The Malaysian Grand Prix - Practice 2 Formula 1

Lewis Hamilton failed to finish the Australian Grand Prix. Hiss

team-mate, Nico Rosberg, went on to win. He currently sits at the top of

the drivers' championship. Rookie Kevin Magnussen is an impressive

second, and his team-mate Jenson Button is third. Daniel Ricciardo

was disqualified despite finishing second. Red Bull didn't meet

fuel-flow regulations. They will appeal. Red Bull don't even feature

in the constructioners', with Vettel not finishing either.

Well, the pit lane was pretty hot and sweaty this morning. After the,

it's the task of Tom Clarkson and Jenny Gaw. It was very uncomfortable

this morning. The air tempis now 34 degrees, five up on this morning.

The track temperature is the one the teams will be worried about. It's

nigh on 15 degrees warmer than it was this morning. It's 54 degrees

now. Also, spare a thought for these guys, the mechanics. It's a good ten

degrees warmer in the garages than where I'm standing out here in the

pit lane. You're looking at Pastor Maldonado's car. He is not going to

be doing much running during this session. There's no rear end on his

car after his engine let go this morning. We're also not going to see

Kamui Kobayashi, who's got a similar problem with hisicateroom. The cars

doing their tyre comparisons and long runs this afternoon. They'll

learn a lot in these temperatures about degradation, and I'm going to

learn a lot about sweating buckets! Degradation and rehydration, Tom!

You can also get involved - without having to set it out on pit lane.

You can also leave a comment on the BBC Sport Facebook page. Who knows -

maybe James Alan will read them out? Alan has joined James in the cool,

air-conditioned commentary box. Gentlemen? One of the challenges

here will be that the temperatures in qualifying and the race - it will

be two hours later in the day. Not representative session at all,

really. The temperature will go down when the race is on. We were

chatting on the way over here. This is one of Hermon Tilker's first

circuits, the Formula 1 designer and, you think it's one of the best?

Personally, I feel it's one of the best. Nice, technical corners that

are quite slow. You have to work with them. It's also got some nice,

fast and flowing sections through turn five and turn six, which you

enter at about 190 miles per hour and slow it down through the apex of

the corners. You have to drive and attack the circuit. Personally, when

you end up having done a good lap around here, you feel like you've

earned it. There's an awful lot of talk about as the drivers get

strapped into their cars for this 90-minute second free practice

session. This morning, Lewis Hamilton set the pace. He was the

pole sitter, of course, that first Grand Prix in Australia two weeks

ago in the Mercedes - 1.40.691, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the

Ferrari. One of the big talking points of this weekend - obviously

dealing with the temperatures - is how the drivers, cars and engineers

keep those cars cool from a reliability point of view. This is a

new hybrid turbo technology, and cooling is more important with these

new cars than it was with the old V8s last year. We're already seeing

teams opening up that body work. We saw Ferrari's engine cover this

morning - it's highly ventilated. That will be a theme over the next

36 hours. They didn't have a turbo before. They're running at about

1,000 degrees Celsius. You also have a new hybrid system with ten times

the energy capacity level, producing double the power. Therefore, there's

a lot more heat from that. The cars are generally a little bit bigger at

the back end to try to get that air flowing through. We've seen a few

teams this morning - McLaren especially, and also Mercedes -

checking out what was the best option there. Two varieties of

cooling packages. They wanted to get the least negative - from the

aerodynamic down-force point of view - with the most positive, which is

the best cooling. The pit lane is open now. No-one yet going out on

circuit. 49 degrees the track temperature, 34 the air temperature.

Alan was saying about the aerodynamic trade-off - in Formula

1, as in life, you never get something for nothing. If you open

up the body work to increase the cooling, you'll get less down-force.

How much reliability matter in intense temperatures versus how much

down-force and rear-end stability, particularly - am I going to lose by

opening up that body work? That's a trade-off that's one of the top

priorities of all Formula 1 teams in a weekend like this. It's always a

trade-off all the way through, especially right now at the

beginning of the season. The teams don't necessarily know the cars very

well. They're still learning about the new tyres because they're

slightly different from before. In general, they have less aerodynamic

grip by the regulation changes that happened. They're also coming to

terms with this whole process. The real thing is that, in the middle of

the pack, fighting for everything behind the Mercedes, who look to be

a step ahead, the differences are within half a tenth of a second per

lap. You can't to lose that bit of extra and be on the safe side.

You've got to play a risk game. Absolutely. It looks as though the

Mercedes power teams are a little bit more confident on the cooling

than the others. They seem to have less body work open. Ferrari are

definitely taking no chances with what we've seen so far this morning.

I'm sure Tom and Jenny will be across that throughout the course of

this second free practice session. Romain Grosjean, who came to a

grinding hot this morning in free practice - just two out laps, didn't

actually complete a whole lap, the same with team-mate Pastor

Maldonado, who Tom Clarkson was telling us will not take part in

this session - what a torrid start to his Lotus career for Kevin

Magnussen. Chilton, Bianchi are out on circuit. Ricciardo and Vettel

being strapped into their cars at the moment. Ricciardo the subject of

an appeal now since the disqualification, as we were hearing

about from Lee at the top of the show. It's difficult to know which

way that's going to go, isn't it? The FIA are very sure of their case

- that they told Red Bull to turn down the fuel flow, and Red Bull

ignored them, and therefore were not in compliance with the rules. Red

Bull say these sensors you've given us to work with this year are just

not accurate enough. Our own system is more accurate, and we choose to

follow our own rules, not yours. Where do you stand on this one? It's

a very difficult one, because you're looking at two sides of the coin.

The fact of the matter is, the FIA stipulate that you have to use their

technology. You have to go by that. That is effectively what the law

says. Now it's gone to appeal, then it will be discussed by lawyers.

It's not a sporting matter - this is a legal matter in a way, now, and

will be taken as if a pure court of law. I think it will be an uphill

struggle for Red Bull, to be honest with you. I can also understand

their sentiment. We have to remember that Daniel Ricciardo drove a

fantastic race. The difference of performance benefit that he got was

minimal. But it doesn't matter - if you're a millimetre over the line or

a metre over the line, you're over the line. That's what the FIA's

statement clearly said. A lot of teams are talking about this being

like the scales they have in the garages - they may have scales which

are calibrated slightly differently from the FIA ones down at pit lane.

When the car gets weighed in qualifying or whatever, it's the FIA

scales are the ones you have to make sure you get it calibrated to. I

think what you will see this weekend is that the teams will be a little

on the conservative side. They don't want to get in to the particulars of

it. If you have a good result, you don't want to celebrate what you

think has been a fantastic result, as happened with Daniel Ricciardo,

only to have it overturned. On the subject of that fuel flow,

there is a briefing this evening here in the Sepang paddock from the

FIA's man in charge of that, Bruce Lahm, who you know well, Alan. A

murisha pulled to the side of the road - Max Chilton, already, only

four minutes into the session. Marussia would appear to have lost

UN of their cars. Only did eight laps this morning, Chilton. He's

having a tough start to his weekend. I was going to say, this briefing -

you can read all about it and follow it up on the BBC Sport website,

where you will also find Lewis Hamilton's latest column saying

these new rules are very complicated for the drivers to deal with. Make

sure you check out the BBC Sport website. Max Chilton here, he's in

the grass. He basically is looks as if he's trying to find a gear. He

spun the car, dropped the right-hand side wheel on the inside kerb, and

looked to cart arbd around. Whilst he's been looping it around, it

appears he's stuck in between two gears, and that's the cause of him

not being able to get it back to the pit stop. Hopefully he'll be able to

get a rocking motion to the car, and that will bring it back in. Chilton

doing in practice what he's not done yet, Alan, in a Grand Prix - come to

a stop. He's managed to finish every single race he started. I wonder

whether he'll be able to get it back. He might be able to get it

towed back or put on a flatbed. It looks like he's maybe stalled. He

released a clutch to get it going again. It jumped and lurched forward

then on a replay. It looks like it could be stalled for them. If you're

out on circuit, normally you are for the rest of the session. How do you

judge Marussia from what they're running so far? A Ferrari engine in

the back, Ferrari power unit - not one of the teams that's been

struggling so far with Renault. KTRM have been having a torrid time with

the Renault-powered unit. Do you think this is a possibility for them

to score a point in one of the early races? Without doubt, it's an

opportunity for all teams that will normally struggle at the back of the

grid to get a point. We've seen that historically - some of the top

teams, as was clear in Melbourne, with Sebastian Vettel and Lewis

Hamilton going out early - that just lifts the whole grid forward, with

the two top runners out. Neither Marussia or KTRM were able to

achieve that. Marussia has leap-ing forked KTRM in terms of performance

and rilt. They are making moves forward up the grid. It's

unfortunate there's a lot of very good teams ahead of them, though.

