The McLaren tester’s time of 1:30.695, set early in the second run, was never challenged by the chasing pack, headed by Renault’s Fernando Alonso.

It was an impressive result from the Austrian who had his first sample of the MP4-20.

Size constraints saw him unable to test the car previously and therefore miss out on the spare race seat that went to Pedro de la Rosa this weekend.

But given free license he proved his pace and dominated day one of the championship’s third round.

Alonso, second, wasn’t bothered as he himself was also comfortable as the fastest of the field’s race drivers.

The Renault ace, who won in Malaysia two weeks ago, was four tenths quicker than his nearest rivals in McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa and Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher.

Rubens Barrichello never even suited up on Friday afternoon after Ferrari reportedly decided they wouldn’t run a second car. With only two F2005s available in Bahraini the team decided running both Barrichello and his team-mate Michael Schumacher was a risk not worth taking. Ferrari latter denied the suggestions commenting that Barrichello was sidelined because they had 'no spare parts' to fix a gearbox problem.

The Ferrari decision to sideline one car was vindicated by Michael Schumacher who struggled to keep the all-new F2005 on track. The German struggled with handling problems and had four major lock ups plus a spin.

The tricky conditions caught out many men on Friday. Michael Schumacher, Ralf Schumacher, Viantonio Liuzzi and Giancarlo Fisichella were amongst the names to be seen off the circuit.

The site of BAR stopped on the side on the side of the track was – unfortunately – no surprise. After a host of problems in Malaysia Takuma Sato ground to a halt early in the second practice session with more mechanical problems. The Japanese ace’s 007 was returned to the pit lane and he did manage a flying lap in the final minutes of the run.

Renault and Williams had successful debuts of new aerodynamic updates of their 2005 cars. Renault brought a heavily tested new front wing with them to the desert circuit while Williams, now running a single keel system, added some barge boards to the FW27.

With McLaren having to quickly adapt the MP4-20’s cockpit to the lanky Austrian Alex Wurz, they asked an old friend for some help. That old friend was former McLaren designer John Barnard - the designer of the first Ron Dennis owned McLaren chassis, the MP4-1. The MP4-1 chassis was a technological breakthrough in the motorsports world as it was the first all carbon fiber monocoque chassis.