Hamilton dominates free practice in Malaysia

SEPANG, Malaysia-Following his failure to beat his teammate Jenson Button one week ago in Melbourne, Lewis Hamilton proved that it was just a situation of bad luck as the 2008 world champion set both fastest times of Friday practice for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Malaysia.

Hamilton set the quickest times of 1:38:021 and 1:38:172, respectively, which was something that the Briton really wanted to do.

“It was important for me to get the weekend off to a good start,” stated Hamilton after the sessions were completed.

Hamilton himself was five tenths of a second quicker than the current world champion, Sebatstian Vettel, in the opening session. The two AMG Mercedes cars of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were always in the hunt, placing third and fourth, while Lotus pilot Romain Grosjean was next in fifth, with Mark Webber completing the top six. Button was a disappointing 15th.

Both Ferrari’s of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were still struggling with their cars, and were only interested in how to understand the way the car can work more than anything else by placing both cars in 15th and 13th respectively. Following a disappointing race at Melbourne, the HRT team fared much better with Pedro De la Rosa completing 18 laps of the track, while teammate Narain Karthekeyan was forced to park his car on the start/finish straightaway following a hydraulics problem.

Schumacher made a fight of things in the final session of the day, just missing Hamilton’s best time by three tenths of a second, while Button finished in third and Rosberg in fourth. Toro Rosso’s Daniel Riccardo improved his time with fifth, while Alonso improved his car’s reliability by coming in sixth. Sahara Force India’s Paul Di Resta ran off the track on a couple of occasions, which resulted in one of them being a situation where the left rear brake caught on fire and delayed his chance of returning back to the circuit.

Sauber’s Kamui Kobyaschi lost precious track time when the Japanese had to have his gearbox fully replaced right in the middle of the session. The situation was completed just before the session ended, but Kobyaschi himself could only manage a 14th place finish.

A good sign in the final practice session belonged to HRT, who finally combined a total of 40 laps in total, which were well in the 107 percent rule to have a good chance to race for Sunday.