Hamilton fastest in Sepang practice

Lewis Hamilton went quickest in the opening practice session ahead of Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, the Mercedes driver finishing ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and the second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg.

Hamilton’s timesheet-topping lap came roughly an hour into the session his time of 1:40.691 being good enough to see off Raikkonen, who finished 0.152s down on the Briton. Raikkonen, who looked to have overcome some of the handling problems that hampered his race weekend in Melbourne two weeks again, finished three tenths of a second clear of Rosberg.

Early in the session Rosberg had a nervous moment, locking up on entry into the pitlane and lack of grip on the dirty and dusty track was a problem for many during the session, including Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, who spun in Turn 8 and Hamilton, who went off at Turn 11 in the session’s closing stages.

The high heat and humidity in Sepang had been predicted to cause problems for F1’s power units and a number of team’s encountered reliability problems in the morning session.

Kevin Magnussen lost power in his McLaren at the pitlane entrance, while Lotus again suffered major problems, with Romain Grosjean stopping on track after just two laps with a problem with his MGU-H. Team-mate Pastor Maldonado, meanwhile, spent most of the session in the garage and then on his first lap out his Lotus expired in a pall of smoke. Sergio Perez too hit trouble, the Force India driver completing just an installation lap during the session.

With Rosberg third, the morning’s fourth-fastest time went to McLaren’s Jenson Button, with team-matre Magnussen fifth. Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne was sixth with a lap seven tenths off Hamilton’s pace. World champion Sebastian Vettel finish in seventh place, a futher tenth of a second back. The top ten order was rounded out by Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and the Williams pairing of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.