Max Chilton, as expected after that, is having to get out of the car.

That's his session over. That will be very, very frustrating

considering he didn't do many laps this morning. Lost it on that kerb.

Grosjean is fastest at the moment from Perez, Bianchi, Vergne,

Hulkenberg, and Magnussen. Still 88 minutes of the session going.

Back to Tom Clarkson in the pits. It's interesting to see Mercedes

reacting to the higher temperatures after the. This morning, they had

back to back two engine covers - a thin and a fat. They're actually

running the fatter, oval-shaped engine cover exit this afternoon,

because there's 50% more radiator surface area in these cars this year

compared to last year. That heat's got to go somewhere. Mercedes think

they need this wider exit to get rid of this heat in these high

temperatures. It's definitely one of the things that the teams are going

to be looking at more this afternoon. The temperatures are a

little bit more representative. Not ideally represented of the race

time, but they are more representative to it. However,

they're all very much against it - designers hate having to basically

get rid of all their good work in the wind tunnel just because of a

little bit of temperature. The man that hates it most seems to be

Adrian New, because he's done very little about it. He likes to

shrink-wrap the body work around his cars, almost like cling film, it's

so tight to the interinals of the car. The temperatures underneath

those engine covers - I was asking around the teams - typically

somewhere around 120-125 degrees in a place like this. The gearboxes run

at 135 degrees. Really some very, very extreme technology. You can

imagine what the oil's got to do to cope with that - these things must

be on the verge of extinction almost every lap. They certainly are.

That's what the modern age is. That's also what their cars are

doing as well, with the new developments in the fuels and the

oils, because of motorsport - it definitely has helped us on our day.

With Jean-Eric Vergne coming through, you can see how much the

car is twitching around and how unstable the rear end is. He's

always fighting the steering wheel - not big corrections, a lot of small

corrections. This is something we saw in Melbourne. It will be

accentuated because of the nature of the circuit here. This is because

they've got red of those exhaust blown diffusers at the back of the

cars, and they've taken one of the elements out of the rear wing.

That's made the back of these cars more unstable, yeah? You've got

that, but you also have slightly harder tyres. Pirelli have gone a

little bit more on the safe side. As well, you've increased the torque.

Coming out of the corner - that was coming into the corner, Vergne

fighting it a lot going onto the back straight. They've got about 60%

more torque than they had last year out of the corner. When you hit the

thoughtal and it leaps up and electroifies the rear of the car.

Tural, puff of smoke there from Vergne at the left front before he

went into a spin. We'll keep an eye - watch out for the braking if into

the final hair. They have a different braking system now in

Formula 1 this year - brake by wire, it's called. There's an electronic

component to it, designed to take the clunkiness out of the

energy-harvesting going on by the new hybrid system.

This circuit isn't used a heck of a lot. Outside of that, there's very,

very little. It's a harmless spin, but he's basically backed off now

and will come back towards the pits. He looked as if he was right on the

limit every other corner we saw him in. He was close to losing it on the

previous corner as well. Kevin Magnussen chews his lip. A

tremendous calmness about this young Dane. He finished on the podium on

his Grand Prix debut in Australia, emulating what Lewis Hamilton did in

Melbourne back in 2007 on his first-ever Grand Prix. Of course, he

then had a bonus after the race by finding that Ricciardo had been

disqualified - Magnussen classified, for the moment, in second place.

What happens in that scenario? Does he pop next door to Red Bull and ask

Ricciardo for the second-place trophy, ending the appeal? Or does

he wait for the appeal and then claim the trophy off him later? More

to the case - will Ricciardo give the trophy back?

LAUGHS Jenson Button's gone six-tenths of a

second faster than anyone else at the moment. Just half a second

slower than he did this morning. Jenson - it looked as if the car was

working well this morning. They look hooked up all of the time. Unlike

Valtteri Bottas, who's struggling a lot with the rear end and the rear

stability, especially going into the corners. Here you've got a lot of

long corners like the turn one that we're live on board with on the nose

of the car. That's quite tricky. Only ten drivers with a competitive

time so far. We call this the T-tray underneath, skinning along the

ground. It won't have enjoyed that excursion, as the left front wheel

of the Lotus goes off track. He's come up to turn four. You can run

and get two wheels over the kerb. If you do, you get the belly of the car

onto the top of the kerb. It seems to just bobble left and right. You

can turn back off it. You've got to try and drive straight off it. The

underflow of the car doesn't like it. Aerodynamically, it gets rubbed.

In reality, it's not too bad. We were talking about the calmness of

Kevin Magnussen - the podium on his Grand Prix debut. His father, Yann,

was not able to see him racing in Australia, because he was racing

himself. He is here in Malaysia, and he's talking with Tom.

Yann, you must be a very proud father after what your boy achieved

in Melbourne! Absolutely. Absolutely fantastic in Australia. So happy for

Kevin. It's a fantastic start to a Formula 1 career. You made your

Grand Prix debut with this team as well - a Pacific Grand Prix, if I

remember correctly. Talk us through what the achievement of what Kevin

managed to do in Melbourne - did it exceed your own expectations? I

think yes, a little bit, because it is - it was quite amazing, what

happened in Australia - how qualifying went. Extremely difficult

conditions. He didn't put a foot wrong, and got the best out of it.

Had a great race, ended up on the podium your first race - just

absolutely fantastic. Was he better-prepared for his debut than

you were for yours? I think so. He's been with the programme for some

years now. It's been a whole education for him. I was not worried

that he would arrive in Australia and not be prepared for the job.

Most worries were, "How good is the car going to be? Are they back to

being competitive?" It showed that they were, and Kevin did an amazing

job with it. Tell us what sort of a kid he was - I mean, he's so calm

and mature. Was it always like that? He's not always a calm kid - still

isn't. But he's here, he's very professional. He's thought ful and

thing -- thoughtful and thinks to do things in the right way. Super

confident. I think he's got all that it takes. Was it obvious from the

first time he drove a car that he has, as you say, got what it takes?

Well, he started very, very early, so to begin with it was like any

other kid - just for fun and playing around. But once it got more serious

with Kevin, it's quite easy to see that he did have something special.

For him, it's been a whole education with McLaren that's made the

difference, and they've really, really gotten the best out of him,

giving him time to develop and giving him the tools to do the job

right. I've got to ask this question - is he better than you? Much, much

better. LAUGHS

Jan, thank you so much for your time. It's such a great thing to

have a young kid like him coming through and so well. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Thank you. Tom Clarkson there with Jan Magnussen, the

clearly very proud father of Kevin. Well, he's every reason to be proud.

It looks as though Romain Grosjean is touring around at the moment. I

don't know if it's another problem for that Renault power unit in the

back of the Lotus, but certainly Grosjean this morning having a

pretty tough time. This afternoon, he has managed to turn nine complete

laps, but he's on his way back to the pits, it would appear. You've

raced against Jan Magnussen - most of us that have seen Jan and Kevin's

career would agree with Jan's assessment that the son is

definitely a better driver than the father. Not least because he's more

disciplined. I think he came up in a different era. There's no question

about it. Jan had a tremendous amount of natural talent.

Unbelievable skill and success in the junior formulas. Formula 1, it

probably wasn't the right team and time for him, and didn't necessarily

a evthe success that he could have done. It looks as though everything

sorted itself out for Kevin at this moment in time. He's got to get on

with the programme now he's shown what he can do. He's got to do it

week in and week out - that's the tough part. It's cool that Jan can

be so at peace with the whole thing - he can be calm and happy that his

son is a better driver than him. Everyone is still using the

harder-compound Pirelli tyre at this stage. We will see qualifying

simulations in around 20-30 minutes from now, then they'll go back out

and do some long runs, simulating the early part of the Grand Prix -

the very distinctive colour scheme of the new Williams. Felipe Massa

currently in fourth. A lot of long, right-hand corners.

He's got a vibration on the left front tyre - you can see it was

vibrating down the straight a bit. The whole left-hand side gets a heck

of a lot of loading. Coming out of the corners, it's the left too. A

lot of people are having trouble with that corner. Nico Rosberg -

that wasn't by design, that's for sure. Cadence braking to try and

slow it down. A quick trip through the gravel. Then necessitated to

clean out most of the gravel in the pit lane. Why are they having

problems? Is it anything to do with this new brake-by-wire system,

giving the drivers less feel on the brakes? I think it's a combination

of things. It's less aerodynamic grip, slightly harder tyre

compounds, and trying to understand the recuperation of these new hybrid

systems that have significantly more potential. Then there's also the

last part about the new braking system and all of it together means

that the drivers are finding it tough. Engineers as well, to get the

correct balances. The rear DRS wing pops open on Sebastian Vettel's car.

