Rookie teams experience mixed fortunes.

The start of a new season always brings a sense of anticipation but the opening round in Bahrain this year is particularly significant as the 2006 grid will look very different to that of 2005 from a team point of view.

Although Sauber has become BMW Sauber and BAR has turned into Honda, Scuderia Toro Rosso, MF1 Racing and Super Aguri are very new to the Formula One party and on the first day of competition in Friday practice, there were certainly a mixture of fortunes for the debutants.

Easily the most successful newcomer of the day was Scuderia Toro Rosso who, in just a single day, have managed to achieve a level of performance not seen by their effective predecessors, Minardi, for some years.

Having revealed a striking livery just hours before appearing on track, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Scott Speed and Neel Jani all appeared in the morning and the afternoon sessions to put more miles on a car that has had a limited winter running.

Swiss reserve driver Jani proved the quickest of the trio in the first session by getting into sixth place, while Liuzzi repeated that position in the more heavily participated second session, proving the fourth quickest of the race drivers.

Already riding a storm of controversy due to their restricted V10 engines rather than a V8 unit used by every other team on the grid and their recognisable chassis, their pace has raised eyebrows down the pitlane, although Liuzzi is quick to defend, suggesting the time spent testing there in February is mostly responsible.

"I'd say my good time was down to the fact we did four days testing here last month and also I managed to do 33 laps today," the Italian said. "It was a straightforward day and the car responded well to the changes we made. It's the first time we run with the new car here. In the morning, it was just a case of getting to grips with the track.

"Then in the afternoon, we began making progress in terms of set-up and tyre work. I am not sure what our qualifying pace will be tomorrow afternoon, but overtaking is tough here, so we need to aim high. I am confident we can do well even though I am not particularly fond of the technical nature of this track. But we've got off to a good start, so fingers crossed."

While Liuzzi's fingers were crossed, over at rivals MF1 Racing, there was plenty of finger pointing, particularly from Colin Kolles who has repeatedly said in the press that he will launch a challenge if Toro Rosso prove more competitive than his outfit and repeated his claim after practice (see seperate story).

It was a mixed day for MF1 itself, who scored a small victory in being able to mingle with their underperforming engine suppliers Toyota in the afternoon session, but Tiago Monteiro, reserve driver Markus Winkelhock and Christijan Albers still proved to be at the lower end of the timesheets, managing 20th, 23rd and 26th respectively.

Still, Monteiro was pleased with his day and was looking forward to qualifying. "I was pretty happy with my day, actually. We had no major problems and the car felt better and better as the day went on. I got held up in the second session by a few yellow flags, so I'm pretty sure I could have gone about four-tenths faster on the fuel load I had.

"We also know where we can make improvements, so that's also pretty encouraging. But you never know where you are compared to everyone else - this is only practice, after all. Tomorrow's qualifying should provide more answers."

With barely any testing and with a dated chassis design, it is perhaps not surprising to find the only entirely new team on grid, Super Aguri, to be bringing up the rear, but the distance to those directly in front was smaller than many were expecting.

Bahrain debutant and inexperienced F1 driver Yuji Ide certainly experienced a baptism of fire and as a result proved the slowest of the 28 runners, although he did get within a second and a half of Takuma Sato, who in turn managed to within a second of Christijan Albers.

"I am always happy to be in the car but today was a very special day for me," Ide said. "We had a little mechanical problem but I am glad that I was able to test the new tyres during my running time. I think that we had a good practice session. It was a good testing for me. I am looking forward to driving tomorrow and will do my best to learn more about the track when I am in the car again tomorrow."

Indeed, while their hopes are very low for the first few races until the proposed new chassis is revealed for the San Marino Grand Prix onwards, the fact that they haven't disgraced themselves is a big improvement on what many were expecting and that is something they want to build upon.

"It was a busy day being the first time the team has run in a race-weekend situation," said for BAR driver Sato. "Obviously we were limited because of the amount of work we have to do today, but we have been able to collect very valuable data as this is really the first time that we have run the SA05 with our 2006 aero package. So this is a good step for our first day and there is a lot of work to do regarding our performance, but we shall work hard over night to ensure another good day tomorrow."

Team principal Aguri Suzuki was satisfied with the days work and is looking forward to the weekend ahead. "We couldn't test the car much at the testing so the first practice session was like a shake-down for us. It was great to see the car actually running on the track.

"The second session was to check if the car runs properly and make some changes from the first session. Although we had mechanical problem today but I am happy with what we did and am looking forward to tomorrow very much."

With the practice sessions not necessarily representing the full extent of the pace shown by a number of teams, the new knockout qualifying session will certainly be more representative as to whether these three new teams can really upset the established odds...