Malaysia Practice 2: Ferrari duo on top
(GMM) After his apparent KERS incident in the initial session, Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari topped the timesheets as the three hours of Friday action concluded at Sepang.
However, towards the end of the session, amid the backdrop of ominously grey Kuala Lumpur clouds, the Finn was told by radio to turn off his energy re-use system due to another problem.
His teammate Felipe Massa was second fastest, ahead of Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, who nearly collected BMW's Nick Heidfeld at one point and apologetically waved to his countryman.
“These three hours of free practice would seem to offer a different view of the situation to the one we saw in Australia, which indeed was predictable given the characteristics of the two circuits,” commented Scuderia Team Principal, Stefano Domenicali. “Obviously, it’s much too early to say what is our level of performance when compared to all the other teams, but it is clear that it very finely balanced, given that the first fifteen in the second session are all covered by less than a second. Reliability remains the main priority: again today we had a technical problem which, if it had happened in the race, would have led to a retirement. Having said that, we must remain focused and calm, while allowing ourselves to look forward to the rest of the weekend being aware that we will have to fight hard to bring home a good result.”
“This morning we had a problem with the KERS, which cost us a bit of time, but we managed to make up for most of it in the afternoon," said Raikkonen. "We had felt that the situation here could be different to Melbourne, but it is still too early to say where we are up against the opposition. What we can be sure of is that when the car runs trouble-free, we are competitive. We hope we can do a good job in tomorrow’s qualifying.”
Nico Rosberg slipped to fourth after topping the first session, as both him and his Williams teammate Kazuki Nakajima shed wheel-fairing discs.
The Brawns were sixth and seventh fastest, and the McLarens ninth and eleventh, with Heikki Kovalainen recovering from his earlier problems and - as in Australia - setting the pace to his reigning world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Ominously down the order was the ear infection-afflicted Fernando Alonso, and both BMWs -- Heidfeld was not only the slowest of the entire 90-minute session, but half a second from his nearest rival, Giancarlo Fisichella.
Fisichella returned to the pits by foot, having crashed his Force India in the high speed turn 10.
Practice 2 Results