Vettel stays ahead in China

Sebastian Vettel completed a positive day of practice in China by going fastest in the second free practice session of the weekend. He also seemed to find a good race pace on both types of tyres.

It was a lot closer in the afternoon though, with Lewis Hamilton slower by less than two tenths of a second. Button, Rosberg and Schumacher were within five tenths of the Red Bull driver. Webber was only tenth fastest while Alonso was down in 14th place.

At the bottom of the timesheet, Lotus was once again the best of the new teams while HRT outpaced Virgin.

How the session panned out :

Most of the drivers quickly left the pits to resume their preparations for the qualifying session and the race.

Button and Hamilton once again set the early pace as Renault’s Nick Heidfeld tried to make up for the time lost in the morning session. Only ten minutes had gone by when Button broke the 1’40 barrier to set an interesting benchmark.

This is the moment Red Bull Racing chose to send its cars on track. They embarked on a long run with a high fuel load and seemed to be concentrating on their race pace. They lapped consistently in the 1’43-44s. In the meantime, Nico Rosberg took over at the front with a 1’38’’912.

Pastor Maldonado used a first set of soft tyres really early in the session to move up to P3 and split the McLarens. With just under an hour remaining, Felipe Massa also used soft tyres to go fastest and beat Vettel’s morning benchmark. Minutes later, Rosberg did better and broke the 1’38 barrier to move on top of the timesheet.

Shortly before the halfway point, Vettel rounded off a nineteen lap run. His teammate had pitted after fifteen laps. They were 17th and 19th fastest at this point, while Rosberg was leading from Massa, Button, Maldonado and Hamilton.

Like this morning, Nick Heidfeld had a moment and made contact with the barriers, this time at Turn 2. He broke his front wing but managed to keep his car running. He tried to drive back in the pits but parked his Renault in a safe place a few corners later.

Webber then came out for his second run and immediately jumped up the order to slot in fourth place. Michael Schumacher, meanwhile, joined his teammate on top of the timesheets.

Both Vettel and Hamilton started a flying lap with just under thirty minutes remaining and were closely matched. The World Champion set the 3rd fastest time while the McLaren driver went top of the list. Button joined him at the front seconds later to make it a McLaren one-two.

Hamilton pitted after a single flying lap, but Button and Vettel had another go at it. The Briton couldn’t improve, unlike the German who took over from Hamilton at the front.

As tends to be the norm, the final part of the session was dedicated to long runs with heavy fuel loads. In these conditions, the hierarchy didn’t change and Vettel concluded the session on top. He was faster than Hamilton, Button, Rosberg and Schumacher.

A fuel pressure problem stranded Paul di Resta’s Force India in the pits for the whole session. Tonio Liuzzi could only join the action in the last couple of minutes due to a technical problem on his HRT. Timo Glock missed part of the running due to a potential exhaust problem on his Virgin.

Alonso also lost some valuable time because of hydraulics problems.

FP2 classification: