Mercedes dominates again in second practice

Mercedes continued its domination of Friday Practice during the second session of the day as Nico Rosberg once again topped the time sheets in front of team mate Lewis Hamilton. Next in line came Sebastian Vettel for Ferrari almost three-quarters of a second slower. Vettel's Ferrari team mate Kimi Raikkonen came next in fourth at Williams driver Valtteri Bottas rounded out the top five.

Not everything went well for Williams however as Felipe Massa was not able to take part in the session because the team had to change his engine due to a water leak. On top of Massa needing to change his engine, Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo had to suffer an engine change as well and could also not take part in the second Friday Practice session. This can be very worrying for both drivers because if the engine is damaged beyond further use then they only have three more engines to last the year before facing penalties. Also not taking part in the session again were the two Manor drivers Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi.

Sauber however did take part in this session to turn in their first laps of the season. Felipe Nasr got a decent number of laps in with 31 and finished in 11th position but team mate Marcuse Ericsson was not able to complete much running due to a left rear suspension failure. The team did not take part in the first session due the legal issues with Giedo van der Garde.

McLaren suffered another difficult session as Kevin Magnussen brought out a red flag early in the session as he crashed into the wall at turn 6. Magnussen later tweeted that the crash was his fault but it cost McLaren much needed track experience as he could only get 4 laps in beforehand. The other McLaren of Jenson Button managed to get 21 laps in before reporting that he felt a loss of power towards the end of the session. Button's time was only good enough to place him in 13th. If this is the true pace of the McLaren-Honda the team may have more issues than we thought they had heading into the race. On top of an unreliable engine they may have a slow chassis or engine as well.

Also of note in the session was Max Verstappen's running was limited due to a battery failure. Overall though, it seems as if Rosberg has the edge over Hamilton today topping him in both sessions but the margin is close. We will see if Rosberg can carry this through the rest of the weekend or if Hamilton can respond.

Friday 2nd Practice Results

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m27.697s	-	29
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m27.797s	0.100s	25
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1m28.412s	0.715s	33
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m28.842s	1.145s	33
5	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1m29.265s	1.568s	32
6	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull-Renault	1m30.016s	2.319s	27
7	Carlos Sainz Jr.	Toro Rosso-Renault	1m30.071s	2.374s	41
8	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Mercedes	1m30.104s	2.407s	11
9	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Mercedes	1m30.205s	2.508s	37
10	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1m30.473s	2.776s	30
11	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	1m30.755s	3.058s	31
12	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1m30.980s	3.283s	32
13	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda	1m31.387s	3.690s	21
14	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso-Renault	1m31.395s	3.698s	6
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1m32.303s	4.606s	14
16	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Honda	1m33.289s	5.592s	4
17	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-Renault	No Time		0
18	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	No Time		0
19	Will Stevens	Manor-Ferrari	No Time		0
20	Roberto Merhi	Manor-Ferrari	No Time		0