Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton hits trouble as Rosberg sets pace

Nico Rosberg set the fastest time of first practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton stopped on track after four laps.

Reliability was a relative weakness for Mercedes in 2014, and problems surfaced again on Friday morning as Hamilton pulled to the side of the track at Turn 9 despite claiming he could have made it back to the pits. With Hamilton's car not delivering any telemetry, Mercedes said it was being cautious by asking him to stop and it was right to be as the team later confirmed an engine change was required.

Rosberg suffered from no such problems as he comfortably set the pace in the other Mercedes, clocking a 1:40.124. As in Melbourne, Ferrari was again the nearest challenger with Kimi Raikkonen just under 0.4s adrift in second place and Sebastian Vettel a further half second back as both cars improved right at the end of the session.

There were encouraging signs for two teams near the bottom of the times as Manor finally ran its car for the first time. Both Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi completed eight laps each, with Stevens the faster of the two but 6.5s off of Rosberg's pace on what was essentially an installation run for the car.

McLaren also showed signs of improvement, with both Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button completing solid running. Alonso ended the session 14th fastest - with the two Force Indias separating him from his team-mate - and was 2.7s off the pace, while the two cars managed 39 laps between them.

To highlight the gap between Mercedes, Ferrari and the rest, Romain Grosjean was 1.4s adrift of Rosberg in fourth place and 1.3s clear of Alonso's McLaren. Carlos Sainz Jr finished the session in fifth place ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen as all four Renault-powered cars finished the session in the top ten. Daniil Kvyat, however, complained of something "strange" to do with braking and power delivery.

Kvyat ended the session in ninth place behind Valtteri Bottas' Williams and ahead of Marcus Ericsson in the Sauber. Ferrari young driver Raffaele Marciello made his FP1 debut in the second Sauber, enjoying a solid session as he completed 13 laps and was half a second adrift of his team-mate.

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	N. Rosberg	Mercedes	1:40.124	20
02	K. Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:40.497	17
03	S. Vettel	Ferrari	1:40.985	13
04	R. Grosjean	Lotus	1:41.543	14
05	C. Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:41.596	26
06	D. Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:41.787	15
07	M. Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:41.803	23
08	V. Bottas	Williams	1:41.882	23
09	D. Kvyat	Red Bull	1:42.055	18
10	M. Ericsson	Sauber	1:42.064	16
11	F. Massa	Williams	1:42.103	23
12	P. Maldonado	Lotus	1:42.567	19
13	R. Marciello	Sauber	1:42.621	13
14	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:42.885	20
15	N. Hulkenberg	Force India	1:42.893	13
16	S. Perez	Force India	1:43.054	15
17	J. Button	McLaren	1:43.100	19
18	W. Stevens	Manor	1:46.686	8
19	R. Merhi	Manor	1:47.683	8
20	L. Hamilton	Mercedes		4

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.