You'll see some day-glow paint, those of you watching on TV or

online, on the right-hand side of the rear wing of that Red Bull car.

That is called Flow Viz Paint. The air odynamicists paint that onto the

cars, send it out, and as the wind passes through, it forms a pattern.

They can take photographs of that and analyse it and can see whether

or not the aerodynamic parts, like the engine cover and the rear wing,

in this case, are actually doing what they're supposed to do, what

they were designed to do from all the work they've done in the wind

tunnels. Everybody else can see that as well. All the other teams have

their eagle-eyed employed photographers taking pictures on the

circuit. They will see if Red Bull's rear wing is doing what it's

supposed to do. It is a useful tool for measuring whether you're on the

right track. A wind tunnel is a simulation tool. It simulates. It

isn't the real world. You always need to correlate between the wind

andunl and the track. That's something -- wind tunnel and the

track. That's something Red Bull have been very, very good at in the

past. Even they still like to check it in the real world. Daniel

Ricciardo there running a little bit wide coming out of turn six... .

Very tricky double right-hander - you've got to throw the car in,

which you don't want to do because it destabilises the rear. You need

to. If not, the front doesn't grip and you miss the apexes.

Kobayashi and Maldonado will not take any part in this session. You

can send us your questions and share your thoughts with us by tweeting us

using BBCF1, or commenting on the BBC Sport page.

A question from Timothy: "Do you think Red Bull have a serious chance

of winning a Grand Prix this season, Allan?" I do. Daniel Ricciardo

finished second at the last Grand Prix on the road. If Nico Rosberg

had any type of problem similar to Lewis Hamilton, he would have been

the winner. I think there is a great chance of anybody in the top six or

eight achieving that. I think on pure speed, they're a bit behind at

the moment. They're one second down, basically. They need to improve. I

would think that that's going to come by the time they get back to

Europe, by the time we get back to the Spanish Grand Prix in a couple

of races' time. You can see, those of you watching online or on TV, the

flow viz paint being painted on the the underside of the nose on the Red

Bull car. Quite extensive work. This is essentially a test session, the

Friday practice. They run in configurations they would not be

allowed to qualify and race in, with all sorts of it infra-red cameras

measuring exhaust output and that kind of thing. Look at the great

pipe out the back of the engine cover of the turbo a little bit

further up. 100,000 RPM, that turbo spins to. That's what contributes to

this amazing noise these cars make, the whistling sound when you stand

next to it. Not quite like the old sierra Coswood in Andy Raw's touring

days Shows your age, James! It's a good sound, but it could be a bit

louder. We've had a lot of comments on the BBC Sport Facebook page about

the sound and the quieter F1. Daniel says, "The new engine sound is like

Marmite - you either love it or hate it. It's growing on me." Andy: "Love

hearing the turbo when the car down-shifts." "You can hear the

engine grown growl, the exhaust pop and the pistons fire. It's more

attractive." "Hybrid race cars sunk!" That's from Jim. The best of

your comments will be included in the live text commentary on the BBC

Sport Formula 1 website. Make sure you have that going on on the second

screen. That's Bernie Ecclestone, the ringleader. The man behind him

is Ong Been Seng, the promoter of the Singapore Grand Prix. Quite a

lively character, as you can tell from his interactions with the

photographers down there. Burnie taking a walk down the -- Bernie

taking a walk down the Formula 1 pit lane and braving the temperatures.

He didn't come to the Australian Grand Prix, but he's certainly here.

65 minutes remaining on the clock in this second free practice session

ahead of Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix. Second round of the Formula 1

World Championship. The times they're down to now, with

Alonso and Vettel split by hundredths, is exactly the same as

what they were this morning. When they start to get out and do a bit

of a qualifying run, I expect the times to be pretty much faster than

that. It is pretty close, because it's 40. 7 for Alonso, 40. 7 for

Hamilton. Lots of 41.0 after. It's a long lap - 3.44-mile circuit, this

one. 54 laps on race day. A tricky circuit. 15 corners. Getting the car

slowed down, particularly into the final hairpin as we've been seeing

all weekend, is a challenge. So are some of the high-speed switchbacks,

particularly with that lack of rear-end stability of these 2014

cars. There's quite a lot of corners on this track where that's a

problem. It's also the long corner entries like 13 and 14, like

Jean-Eric Vergne has gone through in the Toro Rosso. You're breaking,

turning, down-shifting, a lot of things and, the car is unstable at

that point. From the driver's point of view, you want to brake to stop

the car, but also have to release the brake to let it float into the

corner in a balanced fashion. We're starting to see the first cars

now going out on the medium tyre, the fastest. Pirelli talked about

them being 1.2-1. 5 seconds per lap. That will have a big impact on race

strategy if that's the case, because no-one will want to spend too much

time on Sunday on the slower tyre. They'll find out now, what is the

difference in performance between the medium and hard compound Pirelli

tyres. It's not all just about lap time, but the drop-off - how long

can they use that extra 1. 2 seconds? Three laps? Five laps?

Seven? We heard comments this morning from Sebastian Vettel in --

Daniil Kvyat in the Toro Rosso saying the car was undrivable. He'd

lost his rear tyre grip at that point. If they have that problem in

the race, they'll have to go to the hard.

Ericsson and Sergio Perez are on the medium tyre. Alonso, Hamilton,

Vettel, Bottas, Massa - the top five at the moment. :

We saw Bernie Ecclestone walking down pit lane. Tom Clarkson will

catch up with him. It will take two or three races to see what's going

to happen. What do you think of the noise? Better than I thought. How

about Melbourne? Give us your take on events in Melbourne and what's

your take on fuel-flow meters? Nobody seemed happy about that, did

they? Let's wait for a few races and see. Is it nice to see a new team at

the top? Quite good for Formula 1, that Vettel's not the man

dominating? Yeah, it's good. This year, it's going to be difficult to

know who's going to do what. Bernie, to go back to the noise, there seems

to be so much discussion, particularly in the UK, about

Formula 1 should be loud, the earth should shake as they go by - do you

still think that? Trouble is, people buy Formula 1. When they get what we

got at the moment - they think it's not Formula 1. So we'll see. This is

Formula 12014, isn't it? I don't know. What do you think? I think

it's fabulous. I think the pros outweigh the cons myself. But it's

much more important what you think. Good. If you think that, it's good.

Good. Do you think we could make the cars noisier by tampering with the

exhaust? You'll have to ask the engineers. I don't know. Who's your

money on this weekend? It's hot. I hadn't noticed that. You think it's

hot? I won't show you what's under my bib. Who's your money on this

weekend? I think I'd have to say maybe a Mercedes. Would you like to

see Lewis instead of Niko this time? I don't care. Mercedes, but I don't

care who. Thanks for your time. Bernie Ecclestone there with Tom

Clarkson. Well, he thinks a Mercedes might win. I think it's a fairly

safe bet they'll be up the front, judging by the performance we've

seen so far this season. In Australia, they completely dominated

with Nico Rosberg. At the moment, it's Fernando Alonso who has the

fastest time. Ferrari feel this circuit is more

representative to their true performance than Melbourne was,

where they were very quick on Friday - Alonso quickest in free practice

one on Friday morning. When it came to the race pace, they didn't quite

have it. Alternatively, Mercedes suddenly went that little bit

faster. They feel, around here, and historically, they have been much

more competitive. That's exactly right. This was when Michael

Schumacher was very successful here with Ferrari. Felipe Massa, in his

Ferrari career, twice on pole around this place, and last year - although

the conditions played a part in it - he actually started from the front

row of the grid in a Ferrari with Alonso, his team-mate, in third

place. It was a 2-3 on the grid for Ferrari. This is a track where they

ought to be able to show their colours and show what they can do.

The 21-year-old Dane that everybody is talking about. Kevin Magnussen

hammering around turn one. It's easy to run too wide in that

right. Try to be sure that you don't run too wide onto that outside kerb

before taking a short breath down into the hairpin. This is one of the

slowest corners on the circuit, this hairpin - 44 miles per hour. You

just turn it up the hill, then squeeze on the throttle when the car

is stable and going straight into the long right-hander. This one's

where the rear end can be a little bit tricky. Can be a bit off-camera,

then you accelerate hard. This was flatter.

Now you see the DRS sign on the right-hand side - the DRS is open.

Kevin Magnussen comes down towards the last corner, where a lot of cars

have been making a mistake at the hairpin left-hander. He runs a bit

too wide, loses 0. 3 or 0. 4 of a second. That is a lap of this 3.

