Newcomers given support by Todt after difficult start

In the two 90-minute practice sessions ahead of tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix, Lotus Racing edged the bottom-of-the-timings scrap ahead of Yorkshire-based Virgin Racing and Hispania Racing.

However, Lotus's Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli were 5.5 seconds down, the latter suffering the ignominy of having a part of the bodywork – the rear-wing end plate – fall off his car.

Virgin Racing's cars at least ended the day in one piece, although they managed precious few laps – 34 in total between Timo Glock and new boy Lucas di Grassi, finishing 6.6 seconds off the pace.

Champion Jenson Button and 2008 title-winner Lewis Hamilton were on the pace, finishing fourth and second-quickest, respectively, in their controversial new McLaren behind Mercedes GP's Nico Rosberg, with team-mate and returning seven-times champion Michael Schumacher third.

Addressing the newcomers, Todt, the head of the sport's governing body, said: "I don't think it is a time to criticise.

"It is a time to help and to encourage them.

"Everybody involved in the interests of the business should be very supportive to those teams. I was very impressed today because they did quite well, and we must give them a certain time to be ready."

However, Todt confirmed the FIA "are in favour" of re-introducing the 107 per cent rule for qualifying, last seen in 2002.

Any driver whose fastest lap was outside 107 per cent of the pole time was not allowed to take part in the race.

If the rule was in place now, it would pose problems for Lotus, Virgin and Hispania.

"The reason why it was abandoned was because of the change to qualifying and the amount of fuel allowed in a car to start a race," remarked Todt.

"To change that rule, for this year, we would have to have the unanimous agreement of all the teams. Of course the FIA would support their response, but we don't think it will happen, so we will have to wait until 2011 to reintroduce that."

Virgin's Glock was far from happy after managing just 11 laps, primarily due to a gearbox issue.

"Today hasn't been the start to the weekend we hoped for," he remarked.

"We've already had two tough nights, but we have another one ahead I'm afraid, to get us to a point where we can feel confident going into the rest of the weekend."

Di Grassi added: "Although it was a tough day, we actually had a good session in the afternoon and got through a lot of things. For me, everything is new.

"I wasn't able to run this morning so the afternoon laps were key to my performance and helping us get started this weekend.

"The mechanics did a great job running the car and everything seems fine so far. Now we just need to work on car performance, which we clearly haven't been able to optimise at the moment."

Nick Wirth, technical director of the Dinnington-based newcomers, explained: "Due to the late arrival of some key new components, we had to work all through Friday night to have the cars running, which is not ideal.

"Thankfully, we haven't had a recurrence of any of the problems that blighted our winter testing. "

n 'Pit village team from South Yorkshire takes on F1 elite' – read Nick Westby's special feature on the eve of the new F1 season in today's Yorkshire Post magazine.