Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes made it two from two this evening by finishing on top of the time sheets in the second practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Hamilton finished the session in P1 with a time of 1:34.325. His team mate Nico Rosberg ended the session in P2 with a 1:34.690. Fernando Alonso finished the session in P3 with a 1:35.360, a full 1.035s slower than Hamilton’s P1 time.
Alonso could not do any better than P3. His long run pace looked encouraging but Ferrari are struggling with high tyre degradation. Kimi Raikkonen in the other Ferrari struggled this session. He ended his FP2 down in P14 with a 1:36.962. So not a good session for the Finn who’s looking to get a strong finish in the race.
With 35m left in the session Max Chilton in his Marussia suffered a front left brake disk failure under braking into T4. The front brakes went, the rears locked up and he spun off the track into the run off area and that was his session. He was not the only casualty of the session. Sauber’s Adrian Sutil stopped out on track with 30 minutes left in the session. The final casualty of the evening was Caterham’s Marcus Ericsson. He stopped his car on the back straight on the run down to T11 with just 5mins left in the session. There was a bit of a moment between Rosberg and Perez in the Force India that will be investigated after the session. Rosberg was on a slow-down lap with Perez on a timed lap approaching rather quickly. Rosberg moved to his left to get out of the way, but by then Perez had already committed to passing Rosberg on the left. Perez had to move a bit more to the left to avoid Rosberg. All this happened on the run into T14
The Williams cars of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas spent most of the session in their garages and with 42 mins left in the session they both took to the track with very encouraging pace from Massa. Massa and Bottas finished P5 and P11 respectively.
Red Bull confirmed just after the start of the session that the had a fuel flow sensor failure together with Toro Rosso and Lotus. They had a relatively quiet FP2 with Ricciardo finishing in P4 and Sebastian Vettel finishing P7. Red Bull do have some tyre degradation issues but not as bad as Ferrari. They actually looked much stronger on the long run race than Ferrari.
Mercedes look to be in a class of their own. At the moment qualifying looks to be between Hamilton and Rosberg for P1 and P2. But we all know how quickly things can change in F1. There’s still FP3 to come.
Below is the timing wall for the session:
