Lewis Hamilton dominated FP1 by lapping over 0.3 faster than Kimi Raikkonen on the slower, but more durable Soft Tyre. Valtteri Bottas was a close third, +0.458s behind his team mate while Sebastian could only manage 6th – +0.8 behind the English man.
In FP2 things got a lot more competitive with the top 4 cars separated by a mere 0.108s. Again it was the Mercedes and Hamilton pounding in fast laps to top the time sheets with a 1:33.482, only 0.007s fast than the Ice Man in second.
Both Ferrari and Red Bull picked up their pace to close the gap and give Mercedes a run for their money on one of their favorite tracks. The German team has won 6 times in China and unchallenged, specially for poles through the Turbo-hybrid era.
This weekend promises to be a close run, specially as the top 3 times had near identical long-run pace. The Ferrari was 0.1 faster per lap but only run a 3 lap stint – meaning tyre degradation didn’t have a chance to play its part so we suspected those times aren’t representative from the Italian team.
Both the Ferraris and Mercedes were running with their engines turned down as was evident from the top speed traps that were topped by Honda.
Once we get into Q3 we expect a lap improvement of at least 2 seconds.
