Darkness fell as the sparks and lasers were out for the second practice session for the 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix. Nico Rosberg led team-mate Lewis Hamilton ahead of the Ferrari’s of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. The two men in red led the first session but were unable to attain their places at the top in the evening.
Valtteri Bottas was best of the rest in 5th ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and an impressive Pastor Maldonado in 7th. Felipe Nasr showed once again he has what it takes to race with the top drivers in 8th, the second Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat in 9th and Felipe Massa rounding out the top ten.
It was another problematic session for McLaren’s Jenson Button who stopped out on track for the second time today at turn 11 before his MP4-30 was returned to pits. Button ventured back out again with a little over 30 minutes remaining in the session. The Brit remained in 19th despite getting out but was unable to move up the order.
Button’s team-mate Fernando Alonso continued to impress and make us all believe McLaren may actually get out of Q1 for the first time this season. The Spaniard finished the first practice session in 7th, less than one second off pace-setter Kimi Raikkonen and was impressive with 12th in practice two.
Cars struggled on their qualifying runs in the final two corners with the back ends always trying to kick out. All drivers were also seeming to be struggling with understeer in the final sector.
It was a relatively quiet session before a bizarre incident involving Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez. Vettel reported a brake failure heading down into turn one coming out from the pits, Perez turned into turn one and clipped the German’s front wing. Debris on the track resulted in the only red flag of the session. Both drivers will visit the stewards to discuss the issue. Vettel went down to the Force India garage just before the end of practice to apologise to Perez.
Nico Rosberg also had an issue after he was told to pit with only a few minutes remaining in the session after being told by his engineers they saw something on the data they thought may be problematic but it is unclear what the issue was.
Raikkonen and Hamilton will also visit the stewards for “failing to leave the pit-lane correctly”. Both drivers went behind Marcus Ericsson who was parked along the pit-lane waiting for other drivers to leave the pits after the green light.
Image Courtesy Of Mercedes F1 Team
