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Formula 1 Australian GP

2015 Australian Grand Prix Friday - Practice

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Button is running again. He's currently down in 16th, 5.3s off the pace.
Hulkenberg moves up from 12th to 10th place, demoting team-mate Perez, who has outpaced by half a second.
Hulkenberg is now the only car on track. Most drivers whose cars are functioning have now tried softs and are likely to move onto long runs.
Remember, we won't see Massa in this session due to a water leak.
Leading times:

1 Rosberg 1m27.697s
2 Hamilton 1m27.797s
3 Vettel 1m28.412s
4 Raikkonen 1m28.842s
5 Bottas 1m29.265s
6 Kvyat 1m30.016s
Hulkenberg is getting impatient, but he's told that "we've got a bit of an issue sorting out the front wing, and we'd rather get that right".
No improvement for Bottas, he stays fifth behind the Mercedes and Ferraris.
Bottas improves his sector one time on his next run, but it's not so good in sector two.
Hamilton is precisely one tenth of a second slower than Rosberg around the lap as he goes into second place.
Now Hamilton beats Rosberg's time in sector two.
Maldonado is complaining of "no power" and the Lotus team tells him to come into the pits. As we hear that on the radio, we get a replay of him going off at Turn 9.
Hamilton's flying lap on softs isn't as quick as Rosberg's in sector one.
Stopwatch
Rosberg completes his flying lap in 1m27.697s, 0.715s up on the deposed Vettel.
Bottas also makes a leap on softs, going ahead of Verstappen into fourth.
Rosberg is on course to go emphatically fastest again.
Sainz jumps to fourth and splits the Mercedes.
Time to see what Mercedes can do on softs - fastest first sector yet from Rosberg.
Midfield:

11 Verstappen
12 Hulkenberg
13 Ericsson
14 Nasr
15 Button
16 Magnussen

Not running: Ricciardo, Massa, Stevens, Merhi
Order recap:

1 Vettel
2 Raikkonen
3 Rosberg
4 Hamilton
5 Maldonado
6 Kvyat
7 Sainz
8 Bottas
9 Grosjean
10 Perez
The Sauber trundles into the pits and pulls up outside the garage.
Sauber informs Ericsson that the tyre is rubbing on the bodywork, and he confirms that he reckons he can make it back to the pits slowly.
On-board replays show that Ericsson suffered the problem as he exited the final corner. It looks like it could have broken on the exit kerb, which isn't particularly aggressive, it's worth saying.
Grosjean improves his time and moves up to sixth, ahead of Perez and Sainz.
Painfully, Ericsson has to a whole lap with that problem to get back to the pits. The cameras picked him up heading into Turn 1, and he's now at the Turn 9/10 chicane.
Smoke coming from the left-rear wheel of Ericsson's Sauber - which is at a strange angle. "Something is broken," he says, speculating that it's a suspension failure.
Button is told that - because McLaren lost some time at the start of the session - if he's "got a feel" for the car, then it might be worth coming into the pits for some planned changes and a switch to the soft tyres.
Perez pops the Force India up to sixth on soft tyres.
Order now:

1 Vettel
2 Raikkonen
3 Rosberg
4 Hamilton
5 Bottas
6 Sainz
7 Grosjean
8 Verstappen
9 Kvyat
10 Maldonado
Perez has a Magnussen-like twitch in Turn 6, but unlike the McLaren he keeps it on the black stuff.
Vettel pits rather than completing that lap, but he'd been fastest of anyone in sector one and did a personal best in sector two.
Rosberg improves, staying third but bringing the gap down to 0.6s. Vettel is on another fast lap.
"Getting a bit of rear movement under braking, I think it's rear locking," says Button, who is always fascinating to listen to when he's feeding-back to his engineers on the radio.
Vettel's current benchmark time is already 1.2s better than the best from this session last year.
Rosberg goes third, doing a 1m29.937s.
Nasr moves into 12th, ahead of Sauber team-mate Ericsson.
Sainz brings Toro Rosso up to fifth, albeit 2.8s off the pace.
"The front is a little bit better now but still not ideal," says Raikkonen.

By: AUTOSPORT staff, Jack Benyon, Ben Anderson, Glenn Freeman

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