Malaysian Grand Prix: Mercedes still on top, but others getting closer

In perfect hot conditions at Sepang, majority of the teams managed to complete their schedule in the second practice session, although the pace of the teams was still quite far off from the timings of last year. Vettel was quickest in this session last year with a time of 1:36:569, and no one expected the teams to go quicker just yet. Nico Rosberg set the pace of 1:39:909 to continue the impressive form that the Mercedes is in at the moment. Kimi Raikkonen once again managed to squeeze into P2, and Vettel surprisingly slotted himself into P3.

Red Bull are making strides with each lap

It was pretty evident that the both the Lotus drivers, and Perez had to get some mileage under their belt, and they were the early runners of the session. Unfortunately for Lotus though, Grosjean suffered gearbox issues twice into the session, thus halting any progress that they could make while Maldonado completely missed the session. Elsewhere Kobayashi was the other driver to miss out on his FP2 session.

The Top 11 drivers were separated by 0.868 seconds while Magnussen was just over a second away from the Top 10. Several drivers had twitchy moments in this session, with a wild one coming from Hulkenberg and Ricciardo, both of whom could have lost it completely. The last corner seems to pose a bit of an issue to few drivers, like Hulkenberg and Vergne, who completely spun around before making a recovery.An interesting point of contention is that the pace of Mercedes cars in the long runs doesn’t seem to be all that impressive especially Hamilton’s. We aren’t sure of their program, but it was evident that the pace was patchy across their stint.

Comparatively, Williams managed to add many miles to their total mileage, with 34 laps to Massa and 35 to Bottas, both of whom managed to squeeze into the top 7, and these two form one of the most underrated teammate rivalries of the season. Ferrari as evident from Kimi’s radio comment are suffering from degradation issues, but both Alonso and Kimi are closer to Mercedes than ever before, and this will be a nice contest to watch in the race.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Force India seems to have an edge when compared to their nearest rivals Toro Rosso and Sauber. Marussia made remarkable progress with their car, and Caterham are struggling to fix their loopholes.

It started to rain in Malaysia just after the Practice Sessions, and with this very unpredictable weather, we could see a wet race. But until then, Mercedes are the team to beat with the others – Ferrari, Williams, and Red Bull – right up there as well. Of all the top teams, McLaren has fallen off the radar, and this is not what was expected of them going into the race.

by Bala Yogesh