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McLaren-Mercedes on Friday set the pace in Formula One practice in Abu Dhabi, as both Red Bull Racing and Ferrari suffered crashes.
After McLaren’s Jenson Button topped the times in the first session, teammate Lewis Hamilton proved to be fastest in the second session, which ran into darkness. Button underlined McLaren’s form at the spectacular Yas Island venue by taking second place.
“It was a really positive day for me,” said Hamilton. “The car feels good, our long-run pace doesn’t feel too bad and we seem to be quite competitive. The car feels a lot better than it did at the last race, so I really hope I’ll be able to keep that going throughout the remainder of the weekend.
“The track just got better and better today, so I slowly chipped away at the setup. The tires are behaving well; at the last race I had degradation and didn’t have the pace, so it feels much better this weekend. That’s a real positive for me.”
Fernando Alonso was third fastest for Ferrari but missed the end of the session after crashing at turn one, damaging the left rear of the F150 Italia. The accident came a few minutes after Sebastian Vettel went off in the same place. The Red Bull wasn’t damaged badly, and after retrieving the car via an access road, the mechanics were able to get the German out for the last few minutes. Both drivers admitted that they had strayed a little too close to the curb on the entry to the corner.
“I think I braked on the outside of the corner,” the Ferrari driver said. “There is a curb on the outside, in braking, and looking at the videos all of us that had incidents there or were running off-line, we braked on the outside curb. We try to maximize the track in all the corners, but we need to be very careful in turn one tomorrow, when we arrive to [the final round of qualifying], and be a little bit calm on that braking.”
It was the fourth time this year that the German has crashed on a Friday, after Turkey, Canada and Japan.
“I lost the car at the entrance,” Vettel said. “I was obviously a little bit too wide, a little bit too much on the curb, and I lost the rear. I couldn’t catch the car any more. I was quite lucky to get out again at the end, there wasn’t any damage apart from the front wing, which was good information. So we’ll see what we can do now.”
Vettel lost more than 30 minutes and finished the day in sixth place, behind Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and his own RBR teammate, Mark Webber.
Michael Schumacher was best of the rest for Mercedes GP in seventh, while Force India looked strong as Adrian Sutil took eighth, and Paul Di Resta was ninth. Kamui Kobayashi completed the top 10 for Sauber.
In the first session, young Canadian racer Robert Wickens made his public debut in an F1 car as he drove Jérôme D’Ambrosio’s Virgin, staying within 0.5 second of teammate Timo Glock’s best time.
Other test drivers in action in the morning were GP2 Series champion Romain Grosjean--back in the Renault for the first time since 2009--and Jean-Eric Vergne, who impressed in a Scuderia Toro Rosso.
