By Andrew Benson
BBC Sport in Bahrain
**Force India’s Adrian Sutil stole the limelight in the first on-track running of the new season, leading Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari in Bahrain.**The German’s lap of one minute 56.583 seconds led the double world champion by 0.325secs in first practice.
McLaren drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton set the pace early on but ended up fifth and sixth.
They were half a second off Sutil’s time, behind Renault’s Robert Kubica and Alonso’s team-mate Felipe Massa.
The other members of the “big four” teams, Mercedes and Red Bull, had a lower-key session.
Nico Rosberg was the faster of the two Mercedes drivers in eight, two places and nearly half a second ahead of team-mate Michael Schumacher, who is taking part in his first race since 2006 after coming out of retirement.
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They were split by the Red Bull of Mark Webber, whose team-mate Sebastian Vettel was 13th.
The gap between the fastest and slowest times was even bigger than expected, with Sutil more than seven seconds faster than the cars of new teams Lotus and Virgin.
German Timo Glock was the fastest driver from the three new teams, 0.168secs ahead of the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen, whose team-mate Jarno Trulli was 0.122secs further behind.
Glock’s team-mate Lucas di Grassi and the two Hispania cars of Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok did not set a time.
It was the first time the two Hispania cars had turned a wheel - the team missed all the pre-season test sessions as they battled to get themselves ready in time for the first race, following a change of name and ownership.
It remains to be seen whether the times are a reliable indicator of form, as practice sessions are even harder to read than usual following the banning of in-race refuelling this season.
Cars will now go to the grid fully laden with approximately 160kg - about 210 litres of fuel - and teams have to use the practice sessions to learn about the behaviour of their cars and tyres on both heavy and light fuel loads.
Cars will qualify with as little fuel as possible before filling up for the start of the race, and finding the best compromise between set-ups for the two conditions will be one of the major challenges of the season.
As fuel loads, tyre choice and track conditions can have a dramatic effect on lap times, it makes the list of fastest times in practice virtually meaningless without further analysis.