Vettel satisfied with stellar showing

Sebastian Vettel admitted his outstanding Friday practice performance in Malaysia that saw him spend much of the second practice session in the company of Ferraris and McLarens at the top of the timing charts – despite driving for the lowly Toro Rosso team in a modified version of last year’s Red Bull car.

“Lap times don’t always tell the full story, but I think we can be happy with the afternoon, when we did quite a lot of laps," Vettel said. “Unfortunately, this morning we had a brake problem, but in the end it did not cost us too much time and we were able to continue with our program in the afternoon.

“We spent most of the time fine-tuning the car and finding the right balance, sorting out tire choice. It has been a good day and we have got plenty of data to study for tomorrow."

Teammate Sebastien Bourdais missed the whole afternoon session after his car broke down on his out-lap. “This circuit is very nice and very fast, a really good track," he said. “However there wasn’t much grip so it was difficult to get a full understanding of the situation.

“Then it was a case of moving forward step by step, waiting for the track to come to us. Unfortunately, this afternoon, we had a gearbox problem right at the start, after a ratio change, and this error on our part broke the engine. The car seemed not too bad this morning and we were planning to see how it felt on different tires this afternoon, but it was not to be."