(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)
Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes 1-2 in FP2 ahead of Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix. The 2008 world champion ended the day with a 1m 16.118s just ahead of Nico Rosberg in second place. Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel was third fastest for Red Bull Racing. The German said:
'It was a bit of a shame to lose some laps; we had something with the gearbox, but fortunately we got it checked and went out again. It meant that we were maybe a bit off the rhythm compared to some of the others, but it seemed to be alright and we still got some good laps completed. I think there’s still a lot if improvement we can do, the Mercedes is very quick, but it was okay as a start to the weekend.
Kimi Raikkonen recovered from an early spin and power problem this morning to finish the session in fourth place with team mate Fernando Alonso in 5th place.
'It was a bit of a shame to lose some laps; we had something with the gearbox, but fortunately we got it checked and went out again. It meant that we were maybe a bit off the rhythm compared to some of the others, but it seemed to be alright and we still got some good laps completed. I think there’s still a lot if improvement we can do, the Mercedes is very quick, but it was okay as a start to the weekend.
Kimi Raikkonen recovered from an early spin and power problem this morning to finish the session in fourth place with team mate Fernando Alonso in 5th place.
It was a great afternoon session for the Williams Martini Racing duo of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas as they finished the session in 6th and 7 place respectively. This will be encouraging for the Williams team as in Canada last season Bottas started the Grand Prix from third on the grid and the team showed today that the FW36 is well suited to the characteristics of the Il Notre Dame circuit.
It was a reserve order for the McLaren pair this afternoon as Kevin Magnussen put in impressive times to finish just ahead of team mate Jenson Button in 8th place while Jenson Button finished the session in 9th place just ahead of Toro Rosso's Jean Eric Vergne who rounded out the top ten for the Italian team. It was a far better afternoon session for the Lotus F1 Team as Romain Grosjean finished the day in eleventh place just ahead of the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo who was down the order in twelve place. The Australian stated:
'The driving was good today, but looking at the time sheets we’ve got some work to do! We got some good references to go by and we need to put some work in tonight – I enjoy driving around here and there are a lot of fans in the'. grandstands. It seems that we’re close to some of the other teams, so we’ve just got to extract as much from the cars as we can over the weekend.;
'The driving was good today, but looking at the time sheets we’ve got some work to do! We got some good references to go by and we need to put some work in tonight – I enjoy driving around here and there are a lot of fans in the'. grandstands. It seems that we’re close to some of the other teams, so we’ve just got to extract as much from the cars as we can over the weekend.;
After finishing this morning's session in eleventh and 12th place respectively the Sahara Force India duo of Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez finished the afternoon session in 13th and 14th place just ahead of Pastor Maldonado in the second Lotus. The Venezuelan appeared to struggle once again with the E22 in the second session.
Hulkenberg said after today's running:
'We’ve had a pretty good day of practice, although there is obviously more work to be done. The car feels very driveable around the circuit, but I feel there is more to come from it, especially on the super-soft tyres. Our target is to squeeze out a bit more performance overnight. The whole field is very competitive and close here and finding the perfect balance will be crucial. It's about getting all the pieces of the puzzle together and having a clean lap in qualifying.'
Sergio Perez also commented on his day's running:
'It was quite a normal day of practice. Trying some different settings and aero parts this morning, and then looking at the soft and super-soft tyres in the afternoon. It went to plan, apart from a small problem at the end of the day, which is why we had to finish our session a little earlier than expected. The positive thing, however, is that we have good information to improve our performance tomorrow. We have a fair bit of work to do tonight to get in the best shape possible for tomorrow's qualifying and obviously for the race on Sunday.'
Hulkenberg said after today's running:
'We’ve had a pretty good day of practice, although there is obviously more work to be done. The car feels very driveable around the circuit, but I feel there is more to come from it, especially on the super-soft tyres. Our target is to squeeze out a bit more performance overnight. The whole field is very competitive and close here and finding the perfect balance will be crucial. It's about getting all the pieces of the puzzle together and having a clean lap in qualifying.'
Sergio Perez also commented on his day's running:
'It was quite a normal day of practice. Trying some different settings and aero parts this morning, and then looking at the soft and super-soft tyres in the afternoon. It went to plan, apart from a small problem at the end of the day, which is why we had to finish our session a little earlier than expected. The positive thing, however, is that we have good information to improve our performance tomorrow. We have a fair bit of work to do tonight to get in the best shape possible for tomorrow's qualifying and obviously for the race on Sunday.'
Sahara Force India's deputy team principal Bob Fearnley commented:
'We’ve had a solid day of practice and we're quite satisfied with things. The only real issue was a small problem with Sergio's car, which cost us the last few minutes of the afternoon. Despite this, the feared rain didn't materialise and we could use the two sessions to go through almost our entire programme. We were able to complete the necessary long runs and we tested both tyre compounds extensively. Our race pace looks better than our one-lap pace, but the track here in Montreal tends to evolve significantly during the weekend so there will be some set-up changes to make ahead of qualifying to find the sweet spot for the car.'
Adrian Sutil led home his Sauber team mate Esteban Gutierrez as the pair ended the day in 16th and 17th place just ahead of the Marussia of Max Chilton. Daniil Kyvat was forced to sit out much of the session as a result of an issue with his car and as a result finished the day down in 19th place. Kamui Kobayshi was 20th for the Caterham F1 Team just ahead of team mate Marcus Ericsson while Marussia's Jules Bianchi suffered a problem with his Ferrari power unit and was unable to take part in the session.
Free Practice three gets underway from 3PM (Irish time tomorrow).
© Ben Johnston 2014
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