44-mile Sepang circuit - the 16th time it's been used for Grand Prix

racing. Magnussen is 15th with that time. Interestingly, Allan, he

clocked 319kph through the speed trap - identical time to the fastest

we've seen so far from Valtteri Bottas in the Mercedes-powered

Williams. That is a whisker under 200 miles an hour. The speed trap is

just before the braking zone into that final hairpin, where we've seen

all those people making those lockups. 320kph is 200 miles per

hour. I'll very sure that, if he puts his visor down a bit more,

he'll be at 200 miles per hour. It's very, very quick. These cars are

faster in top speed than they were last year. The other thing is that

there's a big straight-line speed difference between the different

cars. You can even hear it when you're standing out in the pit lane

as they're driving past - you can hear different audio tones. But you

can see visually as well, the ones that have got maybe a 6-8

miles-an-hour speed. There's no lift on the corners. It's

really not handling well. Kevin Magnussen there saying the car

is over steering - the exit of the corners, when he's trying to put his

power down, the rear end is snapping out. He's not able to throttle as

aggressively as he wants to. Into the business part of the session now

- 56 minutes remaining on the clock. Quite a few drivers, and quick

drivers, have moved onto the faster tyre now. We've got Felipe Massa on

a lap, Valtteri Bottas, Lewis Hamilton warming up for one as well.

He's on an out lap. Sergio Perez one of the first to go on this tyre.

Also, Nico Rosberg has just completed an out lap. We'll see some

fast types - probably the fastest times of the day, set in the next

few minutes. Felipe Massa is already through section one, into section

two. He uses all the kerb and a little

bit more on the outside of that corner. He's the fastest man of

anybody so far in sector one. Rosberg is actually slowing, by half

a tenth, through sector one than the Williams. Massa has got about half a

lap to go. He's coming into the point where, really, the tyres have

gone a bit. He's still four-tenths up on the best time of Alonso at

this point. He's done his fastest, but Rosberg is quicker in the middle

sector by 2. 5 tenths of a second. Nico Rosberg's charging down the

advantage. Very interesting. It looks like the tyres on the Williams

are not quite as good as they were at the start of the lap. I wonder if

he's gone too hard at the start of the lap. Rosberg has been too

cautious in the opening sector, possibly, and he's absolutely flown

through the middle sector. Now he's in the final part of the lap. We'll

see Massa crossing the line first. Rosberg didn't gain any more in the

final sector. Certainly didn't. But Valtteri Bottas is quickest of

anybody in sector one. The shift tones or BRS tones - just lots of

other annoying tones. Message to Lewis Hamilton from his engineer

talking about DRS tones. They're coming up to the DRS area now. It's

an audio beep in your ear to tell you you can activate, and there's

other things as well - for example, engine retrospective, upshift

lights, and audio and visual tones now as well. Hamilton hasn't had a

great middle sector. To be only a tenth off overall, it

suggests Lewis Hamilton has a car pretty well hooked up around here.

If he can eradicate whatever the problem was in the middle sector, he

should be looking quite good. He lost that half a second, as you say,

at that point when we were listening to that radio message. They tend to

be delayed in the telecast, rather than actually live. It's not exactly

at that point, but it's that part of the circuit when we were studying

him on the screens - that's where he lost the time.

Vettel yet to go onto medium-compound tyre.

Kevin Magnussen coped so well with his first Grand Prix, at 19 years of

age. Valtteri Bottas turned a little on

the kerb. The left rear wheel was still on the kerb as he's turned

into a corner. That's a delicate, balanced corner. You've got to be

very, very careful. You have got to be aggressive, but you've got to be

careful for the rear. He just got that wheel on the kerb and slid

wide. That slightly meerkat-like expression of Adrian Newie as he

looks and surveys his cars. A more competitive human being you will

never encounter in your life - that includes the guys who sit inside the

cockpits of the cars. Newie was born to win. He's certainly the most

successful racing car engineer and designer so far in the history of

Formula 1. He's not finished yet. He wants some success as soon as

possible. Rosberg, Raikkonen, Hamilton, Massa,

Bottas in the top five. I think Alonso, in the Ferrari, can pull

more out in a pure qualifying lap than Kimi Raikkonen. I'd expect the

Ferrari to be a touch fighting for that first position at this moment

in free practice too. When you looked at Raikkonen there, he was

very consistent all the way through the lap. He hooked up every corner.

He didn't make any errors. It wasn't, ultimately, the quickest in

any sector, but it was pretty good all the way through. Lockup from

Kevin Magnussen in the McLaren. Had a personal best in the first is

effecter. Slightly uneven middle sector for Magnussen. Well over a

second slower. Meanwhile, Alonso, as predicted by Allan, is absolutely

flying out there in the second Ferrari. He's the fastest of anybody

in that long middle sector. Bianchi really having his hands full

there. What's Alonso going to do? He's at the end of a lap now. He

goes fourth-fastest. His first part of the circuit, he

was five-tenths off. He had a really bad first sector, which we didn't

see on camera. He was fastest of anyone in the middle sector. He was

the fastest of the sixth session, and a tenth and a half off the final

one. Hamilton, if he gets his best sector

times all in the same lap, you're looking at something that's possibly

four-tenths quicker than that - something in the mid-1. 39s. Still a

good bit slower than last year's pace - we were seeing laps in the

high 1.36s around here in the V8 engines. The track hasn't yet come

up to speed. They had a MotoGP test here a few weeks ago. I'm talking to

Pirelli in the lunch break. They said there's definitely some

detriters left from that race. It's not rained much in this part of the

world - would you will - over the last few weeks. That hasn't helped

much either. There's a lot of deUS and dirt that needs to be cleared

off this surface before we get to see the really serious lap times.

Nico Hulkenberg wrestled a result out of his car in Melbourne. He did

a better job than the car probably deserved at this point. It looked as

if the whole car was sliding around, it wasn't getting the grip and

turning. He was waiting, then going back onto the power to come out. He

was locked in a battle with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, Alonso

coming out on top. The battle for sixth and seventh places on the

road, behind Daniel Ricciardo, of course, who was disqualified from

the second place with that result. Hulkenberg prumomented up to sixth

place. Eight points on the board already for the young flyer -- young

German flyer. Pretty close at the top between

Rosberg in first place, and Vettel in sixth place - just over two

tenths of a second. 39.909. 39. 944 for Raikkonen.

What are we to read into this, then? Ferrari struggling to get into the

corner in the hands of Alonso, and the back end stepping out on the

corner exit as well. You can see how hard these drivers are having to

work here. Alonso - this lap is not a personal best in either the first

or second sector. It doesn't look as though there's much more pace to

come out of these medium tyres on the second lap. The first lap

definitely the faster lap around here, despite the fact there's less

fuel in the car this time around. Alonso fourth-fastest. Up with.39. 9

for Rosberg - he's the quickest. Raikkonen, Hamilton, Alonso.

Mercedes, Ferrari, murs aidies, Ferrari. Then Red Bull, Williams,

India... Chilton stopped out on circuit early

on in the session. Kobayashi and Maldonado - both cars in bits in the

pits. Neither of them looking like taking any part in this session. 45

minutes to go in this free practice two from Malaysia. Jenny Goww is

down at Lotus. Quite a lot of Pastor Maldonado's car missing. The guys

working on it very slowly. In free practice one, we saw Pastor

Maldonado's engine let go. A big plume of smoke coming out the rear

of it. A lot of work needs to be done on Pastor's car. He will not be

taking any part in this session. Things not looking that good for

Romain Grosjean either. He did nine laps and didn't post a timed lap

morning. The rear of the car - they've got the body work off and

they're doing a lot of work around the back of this car. Lotus have

been plagued by problems ever since they missed that first test. They

were trying to catch up in Bahrain. Speaking to people in the break

between the two sessions, they're not just one test behind everybody

else. A lot of money and development and a lot of parts behind everybody

else. It's going to take them until at least Barcelona to be on level

terms, even though they're the smaller of the teams in this

paddock. Thank you, Jenny. Sebastian Vettel is on another lap. Again, his

first sector is not supremely fast. Ricciardo moves from tenth to

seventh with the lap he has just completed.

The impressive thing was it was on the second lap on the tyre. The car

looked up - if we remember back to Fernando Alonso and his second lap

on the tyre, he dropped off half a second in lap time.

