The Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix is this weekend and a sweltering Friday with the rain stepping in made for an interesting couple of practice sessions.
Practice One: After several quiet minutes following the green light, the drivers soon took to the track. Early in the session, Mark Webber set a scorcher with a 1 minute 36.935 second lap time – a P1 time which no one ended up beating all through the session. Kimi Raikkonen was in the pits for almost an hour after a sensor on his car’s KERS system led to the entire back of the car being opened up to replace it. With just over 30 minutes left in the session, Lotus got the car ready and Raikkonen managed to get a quick time straight out of the bag, setting a time of 1 minute 37.003 seconds and taking P2. Webber’s team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, finished in P3 with a time of 1 minute 37.104 seconds followed by Fernando Alonso of Ferrari in P4 and Nico Rosberg of Mercedes in P5.
Practice Two: The second practice session was threatened by rain and had the drivers going out in a flurry to get some quick times. The hard tyres were soon swapped for mediums and many drivers saw improved lap times as a result. Twenty minutes in and reports of rain started coming in. Kimi Raikkonen managed to get his Lotus Renault to the top of the time sheets as he put in a stormer of a lap with a time of 1 minute 36.569 seconds; 0.019s ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull Renault, with just minutes to go before the rain arrived. With 40 minutes to go in the session; the rain, which, until then, was just intermittent drops, began coming down harder. A lot of slipping and sliding ensued with the Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg ending up on the grass. He managed to keep it going, almost collecting the Red Bull of Vettel as he headed to the pit lane. The drivers then switched to intermediates and the lap times dropped by almost 20 seconds. The final order was Kimi Raikkonen on P1, Vettel P2, Felipe Massa of Ferrari in P3 with a time of 1 minute 36.661 with his team-mate Fernando Alono behind him in P4 and Mark Webber of Red Bull in P5.
Final practice followed by qualifying is up tomorrow morning. Stay tuned to our website for more updates on the same.
