Daniel Ricciardo raised a few eyebrows setting the fastest time of the first practice session in Bahrain on Friday while Mercedes and Ferrari battled it out for the next four places.

Raikkonen's session ended 15 minutes early when his auto ground to a halt out on track just after Turn Three.

But he has been helped by a mistake by Max Verstappen, who crashed his Red Bull in first qualifying and will start 15th.

It appeared as if a wheel might not have been attached properly at a pit stop - he had just stopped for a new set and the mechanics were waving as he left the pits.

Raikkonen, however, faced a post-race investigation into a possible "unsafe release" of his auto, by Ferrari, following a routine pit-stop late in the session.

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That saw him finish one hundredth of a second clear of team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who will be looking to build on victory at the opening race of the 2018 season in Melbourne.

"And what we have seen in Melbourne and again here is that at various stages the teams are close together, so I can't really judge". "The tyres feel the best they have here in years, very stable with less degradation". At least, that's what Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel says.

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Vettel said: "I am really happy I got the second run and needed to keep away from the kerb but the auto has been excellent all weekend". "I don't know what happened today".

"On the softs, the vehicle were much better, but putting the softer compound on, the supersoft, it looks like we're overheating and therefore not extracting the optimum grip". "At this point, I wouldn't draw any conclusions".

Frenchman Pierre Gasly was ninth in his Honda-powered Toro Rosso with Fernando Alonso, a three-times victor in Bahrain, rounding out the top 10 in his McLaren.

The intense competition continued into the midfield as Pierre Gasly continued to be the surprise package of the weekend as the Toro Rosso driver finished as top midfield runner and will start fifth.

Between the two-who were fourth and sixth, respectively-was Fernando Alonso, who produced a brilliant drive for McLaren.

McLaren dropped Honda engines at the end of a year ago - at a net cost of about $100m - claiming their lack of performance and reliability was holding back a vehicle they said was one of the best in the field.

His best lap, set on the second of three sets of tyres as the Sauber drivers and Hartley managed to squeeze in two runs before the red flag, was just 0.006s slower than Sirotkin.