Day 4, Test 3 - Bahrain Report: Hamilton on top, in good shape for Melbourne

The final day of the final pre-season test at Bahrain saw Hamilton, Alonso and Button take over from their respective team-mates.

The green light saw McLaren's Jenson Button, Marussia's Jules Bianchi and Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne onto the track first to complete installation laps. Sebastian Vettel was quick to follow them, after only completing one laps yesterday he aimed to get more running for Red Bull under his belt today.

Force India's Nico Hulkenberg was first to set a timed lap, however it was quickly bettered by Button and Vatteri Bottas for Williams.

The Red Flag came out no less than seven times today, with Vettel spinning off at Turn 1, Grosjean stopping on-track in his Lotus no less than twice, Jenson Button also became stranded in his McLaren. Hulkenberg and Alonso suffered the same issues, as did Bottas and Sauber's Esteban Gutierrez.

Red Bull, Caterham, Lotus and Force India all suffered various technical problems throughout the course of the day, forcing them all to end the test early to focus on resolving them before Melbourne in under two weeks time.

Despite their problems, Caterham managed to complete a grand total of 106 laps today, again the most of any Renault powered team. They were only beaten in the lap-count by Williams.

Other teams who fared well in terms of laps completed included Force India, Toro Rosso, Sauber and Red Bull. Who all ran over 1 and 1/2 race distances each.

It was again Mercedes who were on top however, with Hamilton posting the fastest time of a 1:33.278, some +0.7 seconds faster than Valtteri Bottas for Williams and just over a second quicker than Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.

The slowest time of today was Romain Grosjean in the Lotus, who was over +6.0 seconds slower than the British driver and just under a second slower than the next fastest driver of Kamui Kobayashi in the Caterham.

It appears that Mercedes, Force India, Ferrari, McLaren and Sauber are the most reliable and quick outfits, and are likely to perform well in Australia.

The first Grand Prix of 2014 gets underway on March 16th and F1Today.net will be providing coverage throughout the weekend, including Practice, Qualifying and Race Reports, Driver Reactions and Technical Analysis, all courtesy of our UK Editors.

We hope you have enjoyed our coverage of pre-season testing in 2014, we look forward to spending the season ahead with you.

Tom Brooks
Chief UK Editor