Sebastian Vettel seemed to recover from his issues in the first practice session by setting the fastest time of the day infront of Nico Rosberg. However; it wasn’t an entirely clean session for the Scuderia Ferrari driver as he again suffered from continuing gearbox problems.
The session had started with the threat of rain. This resulted in many of the teams going straight out onto the circuit as to collect data. As it turned out, the rain did not arrive, meaning that the Williams Martini Racing‘s made the right choice to stay in the pits. Despite this, the car struggled anyway with the team only managing fourteenth and fifteenth.
In the opening session, Vettel had had to stop on track because of issues. They appeared to return after he’d set his quick pace with the team informed him of the lingering issues. Vettel asked if there was anything he could do on track, but was forced to come back into the garage.
Despite this, the Ferrari team will be pleased with the pace up until that point, especially after Kimi Raikkonen topped a lot of the session. However; the Ferrari driver locked his front tyres in the first corner. This, along with Vettel’s limited running late on meant that the team has little data on the long run pace of the super soft tyre.
Behind him, Rosberg had a fairly quiet session, completing the most laps, 50. Having gone 0.7 seconds faster than Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team mate Lewis Hamilton, he’ll be confident he can build upon the success for the rest of the weekend.
As for Hamilton, he managed fifth, behind the impressive Lotus of Pastor Maldonado. Lotus had a good session with Romain Grosjean managing seventh after not running in the morning.
Further down the field, Carlos Sainz Jr who only managed eleventh, had the biggest off of the session. Almost losing the back end and running through the gravel at turn four. While Scuderia Torro Rosso team mate, Max Verstappen complained of headaches after his long run.
After his engine failure in the last session Fernando Alonso went into Free Practice 2 knowing that he would have to start from the back of the grid. But would be pushed on with a new nose on the car.
