A discarded sandwich wrapper that got inside his rear brake duct ended Fernando Alonso's hopes of a possible points finish in Bahrain.

The Spaniard, who at one point was running seventh, was forced to retire just three laps after his second stop when he found his rear brakes were overheating. Called into the pits to retire, it was subsequently discovered that a discarded sandwich wrapped had become trapped in the rear brake duct.

"Both cars made a good start and gained some places on the first lap," said Marcin Budkowski, "with Fernando holding firm in the top ten.

"After his first stop we had a small issue that forced us to reduce the performance of the car," he continued, "then after the second stop, a sandwich wrap paper got stuck inside the rear brake duct of Fernando’s car, which led to high temperatures and caused some damage to the brake system, so we retired him for safety reasons.

"It was a very unlucky first race for Fernando considering how strong he looked."

"It was a shame that we could not see the chequered flag today because I really enjoyed the whole thing," said the Spaniard. "It was nice to be back racing. It was nice to feel again the adrenaline at the starting grid, the national anthem, all these procedures were very emotional today for me.

"I was not at my 100 percent, I'm sure of that," he added. "It was nice, we had a couple of good battles as well, some of them were happy ending, some of them were not because we were overtaken. But I need to find more pace from myself, I need to find more confidence, I need to extract more from the car, from the brakes, execute the start better."

Reports that Nelson Piquet Jr was seen at Turn 3 eating a BLT are understood to be wide of the mark.

Check out our Sunday gallery from Bahrain, here.