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 Kimi Raikkonen chased home the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg in the
morning and repeated the feat behind the German's team mate Lewis
Hamilton in the afternoon, trailing both by identical 0.373-second
margins at a circuit where he has won twice before.
Sebastian Vettel also looked far closer to the Mercedes duo than he
did in finishing a distant third, more than 30 seconds adrift, on an
otherwise impressive debut with the Italian outfit at the
season-opening race in Australia two weeks ago.
The German was third in the first practice session but spun off at
Turn 11 in the second when he was on course for a quick lap on the
faster medium tires and was forced to settle for seventh place along
with a solid race simulation run.
"Today we did all we were supposed to do," Raikkonen told reporters.
"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 lap time were not
so bad."
Ruing a red flag during the second session when he was fitted with
the faster medium-compound tires, Raikkonen still feels there is
room for improvement.
"The car is still not perfect, but I'm sure we can improve for
tomorrow," he added. "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."
Vettel was also disappointed with his momentary loss of control but
still saw the positive side of his day's work.
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"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 Friday," he said,
admitting that Mercedes were still some way ahead in terms of
performance.
"It will be close between us and Williams, and probably Red Bull as
well," the four-times world champion added. "Mercedes didn't have a
clean day but are still very strong but we have to look now after
ourselves."
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
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