World championship leader Nico Rosberg ended the opening day of practice for the Formula One Japanese Grand Prix in a strong position after setting the pace in both sessions yesterday.
The German set his fastest time of one minute, 32.250 seconds on an overcast afternoon in Suzuka in the second of the two sessions, after also having topped the timesheets at the end of the morning’s opening 90-minutes of running.
Rosberg’s Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton was second in both and while the Briton was 0.214 seconds off his title-rival’s pace in the morning he closed the gap to just 0.072 seconds in the second session.
Rosberg extended his advantage over Hamilton to 23 points in the overall standings after the reigning champion was forced to retire 16 laps from the finish while holding a comfortable lead during the last race in Malaysia.
Hamilton heads into tomorrow’s Japanese round desperately needing to revive his title hopes by clinching a third successive win at the Suzuka circuit.
Their Mercedes team could also wrap up their third successive constructors’ crown tomorrow.
Kimi Raikkonen ended third-fastest for Ferrari, 0.323 seconds off Rosberg’s pace.
The Finn had been fourth-quickest in the morning behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who was fifth fastest in the second session.
Vettel heads into the weekend carrying a three-place grid penalty for tipping Rosberg into a spin in Malaysia.
Max Verstappen, sixth in the morning, split the two scarlet cars in fourth.
His team-mate Daniel Ricciardo who inherited the win in Malaysia after Hamilton retired, fell to 12th in the second session after he was forced to abandon his lap when the virtual safety car was deployed after Esteban Gutierrez ground to a halt by the side of the track.
Meanwhile, Force India continued to show a strong turn of speed.
Mexican Sergio Perez went sixth fastest ahead of German Nico Huelkenberg with the duo having set the seventh and eighth-fastest times in the morning.
Fernando Alonso, who survived an encounter with the barriers after losing control of his car at the fast Spoon corner early in the first session, ended the day eighth.
Hamilton’s engine troubles just bad luck, says Mercedes chief
Lewis Hamilton’s engine problems are down to bad luck and “anybody with an ounce of intelligence” knows Mercedes did not sabotage the Briton’s car in Malaysia last weekend, team technical head Paddy Lowe said yesterday.
Hamilton retired at Sepang when his car’s engine suffered a fiery failure 16 laps from the end while he was leading the race.
He said afterwards that “someone doesn’t want me to win”, later clarifying that he was referring to a “higher power” and not the team.
Lowe told reporters that it was just chance.
“We all know that you can throw three double-sixes in a row. That is possible, statistically. And yet when you see it done, emotionally you feel ‘how did that happen’? We have got a little bit of that scenario with Lewis,” he said.
“It is the way the dice have been thrown. Things do go wrong. We understand that and it just so happens that, by pure coincidence, that has occurred repeatedly on Lewis’s car.”