Sebastian Vettel dominated again the second practice session of Australia, the first GP of the season. Vettel set a time of 1:25.908 followed by his teammate Webber two tenths behind, and a surprising Nico Rosberg only four tenths behind the triple world champion’s time. After Rosberg came Raikkonen, Grosjean, Alonso and Hamilton.
Fernando Alonso has finished eight tenths away from Sebastian, something troubling for aspirations of the Spanish himself and Ferrari ahead of Sunday’s race. Supersoft tires did not work all that well in the Ferrari and this has been confirmed by Marc Gené: ”We have not taken full advantage of the super”.
In this session the teams have made a qualifying test with Media and supersoft tires and during the last half hour of testing all teams have staged long runs, in which has been seen the high wear of Pirelli. This race simulation of all teams was made on Friday as the weather forecast for Saturday predicts rain, so the teams had to advance a little with their testing program.
At the end of the session the two Mercedes surprised us with incidents. The first was Lewis Hamilton, who went off track and impacted (not powerfully) against the protections and the next minute Nico Rosberg stopped his car as his team indicated him to do so. Apparently, the problem was a failure in the gearbox .