Hamilton tops first free practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Malaysia, Sepang International Circuit

Lews Hamilton topped the timesheets in the opening practice session at Malaysia. The McLaren driver was half a second faster than Sebastian Vettel, followed by both Mercedes AMG cars. Jenson Button meanwhile had an oil leak on his car that cut his own running short.

On the struggling end, Narain Karthikeyan stopped on track with the HRT, while Ferrari also didn't enjoy the best of sessions, continuing their struggle to extract pace from the Ferrari F2012.

Results

Pos.	No	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:38.021	-	19
2	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:38.535	0.514	21
3	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG	1:38.813	0.792	21
4	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes AMG	1:38.826	0.805	19
5	10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:38.919	0.898	17
6	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:39.092	1.071	20
7	9	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:39.128	1.107	22
8	11	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:39.298	1.277	23
9	3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:39.323	1.302	15
10	12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:39.440	1.419	19
11	19	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	1:39.724	1.703	23
12	18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:39.783	1.762	23
13	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:39.896	1.875	16
14	14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1:39.910	1.889	21
15	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:39.980	1.959	23
16	17	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Ferrari	1:40.099	2.078	23
17	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	1:40.247	2.226	19
18	16	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	1:40.469	2.448	23
19	21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	1:40.857	2.836	25
20	15	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:41.085	3.064	23
21	24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	1:43.170	5.149	18
22	25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	1:44.580	6.559	14
23	23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1:45.360	7.339	8
24	22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	1:45.528	7.507	18