Chinese Grand Prix - Practice One: Hamilton goes fastest

Lewis Hamilton went fastest in the first Practice session of the weekend in what was a routine session for the Silver Arrows.

Team mate Nico Rosberg was behind Hamilton but was half a second down on the Brit, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel rounding off the top three, albeit a second behind the reigning world champion. Vettel, winner last time out in Malaysia, is now expected to fight Mercedes for the title, but with him lapping half a second behind the second Mercedes of Rosberg, it appears these ideas are wide of the mark.

The general consensus being that Vettel’s win at Sepang two weeks ago was due to Ferrari’s SF15-T being more generous on the tyres than the W06 Mercedes. However things will become clearer in Qualifying, with teams usually opting to run various strategies in Practice sessions, such as heavier fuel loads, and testing new parts.

McLaren managed to lift themselves ahead of some other cars, with Jenson Button going 13th, although he was almost three seconds off the pace, with team mate Fernando Alonso going 17th fastest. It’s hard to gather whether the Woking team have made any progress due to the aforementioned use of practice time to test different things.

They’ve said that any progress made in Malaysia will be masked here due to the demands the Shanghai track will have on the Honda power unit. There was a debutant on the track in the form of GP2 champion Jolyon Palmer. The Lotus driver span early on but still went 15th with a 1:41:967, almost two tenths faster than Alonso’s McLaren.

Sauber’s Felipe Nasr continued to prove difficult to predict as he posted the fifth fastest time, ahead of Red Bull pair Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat, while Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz and Williams duo Valterri Bottas and Felipe Massa rounded off the top ten. Manor continued to occupy the last two places, and were well off the pace, with Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi being six and seven seconds slower than Hamilton respectively.