Lewis Hamilton overcame problems with his car’s handling to return Mercedes to the top of the timesheets in the second practice session for the Chinese Grand Prix yesterday.

Hamilton completed 25 laps of the 5.4 km Shanghai International Circuit in the afternoon session to end the day with a best time of one minute 38.315 seconds, edging out the morning’s pacesetter Fernando Alonso by a tenth of a second.

Formula One world championship leader Nico Rosberg in the other Mercedes was third, the German falling four tenths of a second short of his team-mate’s benchmark.

Despite ending the day fastest, the two practice sessions were far from trouble-free for Hamilton, who arrives in China having won the last two races and is gunning for his first grand prix hat-trick.

The Briton was limited to running nine laps in the morning after a suspension issue brought an early end to his session.

The problem persisted into the second 90-minute session and Hamilton was forced to miss out on the opening half-hour of the post-lunch action as his team worked to fix his car.

Hamilton’s Mercedes team have set the standard this season, the German marque having swept to three dominant wins in as many races.

However, the Brackley-based team did not seem to have as big an edge over the opposition as in Bahrain two weeks ago, though they could well have been masking their true pace.

Fernando Alonso in particular looked strong in his Ferrari.

Having set the pace in the morning, the Spaniard swapped the fastest time with Rosberg’s Mercedes for most of the afternoon before teams switched their focus to high-fuel long runs.

“We have brought some small updates here, which we already tried at the Bahrain test,” Alonso said after practice.

“Everything worked well and that’s good news. Leaving aside the performance of the others, I am happy with what we have done today,” he added.