Practice 2: Hamilton untouchable on day one

Apr.2 (GMM) The skies opened at Sepang in between Friday’s first and second practice sessions, but the rain quickly passed and the sun remerged and the track dried fast. Within a few minutes Lewis Hamilton (McLaren Mercedes) was setting times faster than his best in the first session, which he topped.

The Briton was in inspired form on the opening day, quickest in both sessions and fastest of all on the day. His team mate Jenson Button was also at the sharp end of proceedings in both sessions, ending fourth quickest in the second session despite complaining of understeer and lack of rear end stability.

Sebastian Vettel was second fastest, a quarter of a second down on Hamilton’s best, ending a day of tribulations for Red Bull who appear to have reliability niggles going into the Sepang weekend on the back of Vettel’s DNF in Australia and problems in Bahrain. Mark Webber had a shortened session when he was forced to pit with a loss of power, either a gearbox or engine problem. As a result he was down in 20th on the timing sheets.

Again fastest of the Mercedes GP pair was Nico Rosberg with the third quickest time with Michael Schumacher fifth fastest, the Silver Arrows split by Button with the fourth fastest lap.

Robert Kubica (Renault) was again among the pace setters with the sixth quickest lap and 34 laps on his chart, while his rookie team mate Vitaly Petrov had a good showing setting the ninth fastest time.

Ferrari had something of a subdued day, although they have in the past two races taken their time to get up to speed, apparently working on race setup. Fernando Alonso was seventh quickest and tallied up 39 laps during the session.

Felipe Massa was over a second down on his team mate, the floor on the Brazilian’s F10 may have been damaged in an excursion onto the gravel in the early session.

Toro Rosso seem to have found some pace in Malaysia or the car is more suited to the Sepang layout than previous races. Sebastien Buemi was eighth quickest with Jaime Alguersuari 14th fastest on his first visit to the Sepang circuit.

Rounding up the top ten, within a second of Hamilton’s best, was Force India’s Adrian Sutil. His team mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, who sat out the early session to give way for reserve driver Paul Di Resta, was 12the fastest.

Liuzzi split the Sauber’s which saw semi-rookie Kamui Kobayashi go quicker than veteran Pedro de la Rosa, they were 11th and 13th fastest respectively.

In 16th and 17th were Williams duo Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg. Although best of the Cosworth runners the team were either fully focused on race setup with full fuel loads or in trouble.

Lotus were, as is becoming customary, best of the new teams with Jarno Trulli (18th) fractionally quicker than Heikki Kovalainen (19th). Both driers completing a handy amount of laps. Trulli’s best was over four secnds short of Hamilton’s fastest.

Not far off the Lotus pace were Virgin Racing duo with Timo Glock 21st fastest and Lucas di Grassi 22nd.

At the foot of the timing screens, all session long, were the Hispania Racing pair with Karun Chandhok 23rd and Bruno Senna slowest of all. Ominously for the team they were a good six seconds off the pace and two seconds slower than their fellow newcomers.

Free Practice 2 – 2 April 2010