Gearbox floors DC in Q1.

David Coulthard was the biggest casualty of the opening phase of qualifying in Bahrain, as the gearbox on his Red Bull RB3 prevented him from making the cut.

The Scot had already suffered separate problems in the morning practice session, but had been confident of making the cut before losing seventh gear on his first shot at a qualifying time. He was joined in the bottom six by both Spykers - which ended up sandwiching the Red Bull in 20th and 22nd respectively, the two Toro Rossos - completing a disappointing 15 minutes for Red Bull, and Takuma Sato, who was seven-tenths slower than rookie Super Aguri team-mate Anthony Davidson and could not improve enough on his last run to dump Jenson Button out of the session.

The Briton survived by the skin of his teeth, lapping just 0.017secs faster than his former BAR team-mate, while Ralf Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello also squeezed through into the second phase. Alex Wurz and both Renault drivers - Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fisichella - all required late laps to haul themselves out of the bottom six as the chequered flag was being prepared. Fisichella and Kovalainen both had to watch as their cars were worked on between sessions, the Italian having a gearbox change and his Finnish team-mate requiring another new fuel pump.

Felipe Massa topped the times for Ferrari, ahead of Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica, as the head of the field produced few surprises, but the star of the phase was Davidson, the Briton having topped the times mid-session, and ending the 15 minutes in seventh spot.