Singapore, FP2: Hamilton takes over at the top

Lewis Hamilton logged the fastest time of day in Singapore, his lap of 1:47.490 good enough to see of a challenge from the fastest man of FP1, Fernando Alonso, by just over a tenth of a second. Daniel Ricciardo was third fastest in FP2 with a lap of 1:47.790.

Nico Rosberg, meanwhile, ended the second session down in 13th place after failing to complete a performance run on the supersoft tyre.

Rosberg had begun a run but it was halted when Pastor Maldonado lost control of his Lotus at the exit of Turn 10 and hit the wall hard. The smash brought out the red flags and when the action resumed Rosberg went straight into a long run. Thus his best time of the session was set on soft tyres, with the result that he finished one and a half seconds off his team-mate’s option tyre pace.

When the red flags appeared, only Hamilton and Alonso, who had pipped the Englishman for P1 in the morning by a tenth of a second, had yet to make a performance run, with Ricciardo sitting atop the timesheet.

Hamilton was the first to try his luck and he quickly pushed the Red Bull driver to second spot by three tenths of a second. Alonso cut that gap in half to displace Ricciardo further and the Spaniard ended the session 0.133s down on Hamilton’s time.

Kimi Raikkonen put a good gloss on Ferrari’s day by finishing in fourth place, four tenths of a second down on his team-mate. It was a less difficult session for the Finn’s than the morning’s, when on his way to seventh he stopped in the pit lane with his front brakes on fire.

In the morning it was Sebastian Vettel who had occupied that fourth spot but at the end of a productive first session for the German he was forced to stop in the pit lane with a suspected power unit failure.

Replacing that meant that Vettel missed almost all of the second session. The winner of the past three Singapore GPs only emerged for the final seven minutes of the session, but still he managed to guide his supersoft-shod RB10 to fifth spot, ahead of McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen, who was followed by team-mate Jenson Button.

The final top 10 places went, respectively, to the Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg, with Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat tenth.

Whither Williams though? The team has built up a profile of late of making slow starts to race weekends but today the Grove team seemed to more than usual on a circuit that is not expected to play to the strengths of their car. Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas ended up right down in 17th and 18th.