Interesting again - he was taking it fairly easy in the first is

effecter. I don't know if he's got the speed infirst is effecter as

opposed to taking it easy in the fist sector. I'm not sure the

speed's there car anyway. You've got from turn two through to

flat-out turn three, and the uphill drag to turn four, then pure

acceleration out of turn four. It's that middle sector which is all

those fast, sweeping bends, which is classic Red Bull country, really,

isn't it? High down-force. They've been fantastic in the past. They

look to be very, very good right now. But also, if you've got

stability and you've got a balanced front to the car, and down-force,

you make the tyre work, but you can also keep the tyre, you can feel the

tyre, you're not using the tyre to get the lap time. You're using the

down-force to get the lap time. All but five cars are in the pits at the

moment. Huge plumes of brake dust come out

of the front wheels of Jenson Button's car as he puts on the

brakes to slow that McLaren down from 195 miles an hour down to just

50 miles an hour into turn one. Just over 100m of braking to shed all

that speed. That's one of the miracles of a modern Formula 1 car.

The brake dust coming out is a by-product of that. Button is on the

medium tyre. He's on a run at the moment. This is where we're getting

into simulation of the early part of Grand Prix. They do the qualifying

simulation - put a hard lap through those tyres on low-ish fuel - come

in, refuel, and then simulate. In some cases, simulate the opening

part of the Grand Prix, carrying 100kg of fuel. Some teams prefer to

simulate the middle phase of the Grand Prix, carrying 60kg to 65kg of

fuel, to get a baseline understanding that way. Jenson

Button's car looks nice and hooked up OK. He's now on a longer run.

He's driving as you would expect Jenson to drive it. He's driving it

with an element of finesse. That's what held him in good stead in

Melbourne - where he qualified was due to the yellow flag caused by

Raikkonen and missing the cut to go into Q3. To come back and to be just

a few seconds behind his team-mate was a fantastic performance in the

race. He uses his brain. This is a thinking category now. He definitely

does that. Could be a good year for Jenson Button. He said, in some

ways, he was quite glad he didn't end up on the podium in Australia

and have to do interviews with Alan Jones, et cetera, on the podium,

because it was such an emotional weekend for him. First Grand Prix -

in fact, the first race meeting - since he was a tiny kid - where his

father John wasn't at his side. John tragically passed away over the

Christmas break with a heart attack, a very sudden heart attack.

Much-loved and much-missed by everybody in Formula 1. Just how

emotional and difficult it was for Jenson really only became clear

after the weekend, when he looked back on it with a huge sigh and

thought, "Thank goodness that's over." Now he can move forward and

try and work as best he can without his dad.

Jan Magnussen watching how well his son is doing now. The McLaren team

has more direction this year, I think. Jenson was a lot more, I

would say, aggressive with his comments over this weekend about

what they can achieve. They think they can win a race. They think they

can take the fight to Mercedes. Right now, I have to say, I don't

doubt they'll be able to do that at some point. It could be this

weekend. Who knows? Definitely it's a more positive McLaren than we've

had before. Explain for us then, Allan, how it comes to be that

Mercedes had a they look strong in practice, and in the simulation

runs, Rosberg is fastest, and then just three-one -- three

one-hundredths of a second slower, Ferrari, then Red Bull, then

Hamilton almost immediately behind them. I think Mercedes are probably

still in the prime seat. They're still a little bit ahead. If Lewis

Hamilton had hooked up his lap, his middle sector - sorry, his first

sector - then he would have been fastest overall. But the other teams

- Ferrari, for example - feel the circuit is a little bit more tuned

to their car. Certainly we can see that Vettel has done more laps on

Friday than he did down in Melbourne. Therefore, that's

something there. It's all just very, very close at the top. But we can be

running different fuel loads. 10kg of fuel is about 3. 5 tenths of a

second per lap. If you're a little bit out, then that can make a big

lap time difference. Bianchi bank comes in, and jengy's -- Jenny's

there. Max Chilton had a spin and they brought the car back - it took

them a while to recover it. As you can see, Max Chilton getting pushed

back into his garage. He went home in between the two races between

Australia and Malaysia. A lot of people decided to stay out. He did

some hot-weather training in one of the facilities at St Margaret's

College in Twickenham, where he's been practising over the winter to

get ready for this race and what he'll need. Sorry, I got so used to

the idea that Bianchi was the only Marussia out there, I didn't realise

it was Chilton coming into the pits again. Good work by the Marussia

team - he's back out there again. In Australia, Toro Rosso got cars in

the top ten in both qualifying and the race. That's something they

didn't manage to do in the whole of the 2013 season. Already, Toro Rosso

would appear to be on reasonable form this season, taking advantage,

of course, in Melbourne of the problems of other - not least

Vettel, who had difficulties in qualifying. Raikkonen, Button as

well. Still, you have to take your opportunities when they come. In

many ways, Toro Rosso are possibly the best benchmark, really, for the

Renault power unit teams, aren't they? You know where you stand with

Toro Rosso. As they progress, it gibs you an indication of how the

Renault unit is progressing. Certainly in terms of performance.

If you look at Melbourne, they were actually the team that did the most

laps out of anyone all weekend. Therefore they've been able to get

that Renault power-plant package system to be reliable. That's

something that, if you look a bit further down at lotus, they're

struggling at the moment to get out of the pits, never mind reliable

enough to do a session. Therefore it can be done, clearly, because Toro

Rosso have been able to achieve it. How do you explain KTRM going so

well in pre-season testing with the Renault power unit, and having so

many problems with racing? Kobayashi hasn't taken any part in the session

so far. Ericsson's done 14 laps, which is something. I've got no

idea, to be honest with you. I don't think, looking at KTRM this morning,

they've got much of an idea. One car will run one day, and one car will

run the next. They don't really know how to get both cars out there. It

just seems to be a case of - it's so early in the development of this

technology that some of the teams who have been working on it for a

long period of time are a few steps ahead. This team, Mercedes, has been

working on it the. They realise the car was fast last year. But they

didn't have the speed or the reliability or didn't have the

capability to keep their rear tyre in shape to win races. So they

switched very early to try to make sure that they were absolutely

rocking and roaling for 2014. They definitely have done it so far. They

certainly have. They've had a team on the 2014 chassis and engine

integration package - that was essentially what Jeff Willis was

brought in to do, former BAR technical director that moved onto

Red Bull. He's back at brackly, the headquarters of that team. He is

very much where he was - in charge of this integration of the power

unit and the chassis. It's been a long, long time in the development.

They had a whole crew specifically working on it. As did other teams,

but you get the impression Mercedes perhaps invested more and for

longer, seeing this 2014 season as an opportunity with these hybrid,

turbo power units coming in that harvest a lot of energy from

braking, store it as electricity, then reintroduce it back into the

system - 160 horsepower - for 33 seconds a lap, is how much energy

recovery there is going on, and regeneration going on. You've got a

lot of experience with this, Allan, driving with Audi in Lamont mont and

the world endurance championship. They've been onto this type of

technology for five years and more. It's obviously, as you say, the

future. What's it like to drive? How big a change is it for these drivers

from the V8 normally aspirated? It changes where the power delivery is.

It's right at the beginning, the first part of acceleration. It's

torque. Therefore, when you touch a throttle, you don't retrospective

the engine so much. When you touch the throttle, you've got

instantaneous power. Basically, it makes it much more lively when

you're accelerating out of the corners. That's what we saw in

Melbourne, and it's what we're seeing here and we've heard on the

radio from Kevin Magnussen - they're struggling to get the power down.

That's coupled with the fact that they've got less aerodynamic drip.

The bottom beam wing that has been taken away meant the floor worked.

It worked generally at lower speeds, as well as high speeds. When you

combine the two things together, you've got quite a lively car

underneath you. We've also seen more mistakes from drivers than they have

done in the past - sliding and having to work with the car, but

also just running a bit wide. All of that makes for quite good racing, so

far. I think we saw more overtaking in Melbourne than we had seen for a

long, long time. Just over 30 minutes remaining in free practice

two ahead of Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix from Sepang in Malaysia.

Let's check in again with Tom Clarkson. James, contrasting

fortunes at McLaren. Jenson Button's side of the garage very calm and

quiet, preparing to go out on the hard tyre. For Kevin Magnussen, it's

been a very difficult day, actually. The first session this morning - a

sensor at the back of the car put the engine into what it called limp

mode, because it thought it was overheating. That limited his

mileage. Now there's lots of set-up changes going on on the front of the

car. First of all, they did a portion bar change. Now, they're

mucking around with the brakes. It's all to do with cooling, as far as I

can make out. All sorts of problems. We heard him saying he can't get the

power down on the radio. I think he's struggling to stop it, from

what I can see here, as well. The cooling also affects air odynamics

around the front-wheel area. The drum that covers up the disc and the

caliper and the way the air is fed into it and the different sizes of

cooling ducts not only affect braking performance, but the front

grip quite a lot. You need to, again, as we were talking at the

beginning, you need to get balance between performance, grip and

reliability. Magnussen down in 12th at the moment - not at all

representative - one or two seconds off the pace, and almost half a

second slower than team-mate Jenson Button. Remember to keep your

questions and views coming throughout the weekend using

# # BBCF1, and check out the Facebook

page as well. Damien has a question for Allan. What was your favourite

Formula 1 engine? I think for me, it's got to be the first Formula 1

engine I drove, which was 1989, the Honda V10, just because it was the

first one. As a driver, you always want the most powerful engine.

