Giancarlo Fisichella once again outshone team-mate Adrian Sutil even though both the Force India drivers managed to better their morning timings in the afternoon free practice session on Friday, ahead of Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.
Fisichella (1m 34.892s) finished 17th in the morning, ahead of the Honda duo of Jenson Button (1m 34.915s) and Rubens Barrichello (1m 35.174s).
When the Italian returned for the afternoon session, he marginally improved his timing to 1:34.388 but was 18th on the chart.
Sutil, on the other hand, was involved in a collision with Renault's Fernando Alonso towards the end of the session. He clocked 1m 35.429s in the morning session to be 20th before going off track in turn 10.
In the afternoon, Sutil timed 1:34.405 to be 19th, finishing just behind Fisichella and ahead of Torro Rossos Sebastian Vettel and both the Super Aguri cars.
Team owner Vijay Mallya, however, did not read too much into the timing and said he was happy with both the drivers.
The strategy was to concentrate on race pace and long runs with an object to test reliability. To support the above strategy, the cars ran on full fuel load and also on hard tyres, he said.
The actual performance indicator will be better established at the qualifying session tomorrow, Mallya said.
Meanwhile, Felipe Massa, yet to finish a race this season, made a statement by dominating both the sessions and the Brazilians 1:31.420 secs in the afternoon session catapulted him to the top of the timesheets, ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who lost control and hit the tyre wall before coming out of the damaged car.
