Mercedes showed good pace in the two practice sessions on Friday, with Nico Rosberg managing to record the 2nd and 3rd quickest times in practice one and two respectively.
Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher wasn’t far behind in 4th and 5th position, just over half a second behind the frontrunner, Lewis Hamilton in both sessions.
The German veteran encountered a small brake problem before FP1, which delayed his outing, but he was soon on the pace.
“We did have an issue with the brakes this morning so I did not start running right away,” Schumacher said after practice. “But once we were out on track I felt we had good pace.”
He does however remain realistic. Both Ferrari’s didn’t manage to break the top ten in FP1. Alonso did manage P7 in FP2, but the Italian team looked as though they were hiding their true pace by concentrating on longer, high-fuel runs.
“We have to be realistic about our performance here and we might still be lacking a little compared to the front runners. The good thing is that you can play with the lines a bit to find time as the track here is quite wide.”
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