Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 under lights in FP2

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)

 

Lewis Hamilton lead a Mercedes 1-2 once again in the second Free Practice session for Sunday's night race at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain. The second session was under floodlight's simulating the conditions that the team's and driver's will experience during Sunday's race.

 

Hamilton's fastest time in Free Practice Two was a 1m 34.325s, the 2008 world champion finished the session three tenths of a second ahead of team mate Nico Rosberg. It was another good session for Ferrari's Fernando Alonso as the Spaniard ended the session in third place with a fastest time of 1m 35.360 showing that the team have made progress with the F14T in the week between Malaysia and Bahrain.

 

While Alonso was third, it was a difficult session for his team mate Kimi Raikkonen as the Finn ended the day down the order in 14th place.

 

Back at the front Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo was the fastest of the Renault powered teams as the Australian finished FP2 in fourth place just ahead of Williams Martini Racing's Felipe Massa who was fifth for the Grove based team who showed that their pace from final test in Bahrain last month is still there. The Brazilian finished the session just ahead of McLaren's Jenson Button.

 

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel, who is due to meet with FIA president Jean Todt this weekend was 7th in his Red Bull RB10 just ahead of Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat.

 

Kevin Magnussen was 9th for McLaren while former McLaren driver Sergio Perez rounded out the top ten in his Force India. Valtteri Bottas, who missed the opening session to allow Felipe Nasr to run the car was just outside the top ten in 11th place for the Williams Martini Racing Team.

 

Toro Rosso's Jean Eric Vergne was 12th for the Italian team while Nico Hulkenberg was 13th. Adrian Sutil recovered after stopping out on track to post the 15th fastest time for the Sauber F1 Team, just behind the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen and just ahead of his Sauber team mate Esteban Gutierrez.

 

From there they finished two by two with both Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean racking up more mileage for the Lotus F1 Team as they finished this evening's session in 17th and 18th respectively.

 

Jules Bianchi managed to finished the session just ahead of his Marussia team mate Max Chilton as the Banbury based outfits cars were 19th and 20th. After sitting out the opening session to allow Robin Frijns time in the car Caterham's Kamui Kobayashi finished the session in 21st just ahead of team mate Marcus Ericsson who rounded out the timesheets.

 

©Ben Johnston 2014