Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRace weekend

Raikkonen fastest as Ferrari leads Mercedes in FP2

Kimi Raikkonen set the pace as Ferrari headed Mercedes during FP2 for the Chinese Grand Prix.

After Nico Rosberg was fastest in the opening session, Ferrari hit back on the supersoft compound tyre in the afternoon. Track evolution may have played a part as the Ferraris were two of the last cars to run on supersofts and Sebastian Vettel duly went quickest by 0.1s before team-mate Raikkonen beat him by the same margin courtesy of a 1:36.896.

Rosberg best lap was 1:37.133 and he was again faster than Hamilton, with the two Mercedes drivers separated by 0.196s. Hamilton struggled with his car in low speed corners during the morning session - spinning twice - and again went off at Turn 6 in FP2 before also running wide at the Turn 14 hairpin after locking up.

Daniel Ricciardo was fifth for Red Bull but over 1.2s adrift of Raikkonen's best time, with Max Verstappen in sixth place ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas.

Fernando Alonso was cleared to take part in the rest of the race weekend following FP1 and he set the 11th fastest time in the second session, exactly 0.1s quicker than team-mate Jenson Button.

One of the main focuses of the session involved the life of the supersoft tyre, with teams eager to work out how long they will be able to run at the start of the race on the softest compound if track conditions are similar. This weekend is the first time the supersoft has been used in China.

Only Manor and Sauber opted not to run the supersoft, setting their best times on the soft compound.

While the majority of drivers worked on set-ups, Kevin Magnussen did not take part in the session as Renault continued to investigate the cause of his left rear suspension failure during FP1. Pirelli had already ruled out any tyre failures being the cause of trouble for both Magnussen and Felipe Massa.

Another driver to hit problems was Esteban Gutierrez, with the Haas driver's woeful run of luck continuing. Having failed to set a time in the first session due to an electrical issue, a brake problem limited Gutierrez to just four laps in FP2.

AS IT HAPPENED: Chinese Grand Prix - FP2

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Chris Medland's 2016 Chinese Grand Prix preview

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:36.896	35
02	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:37.005	33
03	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:37.133	33
04	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:37.329	33
05	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:38.143	31
06	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:38.268	28
07	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:38.527	31
08	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:38.542	32
09	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:38.569	31
10	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:38.723	34
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:38.728	31
12	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:38.828	28
13	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:39.178	31
14	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:39.214	34
15	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:39.774	32
16	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:39.890	22
17	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor	1:39.941	36
18	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:39.979	35
19	Rio Haryanto	Manor	1:40.550	33
20	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:41.066	32
21	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas	1:42.954	4
22	Kevin Magnussen	Renault		0

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.