Hamilton hits back to lead Rosberg in FP2

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Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the second practice session for the Malaysian Grand Prix, leading team-mate Nico Rosberg by 0.2s.

Rosberg had been fastest by half a second in FP1 on Friday morning - albeit it with the two Mercedes drivers on different compounds - but on comparable laps on soft tyres in the afternoon it was Hamilton who hit back to post a 1:34.944.

AS IT HAPPENED: Malaysian Grand Prix - FP2

The two Mercedes drivers were fairly comfortable in their advantage over the rest of the field, with Sebastian Vettel third but over 0.6s slower than Hamilton and 0.428s adrift of championship leader Rosberg. Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was again fourth as Ferrari enjoyed a slight advantage over Red Bull, with the Finn completing his soft tyre run late after complaining of handling issues earlier in the session.

Max Verstappen was fifth fastest, 0.2s adrift of Raikkonen. Of more concern for Red Bull will be the lack of progress the team made on the soft compound tyre having not run it in FP1, with Verstappen 1.1s slower than Hamilton and team-mate Daniel Ricciardo 0.3s further back in eighth place.

Between the two Red Bulls were Sergio Perez in the Force India and Fernando Alonso in the McLaren, who were also joined by their team-mates in the top ten. With the Williams pair of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa 13th and 15th respectively, it marks an encouraging start for Force India in its battle for fourth in the constructors' championship. Massa also had some of his running limited by a slight issue fitting a set of tyres, which required modifications to his wheel hubs.

Jolyon Palmer was another driver to enjoy a relatively strong session, with the Briton finishing 12th fastest and just 0.2s off the top ten. Renault completed an impressive repair job to get Palmer's team-mate Kevin Magnussen out on track following his fire in FP1, with Magnussen managing 19 laps in the second half of the session as he ended up 19th.

Palmer did have an off-track moment at Turn 14, following Pascal Wehrlein in running wide as drivers got to grips with a new track surface over long runs.

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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.