Kimi Raikkonen may have looked comfortable as he paced the two opening practice sessions of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend but, like the majority of his rivals, the Finn was made to wait for reasonable conditions to grace the rarely-used Shanghai International Circuit.
Raikkonen set the fastest lap of the day at 1min 36.607secs in the final minutes of the afternoon session using the softer Bridgestone compound, having earlier paced the morning's 90-minute outing on the harder option, but Shanghai provided a challenge for all of the teams as they found it 'green' after weeks of inactivity.
To start with, the circuit was very dirty and drivers complained of a lack of grip,"
Bridgestone's director of motorsport tyre development Hirohide Hamashima said, "However, the circuit soon improved and the drivers were able to feel this improvement, although they still wanted more grip and many struggled to find a good set-up.
"The difference between the hard and medium compound Potenza was on average around 0.2secs, but that depends on the car and driver. The wear rate on the left hand front tyre was a little higher than we predicted, but it will be no problem for either compound to complete a race distance. Both grip levels and tyre wear rates should improve after we've seen more running on the track, and we should see an improvement tomorrow.
Nico Rosberg was among those to take time to find grip on the circuit, but the German was not alone.
"It took me a few laps to get used to this track again, mainly because it felt very different from last year on our current tyres," the
Williams driver revealed, "Over the two sessions, we found some interesting results in terms of tyres and wing level, and we tried a few other things and really made good progress with the set-up."
