Russian GP: Hamilton dominates 2nd practice

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton made mockery of the second practice for the inaugural Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix putting in a best lap of 1m39.630s to take top spot by a massive 0.864s at the new Sochi circuit. Such was his dominance.

Hamilton was behind his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg by over two tenths of a second on the slower medium-compound Pirellis early on, but on the softs, he took the top spot on his second attempt before further extending his advantage on his final fast lap.

McLaren's Kevin Magnussen was 2nd quick but not in the same league as Hamilton.

Rosberg ran wide at the next to last corner and had to settle for 4th behind the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso, almost a full second behind his teammate.

Valtteri Bottas was fifth fastest ahead of Felipe Massa, in the second Williams and home hero Daniil Kvyat.

Sebastian Vettel, who complained of a lack of power from his lemon Renault engine was ninth fastest.

Scuderia Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne rounded out the top 10, almost two seconds down.

Quotes

Lewis Hamilton
I like the new circuit; it's got really good grip and great corners, with a lot at medium speed. It's good fun. The car has been feeling really good today. McLaren look close which is great for everyone as it should make for a decent race. We've got quite a good balance with the car so there are a lot of boxes ticked but we still have work to do to see if we can improve for tomorrow.

Nico Rosberg
That was a very productive day from an engineering point of view. The team decided to go two different ways in terms of setup. I took a very creative setup for my car in the second practice session, which didn't work out. So we will go back to the conservative way for tomorrow, because we saw that Lewis was very quick with that. The track is really cool to drive, very enjoyable. Turn three is a very special one and the asphalt is very smooth, so the tires last long. We won't see that many pit stops on Sunday, I guess. That's a bit surprising to me.

Toto Wolff
My compliments go to the organizers on the standard of the facility here in Sochi and this challenging new circuit. Like at any new track, the surface was very green today and we need running time for the grip levels to build up; we could see that lap times were improving all the way through both sessions. The conditions will probably ramp up even further through the weekend and we need to make the right decisions on set-up.

Paddy Lowe
The first thing we must say is that it's great to be here at this new circuit in Sochi. We are very happy with the circuit and the facilities and a great job has been done to prepare everything to a high standard. On track, the biggest challenge of the weekend will be to make the tires work on this brand new tarmac. The problems seem to be shared by all teams and we worked hard between the sessions to make some changes, with some moderate success. We expect tomorrow to prove very challenging as a number of our competitors were looking very fast today. On the positive front, we enjoyed a trouble-free day in terms of reliability, but we have a busy evening of analysis ahead of us.

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