Nico Rosberg led the first practice session for the Malaysian Grand Prix but team mate Lewis Hamilton’s weekend got off to a bad start as he failed to set a time.
Hamilton was on his fourth lap when his car came to a stop at turn nine. The team explained to Hamilton on the radio they were concerned about the life of his power unit, which still needs to be used in upcoming races.
While one Mercedes was worked on in the garage, Rosberg’s set a session-leading lap time of 1’40.124, half a second quicker than the team managed in first practice last year.
Sebastian Vettel made a late start to the weekend after problems in his Ferrari. But after taking to the track in the second half of the session he and Kimi Raikkonen took up the ‘best of the rest’ position behind the Mercedes.
The two Ferrari drivers waited until the final moments of the session to unleash the best from their cars, and Raikkonen got within 0.4s of Rosberg’s time.
On his first lap of the session Carlos Sainz Jnr reported a considerable improvement in drive-ability from his Renault power unit. He ended up quickest of the Renault-powered drivers ahead of Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull and the second Toro Rosso of Max Verstappen.
Fernando Alonso was 14th on in his first practice session at the wheel of the McLaren, which was the first time he’d driven the car since his February testing crash. He ended the session behind Ferrari development driver Raffaele Marciello, who was at the wheel of Felipe Nasr’s Sauber.
Manor finally began their participation in the 2015 championship as both Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi set times in the MR04. Stevens’ best effort of 1’46.686 was three-and-a-half seconds off the next-slowest car but, crucially, within 107% of Rosberg’s time, an early sign the team has realistic chances of qualifying for Sunday’s race.
Pos. | No. | Driver | Car | Best lap | Gap | Laps |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 6 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1’40.124 | 20 | |
2 | 7 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1’40.497 | 0.373 | 17 |
3 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 1’40.985 | 0.861 | 13 |
4 | 8 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus-Mercedes | 1’41.543 | 1.419 | 14 |
5 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’41.596 | 1.472 | 26 |
6 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull-Renault | 1’41.787 | 1.663 | 15 |
7 | 33 | Max Verstappen | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’41.803 | 1.679 | 23 |
8 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams-Mercedes | 1’41.882 | 1.758 | 23 |
9 | 26 | Daniil Kvyat | Red Bull-Renault | 1’42.055 | 1.931 | 18 |
10 | 9 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’42.064 | 1.940 | 16 |
11 | 19 | Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 1’42.103 | 1.979 | 23 |
12 | 13 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus-Mercedes | 1’42.567 | 2.443 | 19 |
13 | 36 | Raffaele Marciello | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’42.621 | 2.497 | 13 |
14 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren-Honda | 1’42.885 | 2.761 | 20 |
15 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes | 1’42.893 | 2.769 | 13 |
16 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 1’43.054 | 2.930 | 15 |
17 | 22 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Honda | 1’43.100 | 2.976 | 19 |
18 | 28 | Will Stevens | Manor-Ferrari | 1’46.686 | 6.562 | 8 |
19 | 98 | Roberto Merhi | Manor-Ferrari | 1’47.683 | 7.559 | 8 |
21 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 4 |
2015 Malaysian Grand Prix
- Emphatic Driver of the Weekend win for Vettel
- F1 bounces back with lively Malaysian Grand Prix
- 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix fans’ video gallery
- 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix team radio highlights
- 2015 Malaysian GP Predictions Championship results
jon snow
27th March 2015, 3:44
Interesting session! Not expecting Ferrari to be that close, but realistically speaking Mercedes can still walk this victory easily this weekend. I hope Ferrari can catch the development rate midway this season
karter22 (@karter22)
27th March 2015, 3:50
MERC is definitely sandbagging so it´ll look more interesting for the viewers.
I´m sort of getting used to seeing Sainz beating Verstapen.
ALO up on BUT for first practice, that seems encouraging. I hope Honda made an improvement. Ferrari is looking very good.
Redguy010 (@redguy010)
27th March 2015, 3:46
Wow Kimi… trying not to get my hopes up
Nase (@)
27th March 2015, 10:02
He was 2nd in last year’s friday practice, too (and rubbish after that …)
erix
27th March 2015, 12:35
Last year Kimi was 0.5s faster than Alonso up until Saturday Q1, but then the rain fell and Alonso suddenly laughing in the garage.
Nase (@)
29th March 2015, 0:00
Considering that he was virtually never faster on Saturday and/or Sunday, in Malaysia or elsewhere, I’m rather inclined to classify Räikkönen being faster on Friday as the actual anomaly.
LL
27th March 2015, 3:56
Kimi’s time was later in season with some more rubber on, if on same fuel loads i am sure Rosberg could improve that time about 0.5 at least.
Niyoko
27th March 2015, 4:12
On the brightside McLaren with Alonso were faster than Force India in FP1.
ColdFly F1 (@)
27th March 2015, 4:45
and both Manors. #glasshalffull
bigwilk (@bigwilk)
27th March 2015, 4:21
Go McLaren and Go Manor! Great progress from both!
David Not Coulthard (@davidnotcoulthard)
27th March 2015, 4:30
That’s one slow Manor. Have Manor gone to a coma and woken up in Barcelona?
Ah, yes, they did :)
Meander
27th March 2015, 7:46
I’m not sure what you mean, but that is very unfortunate wording mate.
Edgar
27th March 2015, 5:41
Mclaren didn’t look too bad.
Maybe Honda finally fixed all the reliability issues on this safety mode of the PU and we’ll see some aero upgrades now that they can test it.
BigAlex
27th March 2015, 6:37
Hey Williams?! Push it! push it!
Diego (@ironcito)
27th March 2015, 11:20
A la la la la long
Cabuna
27th March 2015, 11:37
Very strange to see the gaps of Kimi and Vettel from the fastest time set by Mercedes in 1st and 2nd practice sessions. Kimi’s car was 0.373 seconds slower than the fastest Mercedes on both sessions. Vettel was 0.862 and 0.861 seconds slower in FP1 and FP2 respectively than the fastest times set by Mercedes.