Doesn't matter what it is, if it's got six cylinders, eight cylinders,

ten or 12. I've driven them all. Turboes, non-it urboes. You always

want the one that gives you the best performance out of it. As much as we

have a bit of a heart towards one thing, you tend to go with what the

stopwatch says. Back when I started in Formula 1 in 1990, there was an

Italian team called Life. They used to turn up for what was then

pre-qualifying. I remember. Friday morning, before the weekend. We used

to troop down to the garage to see if they could get this W12 engine

started. Basically, some people were trying to qualify on pole, trying to

win the race. An achievement for Life was to actually get this engine

started. It was so complex, and such an ambitious thing, and they were

completely under-funded. None of the mechanics had matching shirts - it

was at that sort of level. Could they get this thing started? Once

they did get it started, there was this enormous cheer from all kinds

of different teams who'd gone down to see if they could get it going.

The Life W12. I can't describe the noise to you, but imagine filling

your dustbin. You only heard it once! ..full of nuts and bolts, and

throwing it down the stairs. Something akin to that. Amanda says,

"You'll be pleased to hear it's raining here in the UK." Very

pleased to hear that, Amanda. "if it rains in Sepang, how badly would

that affect the drivability of the cars?" Surprisingly, with the extra

torque they have now - and they've had one session - the first test was

wet - they found that the drivability, as we listen to Lewis

Hamilton's radio... You were nine-tenths faster than Nicoen the

fast lap. Need to start on the fuel. Sounds like Lewis Hamilton was using

too much fuel there. They have got a restriction of 100kg for the whole

race, therefore the fuel target is very, very important. Target for

zero - you are basely on the white line. -- right line. Don't go below

it. What were we talking about before? How badly it would affect

the drivability of the cars if it rains. With that extra torque,

oddly, you can drive it more gently. You can pull a gear earlier, and use

the torque to accelerate out of the corner, as opposed to having to use

the revs to get power to come out. Therefore, I think the problem will

not be the torque of the new power plants - the problems will come from

the fact that, when it rains here, it's torrential downpour. You get it

like a flooding. These cars are so close to the ground, it's

effectively an aqua-plane. It becomes a surfboard.

Turn one and four, everyone the lift-in. Rosberg there being told to

brake later in a couple of the turns. "Lifting course" meaning he's

lifting off not at the braking point, but before it, and letting

the car roll into the corner. It's very easily mentally, with you're

using to going flat and braking hard 100m into the corner, lift at, say,

200m - and still brake at 100m, you're going a lot slower by the

time you get to that 100m part. You've got to mentally brake at

200m, then actually brake at 70m. It's not easy to retrain your brain

in that way. It's amazing how much fuel you can

save by lifting and coasting for, as you say, 100m or so into the

corners. You'd think it would make the lap time slower - it doesn't,

and it does save a disproportionate amount of fuel, relative. That is

the calculation they're making at the moment. Particularly, obviously,

you do it on the race runs, not in any other situation. It's something

that they're simulating now, the early laps of the race. They're

looking at what the fuel situation is going to be, seeing how hard they

can push, when they can push, when they'll need to save fuel, if they

need to save fuel, how they do it by lifting and coasting, by turning the

engine down, turning the fuel flow, dare I say it, down - a hot topic in

Formula 1 at the moment. That's what that conversation was all about.

Also, the other thing is it's something you'll hear more and more

of, if the drive -- of the driver being coached on the best way to do

it. Engineers are back in the pits looking at the data. They're able to

work out what the best way to do it is at different points on the

circuit. They could maybe coach them along the way, depending on how good

their fuel economy is. Nico Rosberg was getting guidance

from his engineer there. Quite a few people getting in touch with us. Are

the cars actually slower, or faster than they were last year? Certainly

it would appear the lap times are down a little bit on last year's,

but the straight-line speeds, Allan, in many cases, are higher. We're

seeing 200 miles an hour from the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and from

Magnussen. That's about five miles an hour faster than they were going

here last year. Yeah, but we're very, very early in the development

of this. You've got to remember, at the end of laest year, we had stable

regulations for quite a long period of time. The designers had pretty

much perfected everything. I think there'll be massive gains through

the course of this season in terms of pure lap time. There'll be a lot

of games in aerodynamics and in the integration of how to work with the

new power plant with the engine, and the new hybrid system together.

Given the difference between Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari at

the top being a few hundredths of a second, you would suspect Mercedes

were carrying more fuel, given how much faster they were than everybody

else in Australia. We'll only really find that out tomorrow when

qualifying comes around - just what kind of margin the Mercedes have. If

you've got a little bit of performance in the pocket, you'd

prefer to keep it in the pocket. You also like to try and run the car in

a worst possible scenario for the tyre and for the feel, knowing if

you pump the fuel out, if you take fuel out, you've gained

three-tenths. It's understandable if Mercedes are running heavier fuel

loads than the others. 24 minutes remaining on the clock. Here's

Vettel's radio. The tag on the option is high - try to preserve the

tyres at the usual places. The degradation... Sebastian Vettel

being told the degradation on the softer tyre, the medium tyre, is

very, very high. That's to be expected, especially if you have a

big difference between them. It is interesting - they've gone out on

that tyre, and they are trying to push the envelope with that one,

with the option. Sebastian Vettel's very knowledgeable at how to save

tyres. In the year of really trying to conserve tyres - 2013 - they

managed to get it off perfectly towards the end of the year.

It was teamwork, really. Mark Webber tended to focus on the aerodynamics

of the car - evaluating new parts, new wings, et cetera. He had

tremendous sensitivity for the aerodynamics, which was very useful

for Adrian Newey and his team to get really good data from their

developments. Meanwhile, Vettel used to focus on the tyres and what they

call the control systems on the car. His feel for tyres, for them going

off, degradation, et cetera, really exceptional. That's part of the

skills he carries forward. Not sure whether he's had to step up on the

aero side, or whether Ricciardo has a good aerodynamic sensativity.

That's certainly something that's been lost a bit with the departure

of Mark Webber. Interestingly, though, Red Bull - obviously the two

drivers are working together and in tandem. At the same time as Vettel

is doing his run on the medium compound tyre, Ricciardo is doing a

comparable programme using the harder compound tyre. They've got

direct, correlative information. The two drivers very much working

together as a team for Red Bull. Vettel's gone for the tyre that has

got the more performance, if you can make it work. He's looking at the

worst scenario, knowing that if it goes to the harder tyre, which he

will have to do, obviously, in the race, then he's got a more known

quantity If I was in the team, I would try to do that as well. Then I

can maybe gain more than the other driver in that worst period of the

race when you've got the big degradation from the medium.

Vettel's last lap... Focus on the fuel consumption. Looks OK last lap.

Remember to drink. How was the fuel that last lap? Fuel was good. That

was green -. 02. Green,. 02. That is good. As we were talking about the

driver being coached, Lewis Hamilton getting the information about his

fuel - green. 02. Green means good, obviously, and red would mean bad.

They're just talking about tiny little elements. You need to train

yourself to work out to get the speed out of the car. In this long

run, it's perfect time in free practice to be able to do that, when

you get some rhythm. There's not so many cars on the circuit, and you

get a rhythm to get the car rolling and floating. Then you're at one

with it. This is something a lot of fans are concerned about - they're

driving around, coasting around, basically, like taxidrivers, as the

Ferrari president said. He warned the sport, "Be careful with this

fuel-management business. We don't want Formula 1 drivers to be tooling

around like taxidrivers." I have to say, he must have a very fast taxi

if that's the case. I don't think it's that case right now. The

drivers are having to work harder in the cockpit, been a different way to

before. It's definitely in a different way than having to attack

the corners in a very different way. Y. -- they're thinking about the

race in a very different way, in some ways use different parts of

their mind. It's not all about brawn attack, aggressive, fast laps every

single one. I don't think we'll see those in the current time right now.

But we will see fantastic racing, as we saw already in Melbourne. Just

for your reference, in terms of lap time, compared to the other

compounds, it looks quite good, actually. Now you are the fastest.

That's Alonso being told that, actually, it looks pretty good in

terms of the degradation on the Ferrari - actually coming to be one

of the fastest. It's quite noticeable how the lap times of the

others are dropping off. Vettel is in the high 1.44. His tyre

performance has dropped off by about half a second in the last five laps

or so. Looks like the Williams' performance has dropped off by

perhaps even more than that. Massa is now in the mid-1.46s. Clearly

there is tyre degradation here. The first time we've really seen it.

Wasn't too much evidence of it in Melbourne. This circuit puts an

awful lot more energy through the tyres. The white side-wall tyre, the

medium compound tyre, is the same tyre that was used in Australia.

There, it was the harder of the two. Here, it's the softer of the two. In

Australia, it was pretty bulletproof, albeit not easy to warm

up. Here, it looks like it is giving a bit of degradation. It's

definitely something to keep an eye on. Whoever can manage the fuel

consumption and the tyre degradation will do well on Sunday. There was a

first green chute of optimism, I would say there, from Ferrari from

the engineer to Alonso, that there's something to be worked on here. Tom

Clarkson? James, their sector times in first practice this morning were

very good. I know the Ferrari engine is definitely feeling more upbeat

about this race than they were in Melbourne two weeks ago. I wanted to

feed into the commentary that the wind down here in pit lane is

picking up a bit. We're getting a headwind, almost ten miles an hour

now. That's going to be a tailwind into the last corner. It's worth

checking to see if people are missing apexes going into that last

corner as a result of the tailwind. Allan, with the cars being 50kg

heavier this year, does that mean that they're less sensitive to wind

than they might have been in the past? No, relative to sensitivity to

the wind, I think the aerodynamics probably have a bigger effect than

the weight. However, in the fast corners, the fast change of

directions, that 50kg definitely means they're a bit lazier to turn

left and right. Romain Grosjean is pulling off to the side of the

circuit. It seems to be the common thing for him at this moment in time

with Lotus. The weight itself is just more a case of the change of

direction, and stopping and starting. For the wind, that's going

to funnel down that start and finish all the time. What a difficult

situation for the Lotus team. They've lost quite a few engineers

over the last six months. They've had all sorts of problems over the

winter. There's been all sorts of questions about cash flow and

business viability, and they missed the first test, and they really are

struggling here. For the second race in succession, Romain Grosjean -

once again, as he did earlier on, has pulled over to the side of the

road. He has managed to do 14 laps. His best is 1.42. 5, which is almost

three seconds slower than the benchmark time. Team-mate Pastor

Maldonado has not gone out at all in this afternoon's session. His car is

in pieces in the garage. The body language of Grosjean, as you would

be observing earlier, Allan, has gone from angry in Melbourne to

almost resigned now. He's obviously very frustrated. This is a man that

was potentially looking to maybe win races last year. Right now, he can't

even see the chequered flag in any position, never mind up at the front

of the race. I think the whole team is a bit dejected. You can see

they've worked very, very hard, Lotus, and Reno, to make sure they

had some reliability. Obviously it hasn't worked, with Maldonado

struggling and not even coming out today, and Romain Grosjean finishing

his day with 16 minutes to go. You have to say, with 14 laps, that's

not exactly a fantastic session for them. He's certainly getting to know

the corner workers, is Romain Grosjean. He's met quite a few of

them already this weekend. Final comments from you, using

#BBCF1. Andrew making a comment on the sound. "The music's good, but

you need to ask the DJ to turn the sound up a bit." When you're here

live, you hear the different audio tones and they are much louder, and

you can hear the sort of deep growl of them, as opposed to the

high-pitched scream. I think somebody said earlier on, it's a

little bit like Marmite - you love it or hate it. Personally, I quite

like it. Well, McLaren's managing director, stand-in CEO, in fact, is

down in the garage talking to Jenny now. It's Johnathan Neil. I was just

saying, has Johnathan's job title changed - he's now COO of the

company for the moment. It's getting confusing about what your role is.

But you know your role within the company. Absolutely. We're here to

race and to win. Nothing changes with McLaren. We saw earlier than

Kevin Magnussen was having a few issues this morning with the

sensors. Has he managed to get that sorted out? He still seems to be

having a shortened programme after the. This morning was a sensor issue

in the back of the car. It switched the engine to the safety modes.

We've got limited numbers of power trades this year. A number of things

around them protect the car in case there's a problem. This one was a

slightly enthusiastic sensor, shall we say. Kevin tried to lift and

coast into the pit lane. We got that slightly wrong, and did the walk of

shame to recover the car. But it was fine - no problems. There's a lot of

talk about sensors. Yours isn't to do with fuel or anything like that,

but what do you make of the current situation with regards to fuel-flow

sensors and the amount of work your teams are having to do? Obviously

it's captured the media attention and headlines with the controversial

decision taken in Australia. But it's the same for us all. I think

Formula 1 moving into an energy-constrained series is a

really exciting thing for Formula 1 to do. I think the V6 technology and

hybrid technology that goes with it is exciting. We've only done one

race, remember, so it's very early days for this yet. People will take

time to adapt to the change. It's the right thing to do for the

business. Hybrid technology is an important thing for the engine

manufacturers - they're an important part of Formula 1. There's a lot of

challenges for the engineers out there as well. There's lots to play

for, but it's very early days. Have you had any problems with your

fuel-flow sensors? We've all had problems with the cars. 12 days of

testing. 13,500 parts in a car. A short time to mark it. 3. 5 months

to design and build a car. 12 days of testing with an all-new power

train. 50% more radiator area. Sensors glor all over the car. It's

a huge systems integration task. I wouldn't pick fuel-flow sensor as

being anything else different from the car. Those who pick up the

technology quickly will win. I was speaking to somebody in the break

between the two sessions. They said there are a limited number of

sensors around because production has been so rushed and hurried to

get them in the state that you need them. I think there's a bit of a

drama going on about this. Sometimes you've got to run what you've bring

and get on with it, haven't you? Definitely a Ron kind of thing to

say as well. I don't mean in the nastier sense of the word, but the

nicer sense. This team is definitely moving forward. The momentum behind

it is very strong now, isn't it? It is. This team is incredibly focused.

It's great havingerratic and the team with us as well. We're not here

to save Formula 1 from itself. We're just here to race. That's what we'll

do. We'll get on with it. All right. Thank you very much, Johnathan.

Johnathan Nealee there, the chief operating officer, and filling that

COO role that Ron Dennis is looking for someone to occupy on a permanent

basis. Neale is a candidate, but they're looking at other people as

well. Erik Bouyat is essentially the team principal. Jenny was mentioning

the availability of these fuel-flow sensors, an essential part of

Formula 1 this year. I did a bit of research. They cost $4, -- ?4,500

each. They're about the size of a smartphone, or slightly smaller, and

measure the flow rate of the fuel going into the inIen. It's critical

- as it was explained to me, if you're running 0. 5% more than you

should be doing, that's about a tenth of a second.

Basically, they limit the maximum amount of flow of fuel.

Performance-wise, that's when you have a wide-open throttle. You're

not wide-open throttle through the corners. It's really the high

retrospectives at the end of the straight where the performance

benefits. They certainly have created a lot of talking points, not

just through the whole Melbourne weekend, but also in the testing and

coming up to it, because there was a lot of adaptions to get these new

systems working. These are placed inside the fuel tank itself.

Therefore, they're not an accessible part where, say for example, you've

got a problem and switch it off and get another one and put it back in.

You do that, but it takes time to achieve it. The front left is off,

it's wobbling. I'm going to take it steady and get the car back. A

message from Max Chilton - the front left's a bit wobbly, which means -

he's coming very slowly back to the pits. Not exactly sure why.

Visually, you can't see anything directly on the camera, but

obviously it is something very much there. Ten minutes remaining in this

session, the second practice session of the Malaysia Grand Prix weekend.

The drivers are mostly doing race simulation long runs at the moment.

The Red Bull is looking good, I have to say. It's very consistent.

Hamilton getting reasonable returns as well. But I've got my eye on

Vettel and Red Bull. They don't look too bad at all here, from what I can

see. Pretty consistent. The Williams doesn't look too bad either - that's

another car that seems to be banging in the lap times and staying

relatively consistent too. Difficult to say whether Williams are ahead of

McLaren thiswalk. They were certainly - should have been ahead

of them in Australia. Great performances by Magnussen and

Button. Tactically by Button, and in pure performance and opportunism by

Magnussen - both of them ending up with podium positions after

Ricciardo was disqualified. I think Valtteri Bottas would be the first

to put his hand up and say he was on target for a podium until he hit the

wall early in the Grand Prix. I think that's the result that got

away in many ways for the Williams team. Can they put it right here

this weekend? He said yesterday he thought he would be - he was hoping

he would challenge for a podium once again. Ricciardo said the same thing

yesterday. Judging from Vettel's pace this afternoon, I think that

looks like a realistic prospect. The Ferraris also look a bit more potent

here. We're starting to see more of what Ferrari can do. Raikkonen

second-fastest in the qualifying simulation, and those very positive

words from Alonso's engineer - that the tyre degradation numbers on the

Ferrari, on the longer run, are starting to look quite promising for

them. You get a sense there's optimism within the Ferrari camp,

Allan. You certainly do. This circuit, historically, has treated

them very well in the past. I think they've got a bit more of a feel for

the car around here. We saw some speed out of them when we were in

Melbourne, but not in race trim. Definitely for Kimi Raikkonen. He

was out of sorts in Melbourne. I think he's starting to get his feet

a little bit more under the table. That table well and truly was

Alonso's table, with Felipe Massa, when they were team-mates.

