Lewis Hamilton has finished fastest in the first free practice session for this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix, underlining the strong pace of the Mercedes car at the beginning of the new season.
The British driver posted a fastest time of 1:40.691 to finish ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and teammate Nico Rosberg as Mercedes excelled once again, whilst Lotus endured another disastrous session at Sepang on Friday.
As we saw in Australia, the opening 30 minutes of the first practice session saw lots of drivers come out early thanks to the allocation of an extra set of tires for 2014, with the installation laps giving them the first chance to see how their cars are running. Esteban Gutierrez was the first driver to post a time after 15 minutes, and he was soon followed by Williams’ Valtteri Bottas among others.
After 30 minutes of running, Fernando Alonso sat at the top of the timesheets ahead of Kevin Magnussen, but the session was interrupted after Romain Grosjean’s Lotus stopped out on track. Thanks to some swift work from the marshals, the car was wheeled away safely under waved yellow flags, meaning that the session did not have to be red flagged.
Adrian Sutil also had a slight moment at pit entry as he spun his car through the gravel, but the German driver managed to keep his Sauber going and make it back to his garage. Having set an initial lap time and completed some set-up work, most of the drivers returned to the pits to talk to their engineers, leaving the track quiet at around the half-way point in the session.
With 40 minutes to go, a number of drivers got back out on track as Magnussen and Jean-Eric Vergne moved ahead of Alonso at the top of the standings whilst Kimi Raikkonen and Marcus Ericsson spun their cars, proving just how difficult the new cars area to handle. Having remained in the pits for much of the session, Sebastian Vettel finally posted his first lap time, albeit a slow one to leave him down in 16th place. He did improve a few laps later to move up into seventh place.
After setting the pace during the session, Magnussen’s day took a turn for the worse as his car came to a halt at pit entry, but he was able to get pushed by the marshals back to his garage.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen took advantage of Magnussen’s setback to go fastest whilst teammate Fernando Alonso tested the limits of his car by spinning his car. Raikkonen’s sojourn in P1 lasted a matter of seconds as Lewis Hamilton went fastest of all, proving Mercedes’ pace with half an hour to go.
Pastor Maldonado finally made his way out onto the track with 20 minutes to go, but it lasted barely a lap as the car began to spew plumes of smoke from its engine. The E22 car eventually came to a halt at pit entry as Lotus once again struggled during practice with both cars.
In the final few minutes of the session, all of the drivers opted to focus on longer runs, meaning that the times remained relatively unchanged. However, with one minute to go, Hamilton took a trip through the gravel after making a mistake, proving that the Briton – despite being fastest – is by no means infallible.
