autoevolution
 

Webber Keeps Red Bull On Top of Malaysia Practice

Mark Webber is yet to be challenged in the timing reports at Sepang, after the Australian topped the second practice session on Friday with the best time of 1:36.876. The battle for 1st place was much closer than this morning however, as Webber no longer dominated the 90-minute running from one end to another, but finished only 0.005 seconds ahead of closest rival, McLaren's Jenson Button.

In fact, the two drivers were the only ones to break the 1:37 minute mark in the afternoon. Red Bull and McLaren were again top performers of the day, as the two teams had all drivers into the quad of aces on Friday afternoon. Third overall was Lewis Hamilton, while Sebastian Vettel completed the “sandwich” in 4th place. A quarter of a second separated the leading four drivers at the end of the day, all running on the Pirelli's option tires (soft).

Mercedes' Michael Schumacher managed to once again emerge ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg in the official timing sheets and rank 5th, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa separating the two Merc drivers from 6th place.

Even though Renault had announced that neither Nick Heidfeld, not Vitaly Petrov would enjoy any track action in the afternoon – due to an internal investigation on the car's mechanical problems this morning – the former completed 16 laps without any major issues and set the 8th fastest time of the day, ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and STR's Jaime Alguersuari.

Williams duo Pastor Maldonado and Rubens Barrichello finished 11th and 12th, respectively, but the former provided the only major incident of the afternoon action when he lost control of his car on the pit entry and made acquaintance with the wall.

Team Lotus' Heikki Kovalainen was reduced to only 4 laps of running due to some internal problems and finished last in the timing reports, behind the two HRT drivers Narain Karthikeyan and Vitantonio Liuzzi.
If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories