Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton tops China practice

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton topped the leaderboard as expected during both practice sessions at the Chinese Grand Prix on Friday, though Ferrari showed it had the pace to possibly challenge the silver cars over the weekend. Hamilton set the fastest time of the day at 1 minute, 37.219 seconds, which Mercedes said was 1.2 seconds faster than last year’s best practice time at Shanghai International Circuit.

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was just behind the British driver in second place, trailing by less than a half second. “It’s quite close between us and Ferrari,” Hamilton said. “I think we definitely have a race like we said we would.”

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo set the third-fastest time of the day, giving his struggling team a boost a day after company owner Dietrich Mateschitz reiterated his threat to pull out of Formula One if he can’t field a competitive team. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was fourth-fastest and Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg could manage no better than fifth after running slightly wide at the final corner of his flying lap on the soft tires.

The most bizarre moment of the practice sessions came when an intruder dashed across the track early in the second run and leapt over the pit wall and through a gap in the fence before being apprehended by security staff. The man barely made it across the track in between cars coming down the main straight. The incident did not cause a delay to the practice session. Ferrari had been hoping to build on Vettel’s resurgent victory two weeks ago at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

- Agencies