Saturday Morning At Sakhir

How about that Super Aguri? Kimi Raikkonen may have topped the charts on Friday and today its Hamilton's turn but the surprise of free practise this Saturday must be Ant who managed 5th fastest time of 1m 32.900s. This was still some 0.357s behind Hamilton but still ahead of Filipe Massa who managed sixth fastest.

By contrast the two underachieving Hondas of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello managed 16th and 18th respectively, split by Ant's teammate Takuma Sato. Jenson Button was a little more than a second away from Ant and about 1.2 seconds quicker than Sato.

And this was the man who was considered surplus to the works team? For sure, this is merely the practise session and it doesn't count but come on. The big boys in the paddock must surely open their eyes and notice this!

Of the rest, championship leader Fernando has been slower than Hamilton all weekend long and the same thing has happened before when they tested here in the winter. God I hope he's not going to keep doing this in qualy and the race. I'm quite sick of the British press and their Hamilton suckfest.

But happily, Filipe Massa has been outpaced by Raikkonen in all the sessions so far and that is something new this year. Personally I hope this trend continues on.

The Beemers have looked threatening all weekend and are always in the top 5. The times are quite close in this last practise session. Just a shade over 1 second covers the top ten in this free practise. It should be quite a good qualy coming up in about an hour and halfs time.

The customer teams are once again doing very well thank you very much against their respective works teams.

Mark Webber's Red Bull Renault is once again ahead of the works Renaults. Oh, I can imagine the pain Flav is going through right now. A little pain wouldn't hurt the man after his cockiness in the past two (Alonso) years. His cars are back in ninth and tenth. Now if only Webber can do this in the race.

Both Nico and Wurz are in the Williams Toyotas have been outpacing the works Toyotas for most of the weekend except for first practise yesterday. I just hope all these customer teams convert their practise performances into factory beating exploits.

One thing's for sure the Hondas are going nowhere and I would imagine there is a good chance that both the Super Aguris will be heading the works cars to the chequered flag.