Sochi FP2: Hamilton fastest as Vettel stops on track

Reigning F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton ended day one of the Russian Grand Prix weekend fastest of all in his Mercedes, while Sebastian Vettel was forced to sit out half the the session when his car came to a halt on track with an electronics issue.

Slight consolation for Ferrari is the fact that the German was second fastest at the end of the ninety minutes session, but the big concern will be the reliability gremlins that are stalking the team.

For Hamilton it will be a timely boost as his best time of 1:37.583 was over half a second up on Vettel's time and almost a second up on his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg who had topped the timing screens at the end of FP1 earlier in the day.

Kimi Raikkonen was fourth fastest in his Ferrari indicating that this is going to be a Ferrari versus Mercedes ding-dong around the Olympic arena, provided the Reds can find conquer the reliability issues that appear to be plaguing them.

Vettel was one of the first drivers to take to the track at the start of the 90-minute afternoon session at the Sochi Autodrom and he quickly set an early benchmark with a time of 1:38.921 that was just five thousandths of a second quicker than the first flying lap of Rosberg.

Vettel’s time held until 17 minutes into the session when Hamilton, who had struggled over his early laps popped up with a time of 1:38.311, 0.610s faster than the Ferrari driver.

Rosberg then improved to briefly dislodge Vettel but the Ferrari driver quickly reclaimed top spot with a time 0.076s up on the Mercedes pair.

That was to be Vettel’s last action of the session, however. On his next tour the German slowed and eventually ground to a halt on the start-finish straight.

He was quickly on the radio to tell his team that he had “lost electronics”. His car was recovered to the garage but he would play no further part in the session.

Forty minutes into the session Hamilton reclaimed P1 with a lap of 1:37.583 that was 0.652s faster than Vettel's effort.

Rosberg, though had hit traffic and he contented himself with third on the timesheet two tenths of a second behind Vettel as he returned to the pit lane for a period before emerging with half an hour left on the clock on a set of used supersoft tyres.

Hamilton, meanwhile, stayed in the garage as Mercedes worked on set-up changes on his car.

Behind Rosberg, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen took fourth spot with a time just over three tenths of the Mercedes driver.

Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo set the afternoon’s fifth fastest time, 1.5s behind Hamilton’s benchmark and a tenth clear of Williams’ Valtteri Bottas. Daniil Kvyat was seventh in the second Red Bull.