Webber leads second practice in Korea

Mark Webber led the second practice session for the first ever Korean Grand Prix. He became the first driver to go under the 1.38 mark. Fernando Alonso was 2nd, followed by Lewis Hamilton.

Mark Webber led FP2 in Korea

Robert Kubica was 4th, Jenson Button 5th, and Felipe Massa 6th, who was complaining of his Ferrari being “undriveable” in the final sector of the lap. Sebastian Vettel, Vitaly Petrov, Nico Rosberg and Kamui Kobayashi finished the top 10.

Nick Heidfeld was 11th, followed by Michael Schumacher. Rubens Barrichello headed the two Force India cars, with Liuzzi leading Sutil. Nico Hulkenberg was 16th, while Toro Rosso were 17th and 18th.

The Lotus duo of Trulli and Kovalainen stamped their authority on the best new team title, with both drivers being within several hundreths of a second within each other. Timo Glock then headed Lucas di Grassi, who had been given back his car from Jerome D’Ambrosio. Sakon Yamamoto was 7.2 seconds off the pace, while Bruno Senna only managed 3 laps thanks to his car being repaired for most of the session, after his suspension failure in FP1.

This second session was much more eventful, with Sakon Yamamoto crashing at Turn 16 within a few minutes of the session starting. Several turns, especially Turn 12 in particular, caught out many drivers such as Mark Webber. Vitantonio Liuzzi stopped on track with a few minutes to go in the session, while Jenson Button experienced a fault with his exhaust.

I would post the times for this session, but my chart isn’t uploading properly. I’ll try to fix this soon.

Hamilton leads inaugural Korean GP Friday Practice 1

Lewis Hamilton topped the very first Formula 1 practice session on the new Korean Grand Prix circuit. He was closely followed behind by Robert Kubica and Nico Rosberg.

Lewis Hamilton topped the first Korean GP practice session

A problem with his rear wing meant he had to wait until the dying minutes to set his fast laps, but this didn’t deter Hamilton, who set a 1.40.887, despite only setting 15 laps, one of the fewest out of all the drivers. Kubica was 0.081 seconds slower.

Sebastian Vettel was 4th, while Jenson Button was an entire second off Lewis’ pace in 5th. Michael Schumacher and Mark Webber were 6th and 7th, Nick Heidfeld 8th, and the two Williams drivers filled the top 10.

Vitaly Petrov was 11th, Felipe Massa 12th, Kamui Kobayashi 13th, Adrian Sutil 14th and Fernando Alonso 15th. While the Ferraris are currently well off the pace, it is believed they were running race fuel strategies, which would mean that they have potential to be 2-3 seconds faster.

Sebastien Buemi, Vitantonio Liuzzi, and Jaime Alguersuari were 16th, 17th and 18th. Timo Glock was 19th for Virgin, a full second ahead of Jerome D’Ambrosio, who took part in another F1 test session as part of his gradual move into a race drive in the next few years.

Heikki Kovalainen was 21st, while the Hispania cars were a spectacular 9 seconds off the pace, with Sakon Yamamoto half a second faster than Bruno Senna. However, Senna only did half the amount of laps as Yamamoto, as a suspension failure left him spinning out at Turn 7 after 15 laps. Jarno Trulli was last, as he had stopped on track due to a gearbox problem.

The track, predictably, started off very dusty and lacked grip, so the times improved well over the session. The newly laid track caught many drivers out, including both Ferraris, Jenson Button, Kamui Kobayashi and Sakon Yamamoto.

Pos.		Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap	Laps
1		Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’40.887		15
2		Robert Kubica	Renault	1’40.968	0.081	18
3		Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’41.152	0.265	21
4		Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’41.371	0.484	18
5		Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’41.940	1.053	16
6		Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’42.022	1.135	25
7		Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’42.202	1.315	23
8		Nick Heidfeld	Sauber-Ferrari	1’42.293	1.406	18
9		Nico Hülkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1’42.678	1.791	21
10		Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1’42.883	1.996	23
11		Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1’42.896	2.009	22
12		Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’43.054	2.167	25
13		Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’43.309	2.422	20
14		Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1’43.602	2.715	18
15		Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’43.928	3.041	21
16		Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’43.940	3.053	23
17		Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1’44.887	4.000	21
18		Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’45.141	4.254	26
19		Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1’45.588	4.701	20
20		Jerome d’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1’46.613	5.726	17
21		Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth	1’47.115	6.228	22
22		Sakon Yamamoto	HRT-Cosworth	1’50.347	9.460	29
23		Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	1’50.821	9.934	15
24		Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1’51.701	10.814	11