Hamilton leads as Mercedes dominates

The Briton took his time to set his first proper flying lap of the session, having sat near the bottom of the timing screen for the first half of the session after an early attempt at a flyer was ruined when he ran wide at Turn 1.

He then re-emerged from the pits with 44 minutes of the 90-minute session remaining, and immediately posted a 1m39.033s – 0.541s quicker than what team-mate Nico Rosberg had posted to that point, and three quarters of a second quicker than Fernando Alonso’s benchmark time from FP1 in China last season.

Hamilton failed to improve on that time, running wide twice more as the session wound down (once at Turn 6, and a second off at Turn 1), but thanks to Rosberg also not improving in the session half of the second the 0.541s gap stood until the end.

Ferrari best of the rest

The Ferraris were next in line, with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen squabbling over positions three and four throughout the session. Vettel ultimately won out, moving into third with 23 minutes to run with a 1m40.554s lap, before improving at the chequered flag to a 1m40.157s.

Still, despite the late improvement, the Malaysian GP winner was a whopping 1.124s down on Hamilton.

Raikkonen failed to improve in the last half hour of the session, finishing 1.628s down on the reigning World Champion.

Felipe Nasr made it three Ferrari-powered cars in the top five by going fifth quickest in the Sauber. The rookie continued his impressive debut season by setting a best of 1m41.012s exactly 15 minutes from time to dump Daniel Ricciardo from the top five.

Red Bull and Williams a long way back

Ricciardo may have only finished a few tenths down on Nasr, but his gap to even the Ferraris was significant. After complaining of mid-corner understeer on the radio, Ricciardo finished the session 1.996s down on Hamilton, and 0.368s down on Raikkonen.

He did, however, out-pace team-mate Daniil Kvyat and the Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz Jr, who ran as high as third in the early part of the session, despite complaining about being down on power.

Williams couldn’t do any better than ninth and 10th, with Bottas beating Felipe Massa by 0.001s.

Manor runs two cars – at the same time

Manor did its bit to dispel rumours from Sepang that the team can’t run both cars at the same time by finally getting Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi on track together 25 minutes into the session. The pair wound up 19th and 20th, with Stevens just inside the 107 per cent, and Merhi just outside of it.

Joylon Palmer was in action for Lotus and finished the session 15th, 0.632s down on Pastor Maldonado in the sister car, while the McLaren-Hondas finished 13th (Jenson Button) and 17th (Fernando Alonso).

 

Formula 1 - 2015 Chinese Grand Prix - Free Practice 1

	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
01	L. Hamilton	Mercedes	1:39.033		21
02	N. Rosberg	Mercedes	1:39.574	+0.541	21
03	S. Vettel	Ferrari	1:40.157	+1.124	18
04	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:40.661	+1.628	27
05	F. Nasr	Sauber	1:41.112	+1.979	18
06	D. Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:41.029	+1.996	21
07	D. Kvyat	Red Bull	1:41.097	+2.064	24
08	C. Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:41.112	+2.079	23
09	V. Bottas	Williams	1:41.303	+2.270	23
10	F. Massa	Williams	1:41.304	+2.271	17
11	P. Maldonado	Lotus	1:41.335	+2.302	23
12	M. Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:41.575	+2.542	28
13	J. Button	McLaren	1:41.845	+2.812	19
14	M. Ericsson	Sauber	1:41.918	+2.885	24
15	J. Palmer	Lotus	1:41.967	+2.934	25
16	S. Pérez	Force India	1:42.141	+3.108	22
17	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:42.161	+3.128	20
18	N. Hülkenberg	Force India	1:42.184	+3.1551	19
19	W. Stevens	Manor	1:45.379	+6.346	18
20	R. Merhi	Manor	1:46.443	+7.410	20