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Mark Webber says he’s happy enough to start the Bahrain GP from seventh place, having qualified fifth before his Chinese GP penalty was applied.

Webber went back three places but gained one back because Lewis Hamilton also has a penalty.

Crucially Red Bull has saved a set of new prime tyres for use at some stage in the race.

“I was expecting a bit more from it to be honest,” he said. “It felt good in P2 and P3, so the build-up has been pretty good. Overall I would have liked to extract a bit more out of the car. It’s easy to leave a little bit of lap time round here by pushing just a step too hard. That’s the way it is for all of us, and there’s a lot of treacherous corners where like I say you can drop two or three tenths here and there.

“Overall I think it would have been very difficult for me to be on the front row, I certainly left a little bit out there. We’ve got a different strategy as well, we’ve got a set of primes on most people for the race. Seventh with the penalty is not too bad. It would have been nice to be a row further up at least with the penalty, but anyway it’s a long Grand Prix tomorrow.

“We know that we’ve got a bit more of an eye on the race in terms of how we’ve allocated the tyres compared to qualy. It’s nice to have as many sets as you can. We’ve got a few sets, so we’ll see how it pans out.”

Felipe Massa will be a wild card in the Bahrain GP as he starts from fourth place with the hard prime tyre.

Massa qualified sixth, but gained two spots from penalties applied to Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber.

He said the choice was largely because he felt more comfortable than on the medium.

“I think maybe the preferred tyre is the hard, that’s why people are saving the hard,” he said. “I didn’t save, but I start on the hard, it can be that I gain positions on the first stint because of that, I don’t know, we’ll see.

“The race is definitely long. I was not very happy with the medium as well, struggling a bit on the balance to find the right grip, so that’s why I took this gamble. I think when you start from the fourth position on the hard tyres, it’s not a bad thing to do.

“For sure you are more confident because you start in a good position on the hard tyres, so we need to wait and see if it works or not tomorrow. It can be that it works, so let’s be optimistic and concentrate on the race.”

Martin Whitmarsh stressed again today that McLaren has to make the best out of the car it has at the track while its engineers continue to extract more performance back at the factory.

The team had a low-key Friday in Bahrain, with Jenson Button only 11^th in FP2 having been sixth in the morning.

“We didn’t have the performance in the car that we wanted and Australia was a very hard weekend,” said Whitmarsh. “Clearly, there’s no testing, it’s quite difficult to make some progress, and these first four races come quickly, one after the other.

“Again today, every time the car leaves the garage it’s another experiment. We’ve been gathering data and we’ve been trying things. I think we’ve made a little bit of progress – never as much as I’d like, or as the drivers or the team would want.

“I think we’re gaining a little bit of performance, we’re gaining a little bit of understanding, but clearly there’s a big push for an upgrade package for Spain, and it’s important for all of us that we make good progress. But in the meanwhile, we’re racers, so those of us in the field we’ll take the car and do the best job we can with it, try to maximise the points we can get out of these first four races.”

Whitmarsh said it was too early to say it was impossible to win the championship.

“I think after three races or even after four races you don’t give up in these championships. I think Ferrari did an excellent job last year of showing all of us how you can turn it round and be there right at the end, capable of winning both championships.

“So, there are always big hills to climb and mountains of challenge but that’s why we come motor racing. At the moment we’re concentrating on understanding and improving the car. As soon as we make progress we’ll be trying to win races and as soon as we win races we’ll be thinking about championships.

“But at the moment clearly we’re focused on the here and now, and what’s the best we can do this weekend. It’s a tough circuit for us. This is clearly a rear-limited circuit. It’s a circuit where traction is important, and that’s been a deficiency in our car so far. We came here knowing it was going to be a tough weekend, but we’ll fight as hard as we can to get what are possible.”

Having been on the receiving end of some criticism after China Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery said he was satisfied with the performance of the company’s hard and medium tyres in Bahrain today.

Pirelli had intended to bring the hard and soft, but changed its mind immediately after Malaysia – well before last weekend’s race in Shanghai.

Hembery believes that teams could aim for two stops, something that Jenson Button achieved in China.

“It was pretty good,” said Hembery of Friday. “To be honest we expected the track to be a bit dirtier, when you come to circuits like this, particularly here when you can often get sand blown onto the circuit quite a lot, we  expected a little bit more dust and graining on the rear tyres, which we didn’t actually see.

“So that was good, it meant we probably had a better P1 than you’d normally have on such a track. A few people were running 22-23 laps, which is pretty much in line with what we want to see, with this sort of circuit.

“There’s a big variation between the teams in terms of the peak performance between the compounds, between 0.5s-0.8s is where we think it is. There were a few that were much bigger, but we think that’s an anomaly. We see from the wear levels that a two-stop is probably feasible, we came into the race thinking that three would be most likely, but looking at today’s data two, if there’s a little bit more track evolution, could be possible.

“Degradation levels are about 0.115 on the harder tyre, and probably up to double that on the medium. Here the harder tyre seems to be working better than it did in Malaysia, where the medium tyre was used more as the race tyre.”

Mark Webber is bullish about Red Bull’s prospects in Bahrain after finishing FP2 in second place, behind Kimi Raikkonen.

However he didn’t do as many laps as he wanted to during the afternoon, and was thus missing a little long run knowledge.

“We didn’t get to do enough laps unfortunately in P2,” said Webber. “I will have to rely on Sebastian’s data, and see how it went for him. Overall when I was on track I was not too bad at all, I’m pretty happy with the car. But never, ever rest on our laurels, there’s still areas to improve, and we need to say how we’re progressing on both cars as well in terms of developments, and pick out what we need for tomorrow.

“I think the car looks really competitive, but again we see Kimi arrive for one lap every now and again and he’s still very, very fast. Kimi is strong, Ferrari are strong, Mercedes is still there as well. It’s very, very tight, the first three or four rows are very, very tight on time, and the Force Indias are in there as well.”

Webber does of course go into qualifying with the three-place penalty he picked up in China.

“Let’s see how qualifying goes, and then after that obviously the race is more important. Especially for me with the penalty, for sure I won’t be starting on pole! But I need to clear people in the race somehow.”

Jenson Button says that McLaren’s best chance of scoring some decent points in the short term to try different strategies.

Button hauled his MP4-28 into fifth place in China after stopping only twice as opposed to the three stops of his opposition.

“I think it’s been a difficult start to the season, as we all know,” said Button. “The first race was stand-out bad for us. Since then we’ve made a lot of improvements and I think we understand the car a lot more. Here, it’s a very different circuit to Shanghai. It’s very front limited in Shanghai.

“Here it’s rear limited – tyres. Last year it was a really tricky race to look after those tyres. I’m not sure if it’s going to be the same case this year, but we will see. We’ll know a lot more at the end of practice, P3, and we can tell you a little bit more in qualifying.

“I think we’ve been improving since the first race. Every race we have made improvements, and I think maybe these circuits suit the car a little bit more, in terms of where we have to put the car in terms of set-up. But to finish fifth at the last race and to beat some very quick cars, I think to do that we had to try something different. We beat every single car on the grid, at least one of the drivers, which is positive I think.”

Button was pleased with his China performance: “P5 is not where we want to be, but I think we have to take a lot from last weekend, and yes, we had to try a different strategy, we had to try and do a two-stop. We felt that it was the quickest way for us to the end of the race, but it was very tricky to make it work, because of the stint lengths that you needed. If you didn’t make the stint length, you dropped into a three-stop race.

“By that point, you’re pretty much out of the points, so we had to make it work. A lot went into the strategy and trying to understand what we have to do with tyres and the lap time we have to do. It was a tricky weekend but in the end a good result I think we should be very happy with. And here, yeah, I think we have to wait and see.

“It’s tough on tyres round here, it’s hot, it’s tough on the cars in terms of cooling so we have to see first of all what downforce people are running and how the degradation is, to see what we do with the car. Here, I think it’s probably more likely that everyone’s going to be running the same sort of strategy but we have to wait and see.”

Fernando Alonso says it’s too early to suggest that Ferrari has the strongest race pace among the top teams.

The Spaniard insisted that not only was one win soon not enough evidence but also that Sebastian Vettel actually had the fastest package in China.

“We still don’t have the advantage with the car that people try to see now after one victory,” he said. “I think in Australia we were clearly not the quickest, in Malaysia we were struggling a little bit, especially in qualifying that was the only dry running, so we were not so good. In fact Felipe was fifth so it was not that he was dominant in the race.

“And then in China looking at the race pace I think Sebastian was the quickest all through the race, if you look at the stints, but they chose a very strange strategy on Saturday and maybe that compromised a little bit the race. I think we need to keep improving and we need to be a little bit faster. There are some new pieces coming for this race, there are also components coming for Barcelona, and Monaco. So hopefully in the next month and a half we can be at the level of the best cars.”

Alonso said he was delighted to end his victory drought in China.

“I was very happy, obviously not winning in a while is a very difficult matter, because it has been 11 or 12 races that we didn’t win a race, but we were constantly in the podium. There are many other drivers with super cars who never won a race in the last 50 or 60 races. So in a way it’s a good that after 10 races people are missing our wins, but on the other hand we know that we need to be consistent, not only winning the races, we need to be consistently on the podium if we want to fight.”

Asked about the bonus of having Vettel out of the top three he said: “It’s good not to have Sebastian on the podium, it’s good news at this moment because he’s leading the championship. But if Hamilton was leading the championship or Webber was leading the championship it’s the same case, it’s not because Sebastian is Sebastian, it’s just who it’s first in the championship. Now it’s Sebastian, so if we finish in front of him in the next couple of races it will be good.”

