Chinese Grand Prix - Practice Two: Track invader marrs session as Hamilton fastest again

Reigning champion Lewis Hamilton continued to set the pace for Mercedes, but Ferrari continued to threaten their dominance in Practice two ahead of Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.

It seems Mercedes’ pace over a single lap is stronger, however Ferrari’s speed over a long run will be a worry for Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Hamilton set the fastest time with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen going second, four tenths down on the Brit. Both Raikkonen and Rosberg went out on long run stints together, and with both on the medium compound tyre.

Raikkonen ended up being around three tenths of a second quicker than the Mercedes, showing Ferrari have some power here in Shanghai, and is shaping the race up to be a fascinating encounter. Two cars were involved in accidents in P2, with Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat suffering a complete failure and his car went on into the tyre wall at the end of the long back-straight. Also Felipe Massa lost control of his Williams and made contact with the wall, prompting the red flag.

One accident in-particular which marred the session was that of a track invader, a man ran across the start finish straight and hopped over the pitwall. Not the first time this has happened, at the 2003 British Grand Prix, priest Neil Horan (below) ran down the Hangar Straight waving flags and running towards the cars, which were doing around 280 km/h.

McLaren continued to show improvements in China with Jenson Button managing to break into the top ten. Despite the team stating they wouldn’t make any progress here due to the testing nature of the Shanghai circuit, Button went 10th with a time around two seconds slower than Hamilton’s fastest. Team mate Fernando Alonso went 12th for the Woking team.

Problems continued for the beleaguered Manor team, with Will Stevens’ session being delayed due to a power unit issue on his car. His team-mate Roberto Merhi was 5.4 seconds off Hamilton’s time, with Stevens being a whopping seven seconds down on his fellow Brit once he did get going. Force India’s session didn’t run smoothly either, with Nico Hulkenberg having a gearbox problem and team mate Sergio Perez having a brake issue.