Fri: Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull

Lewis Hamilton secured yet another P1 for Mercedes, quickest of all in FP2 for the Malaysian GP. Kimi Raikkonen was second…

Mercedes:
Lewis Hamilton: "It was an amazing job by the guys to get me back out this afternoon – particularly here in such tough conditions, so I’m very grateful to them. It’s not an easy track and the temperatures also make it difficult with the tyres, so it never helps to lose such a big chunk of a session. But fortunately I got a few laps in at the end on a longer stint. In terms of setup I didn’t have time to make any changes – I just went with what we brought over from the last race. It’s probably quite a bit off where I’ll eventually want it so there’s definitely improvements to be made. We’ll need to work hard too as Ferrari looked great out there. It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow."

Nico Rosberg: "I had a good morning session but I didn’t get it right with the option tyres in the afternoon, so I need to find out why that was. In general it was a difficult day for the team as we had reliability issues on Lewis’ car and which meant he missed a session. The conditions are really crazy out there. It’s so hot, the temperatures are really unbelievable. So us drivers and the cars have to adapt to that which is a big challenge. We also learned that Ferrari is strong again so it will be an interesting weekend."

Ferrari:
Kimi Raikkonen: "Today we did all we were supposed to do. In the morning the feeling with the car was better, in the afternoon was a bit more tricky, we had some handling issues and some problems with the wind and the heat, but the laptime were not so bad. Unluckily we had red flag when we went out with new softer tyres.The car is still not perfect, but I’m sure we can improve for tomorrow. We have some work to do on the set up to make everything easier, but we’ll do our best and we’ll see where we end up in qualifying."

Sebastian Vettel: "All in all it was a decent day. It was quite hot and slippery, which makes it difficult for the cars to work with the tyres. I am not entirely happy with myself, I was pushing too much, but it didn’t work out in the end and I spun. But if you have to choose a day where you want to try things, you choose the Friday. It will be close between us and Williams, and probably Red Bull as well. Mercedes didn’t have a clean day but is still very strong. But we have to look now after ourselves."

Red Bull:
Daniil Kvyat: "We had a few small issues at the end of the session, but nothing too big and it looks better for us here; we got some good laps today. We are looking to make some steps overnight and we will keep working. There is definitely potential and things are looking better compared to Melbourne, we just need to keep working hard. The time sheets look good, but it’s Friday, so you can’t read much into that and it’s more important to see what happens tomorrow and Sunday. We will keep fighting!"

Daniel Ricciardo: "Some things are definitely positive and the bulk of the driveability issues we had in Melbourne are a lot better now. The car was a lot nicer to drive. We got to do a few set up things this morning then we had a few issues this afternoon which limited our running. But there are some positives and we got some good feedback from Dany; he wasn’t too far off the pace of the Ferrari’s so that’s good and encouraging for tomorrow. We are finding improvements. If I see rain before qualifying tomorrow, I’ll probably have a little smile!"