Lewis Hamilton expects Mercedes to be fast over one lap in Bahrain this weekend – but cautions that tyre issues are likely to mean that the team again suffers on race pace compared to its key rivals.

“The car is still the same as it was last week,” said Hamilton in Bahrain today. “So it should be quite competitive. But the tyres make a big difference, so that could play a role.”

Regarding his struggles to match his competitors on Sundays he said: “I think that will be relevant here definitely, more so here, it’s always magnified, the race pace [drop-off] and the degradation here is always worse than it is in China.

“It’s different, instead of being the front tyres, it’s the rear tyres here. I anticipate it’s going to be a very tough weekend for us. The team struggled a lot last year. We’ve made a huge step forward in terms of how we look after our tyres, so hopefully it will be a lot better this weekend than what we would imagine is going to happen.”

While there has been a lot of criticism of F1’s current tyre situation, Hamilton is adamant that he’s enjoyed the focus on getting the most out of the 2013 Pirellis.

“It’s not that easy, it’s a lot of different techniques you can have, and as I’ve always been saying there’s so much to learn, I’m always learning, and just in the last couple of months I’ve learned a couple of new techniques which happen to help quite a lot. But there’s still more I need to learn, more I need to improve. But it’s a real good challenge, even if perhaps people are not quite enjoying it.

“I do find it really difficult. I do come out of the pit stop and want to push hard and try and gain, but in actual fact it’s better to go a bit slower on those first few laps, which people are starting to notice. That’s what Kimi and Fernando and Sebastian have been doing, and their long race pace has been really good.”

Heikki Kovalainen says he’s not angling for a return to a race drive at Caterham, and insists that he’s driving in FP1 in Bahrain and Barcelona purely to assist the team with development.

“I’m here to help the race drivers right now,” he said. “My role is different to what it was before. I’m working 100% now for the team, and I’ll give all I can to help the race drivers and help the team. Naturally if I’m pushing them, hopefully that makes them even quicker, that’s what you always what in a team.

“But I think the guys have done a good job already this year. The car is not easy to drive. The car is fundamentally the same as last year, and other teams have made new cars, and it’s fallen a little bit behind. It’s going to be a tough task the race drivers are facing this year. They haven’t made any big mistakes. Charles had a pretty good race in China, so that’s really good.”

Although Kovalainen’s job is to help the team it’s also clear that his FP1 mileage on the 2013 tyres will put him high in the list of potential replacements for any team that might require a driver.

Asked by this writer if that was a consideration, he said: “Right now of course I work with Caterham, and I don’t really look at the moment anywhere else. Before that yes I was at least hoping to be in that position. But no one’s called me yet!”

In the mean time he’s just happy to be back.

“I’ve kept myself fit and well, I’ve kept in touch with the people here. If something comes up, I’m ready to jump in. Part of that preparation has paid off. I don’t need a lot of practice now to get in, but I don’t need a lot of practice, I’m fully ready to go. That’s how it is life.

“I had different offers to do some other things, but my heart wasn’t really there yet. F1 is really just what interests me, and I felt like I could still do a lot of good things here. So I kept the door open here and working at the same time to make sure if something happens I’m ready. That’s sort of what happened now.”

Heikki Kovalainen has been given an F1 development testing role by Caterham after being on the sidelines since the end of last year.

Meanwhile Alexander Rossi has landed a race seat with the sister GP2 team.
Kovalainen, who spent the Malaysian GP weekend with his former colleagues, will drive in FP1 in the next two races in Bahrain and Barcelona, in order to help the team with development.

While it might not seem much of an opportunity for the Finnish veteran, it will at least keep him sharp and give him some knowledge of the 2013 tyres.

Meanwhile erstwhile Caterham GP2 driver Ma Qing Hua has made way for Rossi, who now has a chance to use the drive as a springboard to an F1 seat.

Team principal Cyril Abiteboul said: “After Ma’s successful run in FP1 in China a number of new opportunities have arisen for him and we have decided to restructure our current line-up. Alexander moves to Caterham Racing to compete in GP2 and I am sure he will be an immediate success in that championship whilst he will continue to enjoy the link with the F1 team throughout the season.

“Heikki returns to track work with us and we are delighted to welcome him back into the team. He has six years of F1 experience behind him so he is perfectly placed to provide us objective feedback on the various types of configurations we will run and to give us an objective view of the 2013 tyres against his experience with the 2012 compounds.

“Having invested in Heikki for our first three years of competition it would be a waste not to leverage the valuable expertise he brings. As F1 is a team sport, he will also provide support to Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde, who are both doing a good job in their first months with the team.”

Kovalainen said: “It’s obviously great news that I’ll be on track in Bahrain and Spain and I’m really looking forward to getting back to work and helping the team as much as I can. I’ll be taking part in the two FP1 sessions in Bahrain and Barcelona to give the team my input on the new parts we’re bringing to those races, and I’ll be working closely with the race drivers and the engineers on track and back at Leafield to help everyone get the most out of the new package.”