Mercedes powered 1-2-3-4

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By Simon Strang    Friday, April 16th 2010, 07:43 GMT

Lewis Hamilton made it two out of two for McLaren as the 2008 world champion recorded the fastest lap of the weekend so far to top the times in the second free practice session in China.

Hamilton, who is bidding to become the fourth different winner of a grand prix in 2010 this weekend, bumped Mercedes' Nico Rosberg from the top spot half way through the 90-minute session on a set of option tyres en route to a 1m35.217s lap.

No one else managed to get within 0.2s of that mark for the rest of the day.

Rosberg came closest, improving on his own time when he switched to the options, to set a 1m35.465s, just over a tenth faster than Jenson Button, who was third.

Michael Schumacher improved to fourth in FP2, and was as close as he has been to team-mate Rosberg this year, with a 1m35.602s laps. Though on occasions, the seven-time champion looked lurid.

Sebastian Vettel was more than half a second away from the ultimate pace for Red Bull, in fifth position just ahead of team-mate Mark Webber.

Adrian Sutil was seventh, Jaime Alguersuari eighth (in the sole running Toro Rosso - team-mate Sebastien Buemi remaining pit-bound following his morning shunt), Robert Kubica ninth and Fernando Alonso tenth.

The Ferrari man looked lurid for much of the session as he worked hard to recover the time he lost this morning, lapping just over 0.3s faster than team-mate Felipe Massa.

Pos  Driver         Team                    Time              Laps
 1.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes        1:35.217            26
 2.  Rosberg        Mercedes                1:35.465  + 0.248   22
 3.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes        1:35.593  + 0.376   26
 4.  Schumacher     Mercedes                1:35.602  + 0.385   28
 5.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault        1:35.791  + 0.574   30
 6.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault        1:35.995  + 0.778   29
 7.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes    1:36.254  + 1.037   31
 8.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari      1:36.377  + 1.160   43
 9.  Kubica         Renault                 1:36.389  + 1.172   29
10.  Alonso         Ferrari                 1:36.604  + 1.387   33
11.  Massa          Ferrari                 1:36.944  + 1.727   36
12.  Petrov         Renault                 1:36.986  + 1.769   27
13.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari          1:37.421  + 2.204   32
14.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari          1:37.431  + 2.214   33
15.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth       1:37.657  + 2.440   30
16.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes    1:37.804  + 2.587   31
17.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth       1:37.867  + 2.650   29
18.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth          1:39.624  + 4.407   35
19.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth          1:39.947  + 4.730   30
20.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth         1:40.233  + 5.016   27
21.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth            1:41.008  + 5.791   32
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth         1:41.107  + 5.890   28
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth            1:41.345  + 6.128   32
24.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari

All Timing Unofficial

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F1 Shanghai: Practice

Round four of the 2010 Formula One calendar takes place this weekend in China with the first of the practice sessions getting underway today at the Shanghai International Circuit.
 
The MERCEDES GP PETRONAS pair of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg finished the morning session in second and fourth places having focused on developing the mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of their MGP W01 cars.
 
The afternoon session saw further work on set-up and a tyre programme with the soft and hard compounds in use at Shanghai this weekend. Nico and Michael again finished the session in second and fourth positions having completed 39 and 42 laps respectively over the course of the day.
Drivers
   
Car No.
   
Chassis No.
   
Free Practice 1
   
Free Practice 2
Nico Rosberg
   
4
   
MGP W01 / 02
   
17 laps
   
1:36.748
   
P2
   
22 laps
   
1:35.465
   
P2
Michael Schumacher
   
3
   
MGP W01 / 03
   
14 laps
   
1:37.509
   
P4
   
28 laps
   
1:35.602
   
P4
 
Weather
   
Cool and dry
Temperatures
   
Air: 13-17°C
   
Track: 21-29°C
 
NICO ROSBERG
“We made good progress on the set-up over the course of the day and tried some new directions which all seemed to work ok. I did lose a little bit of balance with too much oversteer at the end of the afternoon so we need to look into the reasons for that. The long runs were pretty good on my side and with the work that Michael completed, we should be in a good position on our tyre evaluations. The pattern looks pretty similar to Malaysia in terms of our pace compared to other teams but we’ll have to wait and see how it works out tomorrow.”
 
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER
“Today’s practice sessions went better than I had expected. The handling was pretty much ok and it seems that we have made a small step forward. We brought some improvements here including the new rear wing which have helped. So I am quite confident for the rest of the weekend even if the overall ranking will not change much from the first three races. I was a bit unlucky this morning as I had a puncture on my rear left prime tyre so we had to use one from the afternoon’s allocation. That meant I only had three new tyres in the second session but it worked out fine in the end.”
 
ROSS BRAWN
“Generally a positive day and initial evaluations are that we have made some progress with the car. As we know the two tyres well now, we focused more on the mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of the car today. We are not quite there with the balance over the entire lap but Nico and Michael achieved some respectable lap times. We are improving step-by-step but there is a long way to go and we won’t be happy until we can consistently compete with the cars ahead.”
 
NORBERT HAUG
“A very busy day today with a lot of learning for us. Our lap times in race trim did not look too bad in my view and both Nico and Michael have been reasonably quicker with lesser fuel. Having said that, I am not expecting that a lot has changed in terms of performance amongst the teams since the Malaysian Grand Prix a fortnight ago. We still have some fine tuning to do in tomorrow’s third practice session and I hope we can make a further step forward from today.”