Formula One news

Steady start for McLaren

McLaren Mercedes drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton finished today's first practice session in second and third respectively with times of 1:35.220 and 1:35.712 completing 24 and 22 laps. In the second practice Lewis was ninth with 1:36.797 and Fernando was 12th with 1:37.041 with 30 and 26 laps respectively. 

"The team tested here last week when most of the set-up was done so we had a good basis for today's practice," said Alonso. "There is now some more data added to the file which we will look at overnight, but everything went as expected. I spent some time just getting used to Sepang again as I wasn't testing last week, but there were no surprises, and I really enjoy this track."

Hamilton commented, "This is my first Malaysian Grand Prix, but I got to know the circuit well during last week's test. The heat and humidity are as I expected and have trained for. The practice today was pretty straight forward, and we made further steps. The circuit conditions are constantly changing which makes it challenging to find the right balance. I'm looking forward to qualifying tomorrow."

Team boss Ron Dennis added, "A solid start to our Malaysian Grand Prix where we continued the work from last week's Sepang test. Today the main focus was on tyre evaluation on a circuit where traditionally tyres have very high levels of degradation. This impacted significantly on our lap times. We look forward to qualifying tomorrow."

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