last few races we have had better Fridays. There's still a lot of work to do overnight to make improvements on the car for tomorrow."

Charles Pic: "Today I have been focusing on what we need to do to prepare for the race, evaluating the tyre options with fuel and looking at what we can do to manage the brakes and the tyre wear. By splitting the programme it means we have a lot of data to look at tonight but I think everyone up and down the field has the same challenge."

John Booth, Team Principal: "It has been an interesting start to the weekend and it is already clear that the race, and the preparation for it, is going to pose an interesting challenge. As always here we are trying to manage brake wear and tyre degradation caused by the combination of the circuit characteristics, the track temperature and the track surface. Things are less than straightforward and the rest of the weekend will be about assessing the track evolution and tyre improvement between now and Sunday's race. Our focus so far has not been on the people around us as we've been concentrating very much on our programme, so our true performance level here will only become clear tomorrow."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.