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McLaren shine as Ferrari fade
Austrian Alex Wurz topped the times for McLaren at the practice session.
Austrian Alex Wurz topped the times for McLaren on the first day of practice for Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix as Ferrari failed to find the pace with their newly introduced F2005 machine in Bahrain.
World champions Ferrari have struggled in the opening two races of the season and decided to rush through the debut of their new car ahead of schedule for the third race of the season on Sunday.
German Schumacher had showed a glimpse of the new car's potential when he finished second behind Brazilian Toyota test driver Ricardo Zonta in the first practice session on Saturday.
But the world champion appeared to be struggling with his new machine after only one day of previous testing and finished the second session down in fifth place after locking his brakes on several laps.
Wurz, who was drafted in to today's sessions as a replacement for regular test driver Pedro de la Rosa when the Spaniard moved into the race seat to replace injured Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, set a time of 1:30.695.
He finished 1.274 seconds ahead of closest challenger Fernando Alonso, of Spain, who won the last race in Malaysia with his Renault team, and 1.624 seconds ahead of Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi's Red Bull Racing car.
De la Rosa put his McLaren into fourth place just ahead of Schumacher with Italian Jarno Trulli, who finished the last race second for Toyota, down in sixth almost two seconds off the lead pace.
Italian Giancarlo Fisichella, the winner of the season-opening race in Australia, finished seventh fastest for Renault with Finn Kimi Raikkonen eight in the third McLaren.