Therefore, that team is generally going to build forward, I think.

Eight minutes to go in the session. We're looking at some long-run

analysis done for us. It's interesting that Hamilton's quickly

got down to a good pace on the harder tyre. He's just moved over

about three or four laps ago. He's lapping in the mid-1.44s. The medium

tyre seems to be going off relatively quickly. Interesting for

the strategy guys to look at that and see what's the best way of doing

this Grand Prix on Sunday. We were expecting the hard tyre to be slower

on a single lap. It looks to be possibly more durable. If it can get

a performance like that fairly early on in the run, it should be good.

It's sliding around a lot. The rear tyre's in bad shape. Kimi

Raikkonen's talking about that. He started out on a used medium tyre.

He's done approximately 10 or 12 laps on that particular tyre. He's

coming into the pits. By contrast - he's had seven-tenths of a drop-off.

By contrast, Sebastian Vettel started on a new medium, doing 44. 2

on a first lap. His 12th lap was 45. 1. The Red Bull keeping the softer

tyre much better than Kimi It's the left front tyre that

typically takes the hardest beating in Sepang, due to long left-handers

that run with that tyre. You quite often see flat spots on that left

front tyre as well. Not much fun being a left front tyre around this

place. Chilton lost a lot of the session

earlier on after stopping on the circuit - he's out at the moment, in

the pits, with a problem on the front left of the car. Bianchi has

done 25 laps. Ericsson has managed 30 laps in this session, which is

just behind Bottas and Hulkenberg as the most that anybody's done in the

session. Of course, Kobayashi and Maldonado - the KTRM and the lotus -

not managing to do any laps at all. The mechanics are very, very good

guys - the team are an extremely tight-knit little team. To not have

any sort of benefits for... The race is good, considering the length of

your stint. I'd like to come in to push the prods, please. So finish

this lap. Rocky talking, the engineer of Sebastian Vettel, the

Red Bull talking to him. "How's your pace?" The pace is very, very good.

Very good. They'd been running extremely strongly on the tyre. He's

about 13-14 laps into it. In total time drop-off, it's about 1. 5

seconds now. It's only been the last couple of laps that it's got down to

that. The Red Bull looks to be pretty well hooked up in terms of

the car balance and the way that they're able to get lap times.

Certainly does. They look to be a contender here. Challenging for a

podium in Australia. Ricciardo getting that second place before he

was disqualified. Hamilton on long run on the hard. Very consistent in

the mid-1. 44s. That's a good pace to be getting out of that hard tyre.

I think everybody will be learning - the crucial thing here, Allan, is

first of all the conditions now are not the same as they will be on

Sunday. The race starts at 4.00 and it's now 3.20, towards the end of

the session. It's not comparable. Secondly, they're not really

learning enough during the session, because they haven't got enough laps

to do so - exactly what the tyres are doing. Although they're learning

something, what will make the difference on Sunday will be the

ability of their clever people back in the factory and here at the track

to model the tyre performance and to extrapolate what they think is going

to be -- it's go to be like. For the next lap, try to down-shift early.

Try to down-shift early on the next lap. Down-shift early. That's

Ricciardo being told to down-shift earl a e, just finetuning his

driving style. We saw it in Australia, with Ferrari. They

underestimated how far they could go in the final stint, pitted too late,

and lost a place to Button as a result. I think, as well, you're

never in a perfect scenario. It's a race weekend. The track's evolving

and changing so, so quickly, especially here with the high

temperatures. You've got to monitor and follow the track evolution and

the speed of the circuit and how it impacts on the balance of your car.

From that point of view, then you can try to think forward. When you

say about the clever people - they're trying to look into the

future. The experienced ones that have been to these races before that

knows which way the wind blows and which way the rain comes from, tend

to get it right more often than not. That's why you've got people like

Pat Simmons at Williams - there's a big, big lockup coming into the pit

lane by Kevin Magnussen. He's got to get down to that speed-lane limit at

that point, or he gets a financial penalty. Nobody likes that. It's the

experience that really counts in these type of places and these types

of races. I don't think Kevin Magnussen will

get much more meaningful running. Vettel's got back out again. He'll

probably get a couple of laps in on that harder-compound tyre, just to

get a bit of a feel for it at this stage. I have to say, that run he's

just done - the length of it and the performance of it on the softer of

the two tyres, the medium-compound tyre for Sebastian Vettel - look

very promising indeed. I think Red Bull will have a bit of optimism.

They've been, from their point of view, relatively reliable today, I

think. Clearly, they're quick. Clearly they are. We still have to

have that caveat in there about the fuel weight inside the cars. But I'd

have said it's tight at the front. If you look at the fastest, all the

way from first position, which was Rosberg, down to Hulkenberg, who's

in tenth place, is seven-tenths of a second. It's just nip and tuck.

We're just watching the Ferrari and a line comparison coming into the

hairpin. I thought the two of them could be racing there for a second,

but it's a line comparison. You can look at different lines between

Raikkonen and Vettel. Vettel is on the left-hand side there. What

Vettel's doing, he's got the front grip to turn the car. When he's

accelerating, he's trying to put that torque onto the ground as he

looks to be driving across the grass now. Is that because he's in

trouble? I think he's run around the outside of a run-off area. The car

seems to be under-powered at the moment. He looks to be rejoining the

racetrack. A little excursion for the Red Bull driver. We were just

saying how good their reliability has been. That line compare pairson

was very interesting. It showed the turning comparability. Chequered

flag is out. Session is over. Anyone on a lap will be allowed to complete

it and the time will count. The Front grip of the Red Bull turned

the car... Yep, just tripping the gravel. I'll just cruise back

slowly. That was definitely just a quick trip through the gravel -

harmless one. Initially, not sure whether it was a technical problem,

but as he said - the thing was, the Red Bull was able to the power down

straightaway with both the rear wheels equally balanced and

accelerating, not loading up their right-hand side tyre. For me, it's

very close. Very close in pure performance, I have to say. But

also, it's very close when you actually get down to the long runs.

Vettel and Red Bull are looking a lot stronger than they did in

Melbourne. They certainly are. This has been a fairly happy hunting

ground for them. Vettel three times a winner of this Grand Prix. Of

course, last year, rather controversially, taking that win

away in the closing stages from his team-mate, Mark Webber, who thought

that they were under team orders - what he called multi-21, the

infamous instruction to them, meaning "Turn everything down and

coast home, keep your positions." Vettel ignored that, took the

victory, giving him his third win. If he wins again here this weekend,

he'll be the only man in Formula 1 to win four times in the Malaysian

Grand Prix. Most drivers then coming back into the pits.

This has been a fairly interesting session, and quite revealing as

well. Rosberg pulls off his balaclava. He is the fastest man on

the track here this afternoon. We're running out of time, Allan.

Just give us your final thoughts on the session. Very close, very

competitive, and there's going to be a lot of long-run data for us to

search through tonight. This is not a foregone conclusion. The one thing

we do not know is how much fuel that Mercedes has got, or how much lap

time in the pocket. They do look very good. But the competition's

coming very, very quickly behind them. It certainly seems that way.

Mercedes had a big margin in Australia. It's a very small margin

- four one-hundredths of a second ahead of the Ferrari of Raikkonen,

and seven one-hunths ahead of the Red Bull of Vettel, who looked very

strong on the long runs. An intriguing picture emerging from the

second free practice session from the Malaysian Grand Prix. What will

tomorrow bring with the free practice and the qualifying? Time

will tell. It's been another strong day for Mercedes, but very

promising, too, for Sebastian Vettel and for Kimi Raikkonen. Tough times,

though, for Lotus. In fact, many of their guys have spent most of free

practice two trying to find a snake which has been lurking behind those

bushes behind me, which begs the question why I'm standing here! A

long night for those guys. Well done for you, sticking through free

practice one and two. Hopefully you'll do the same for free practice

three: You can see Mark Webber's first

television feature for the BBC. We catch up with Valtteri Bottas and

Kevin Magnussen. I'll be back tonight with Inside F1 on the BBC

News Channel. Thank you very much for your company

throughout the night. We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.