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The snow melted. Car buyers dug themselves out. And the U.S. auto industry dragged itself back to first-quarter growth with a 6 percent sales increase in March. The 1.

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-- The Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles finally came to a close this weekend, after nine days of brutal driving and navigation challenges across the Moroccan desert.

From GMM

Red Bull has denied rumours it is preparing to drop its appeal against Daniel Ricciardo's Melbourne disqualification.

The story goes that FIA president Jean Todt, angry with world champion Sebastian Vettel's crass dismissal of the new turbo V6 engine rules as "shit", was offering to drop a disrepute charge if Red Bull agrees to drop the appeal.

"Utter nonsense," Dr Helmut Marko is quoted by Germany's Sky.

"I have no idea where that came from. We are preparing for the appeal hearing," he insisted.

Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull RB10-Renault. (Photo: WRi2)

Team boss Christian Horner on Monday denied that the FIA had even contacted Red Bull about Vettel's swearing.

But when asked about the incident, Todt said: "It is something we will deal with internally.

"Unfortunately we have a tendancy to forget the beauty of motor racing and formula one and concentrate on behaviours that are not my priority," he is quoted by French television BFMTV.

Even with the appeal hearing looming, arguably Red Bull's bigger priority is the performance of its Renault-powered RB10, and the deficit to dominant Mercedes.

Christian Horner is expecting a tough weekend in Bahrain.

"Their (Mercedes') advantage will be bigger than it was (in Malaysia) because it's quite a power dominated circuit," he said.

Mercedes, however, is not resting on its laurels.

"We saw one of our competitors here (in Malaysia) receiving 50 boxes of new parts on morning and evening flights. We need to do the same," Toto Wolff told Austrian television ORF.

Lotus F1 Team Technical Director Nick Chester revealed that the brake-by-wire, electronic system of the E22 was still far from being perfect, and that was causing the drivers a lot of problems.

“We've made some improvements with the braking of the car, but there is still a lot more to come”, said Chester in a team press release.

“We have more work to do at Enstone including improving the set-up and operation of our brake-by-wire system, which is one of the areas where the drivers have the biggest complaints. It's spoiling their entry into the corner and costing them quite a lot of time”, the British engineer added.

The brake-by-wire has been introduced in Formula 1 to counterbalance the huge braking effect caused by the MGU-K, which operates as a generator.

Chester provides more insights about this system.

“The system looks at what the driver is requesting from the brake pedal and then the demand is split between a braking force generated by the power unit and a normal hydraulic braking force from the callipers,” he explained.

“The difficult part is fine tuning those two different types of braking demands so that they work together in a natural, predictable way for the driver. It's very important to have a brake-by-wire system that responds the way you want and to get the mapping correct so that you have the right braking behaviour to make it easier for the driver to control wheel locking.

“When you initially apply the brakes you want to get the pressures up high as quickly as you can, for good retardation. But for corner entry, how you come off the brakes is really important. Being able to carry good speed into the corner apex makes a massive difference to the lap time,” he concluded.

Here is the on-track schedule of the 2014 Grand Prix of Bahrain, Round 3 of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

The 57-lap race will be held on Bahrain International Circuit's 5.412km layout.

Friday April 4
GP2 Practice Session 12h00 - 12h45
Formula 1 Paddock Club Pit Lane Walk 13h00 - 13h45
Formula 1 Practice 1 14h00 - 15h30
Formula 1 Paddock Club Pit Lane Walk 15h45 - 16h55
Porsche GT3 Cup Middle East Practice Session 16h30 - 17h00
Formula 1 Practice 2 18h00 - 19h30
GP2 Qualifying Session 20h00 - 20h30
Formula 1 Press Conference - Press Room 20h00 - 21h00
Track Activity Marshal Pit Lane Walk 21h00 - 21h45

Saturday April 5
Formula 1 Paddock Club Pit Lane Walk 11h30 - 12h40
Porsche GT3 Cup Middle East Qualifying Session 11h55 - 12h25
Formula 1 Team Pit Stop Practice 12h10 - 12h30
GP2 First Race (32 Laps or 60 Mins) 13h10 - 14h15
Formula 1 Practice 3 15h00 - 16h00
Formula 1 Paddock Club Pit Lane Walk 16h15 - 17h30
Porsche GT3 Cup Middle East First Race (10 Laps or 30 Mins) 16h30 - 17h05
Formula 1 Qualifying 18h00
Formula 1 Drivers Autograph Session 20h00 - 21h00

Sunday April 6
GP2 Second Race (23 Laps or 45 Mins) 14h15 - 15h05
Formula 1 Paddock Club Pit Lane Walk 15h30 - 17h15
Porsche GT3 Cup Middle East Second Race (10 Laps or 30 Mins) 15h35 - 16h10
Formula 1 Drivers Track Parade 16h30
Formula 1 Starting Grid Presentation 16h45 - 17h15
Formula 1 National Anthem 17h46
Air Display Gulf Air Flypast TBC 17h48
Formula 1 Race 18h00