Abu Dhabi: Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel trained his sights on a fifth successive race win after topping the second practice session standings ahead of McLaren rivals Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button at the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix here yesterday.
Vettel notched a perfectly timed effort of 1min 41.751sec on the 19th lap of second practice to finish less than 0.2 seconds ahead of British driver Hamilton.
Button came in third best with a time of 1:42.412, while the second Red Bull car driven by Mark Webber was fourth in 1:42.466, followed by the two Lotus cars of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen.
World championship leader Vettel was pleased with the way his car has been responding of late. “Maybe this is the best we could do today and the idea is still to try and get the car a bit faster,” he told media immediately after the day’s final practice session.
Hamilton was not too pleased despite taking second spot. “I was struggling with the car and I don’t know why. I am going to give it my all in the race and if we get ahead [in qualifying] then that will be a huge bonus,” the Stevenage-born driver said of today’s pole run.
If the McLarens dominated the opening practice, it was Vettel who showed them who is in prime position for the world title with a fantastic run in the second session. Though the German was off the mark with a slower 1:43.067 in his third lap, he went on to improve and finally came up with a quick run of 1:42.056 to push ahead of Hamilton.
Vettel kept up the pressure with a fluent 1:41.751 on lap 19 and, even though Hamilton came up with a strong response of 1:41.919 immediately afterwards, the German took the honours.
“I don’t know what they do with the car,” Hamilton said. “Hopefully I am going to push and his lap [in qualifying] won’t be that great and mine will be.”
Hamilton’s teammate Button started off with a 1:42.804 on the sixth lap, before improving to 1:42.642 on the 11th and eventually settled into third with a best of 1:42.412 five laps later.
“The car’s working well,” Button said. “It was quite tricky, it always is for us in the first few laps. But the long run has been promising and the feeling is good.
“The key for us will be to get the tyres heated up within the first three laps.”
Today’s third practice session will be held from 2pm to 3pm, followed by the qualifying session to decide the starting grid for Sunday’s race between 5pm and 6pm.
Vettel has had the edge over Hamilton in qualifying during the previous editions of the Abu Dhabi race. After the McLaren driver took pole in the inaugural year, Vettel qualified quickest in 2010 and 2011.
Vettel also has two race victories here to Hamilton’s one from last year, when he took advantage of his rival’s early retirement to triumph.
