Kimi Raikkonen eradicated any doubts that his Melbourne performance was a one-off by topping the time sheets in Sepang on Day 1 of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.
With track temperatures over 30 degrees, the 33 year old Finn edged out Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari, but the margins were tight; just 9/100ths of a second separated first and third.
Lotus’ technical director James Allison confirmed that only Raikkonen had the new updates on his car today, with Romain Grosjean thus disadvantaged. Lotus has a new exhaust package and was trialling a new front wing today. The Frenchman was 6th, some seven tenths of a second slower than his team mate.
The session was punctuated with a rain shower; the track was soaked but dried quickly. Nevertheless the times never got back to the levels of the first part of the session.
There was some encouragement for McLaren and Jenson Button when the track was damp; he was closer to the pace than in the dry. But the reality for his team is that without rain, he will once again be trailing Force India in the bottom of the top ten. Also showing strong pace in the wet once again was Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez and the Mercedes drivers.
Raikkonen’s pace was strong on both low and high fuel and in the wet conditions and with tyre degradation looking severe, especially on the harder compound, the Lotus’ ability to cover the distance in one less stop than its main rivals while maintaining good pace, may turn out to be a big advantage again.
Allison observed that Malaysia is traditionally one more stop than Melbourne, which indicates that his team is planning for three stops on Sunday. The question is whether Red Bull and Ferrari can also do the 56 laps at pace in three stops.
Williams, another team that has had a disappointing start to the season, ran an evaluation programme today hoping to solve some of its problems which are partly aerodynamic and partly set-up geometry. Early indications looked positive, but by the end of Free Practice 2 it appeared that they were still some way off, with Jules Bianchi’s Marussia ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado only half a second ahead.
“We haven’t made the progress we had hoped for today,” admitted technical director Mike Coughlan. We need to look at the data we have from both sessions to maximise the package we have. We will then head straight back to the factory to work on some improvements ahead of Shanghai.”
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