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Hamilton Dominates Friday Practice In Korea

YEOGNAM, South Korea- Continuing the tradition of having fast practice times and qualifying speeds during the season, Lewis Hamilton made it clear on Friday practice that he would be one to watch for, as the Englishman recorded a best time of 1:38:673 in the second session, proving that he will be one to watch for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Korea.

The German pair of Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg followed closely behind, with Mark Webber in fourth.

However, Hamilton was not just fast in the second session, but in the opening one earlier in the day, the Mercedes driver took fastest lap of the day with a time of 1:39:630 to sweep both sessions.

In the final ten seconds of this opening session, Kimi Raikkonen who was fighting understeer in his Lotus all morning long, attempted to take a sudden left handed kink, and lost the rear of the car and speared the tire wall on the inside of the track. The nose of the car and the whole left side were totally damaged, but Raikkonen despite his bad back from week’s ago, escape without injury, and simply walked back to the garage. Because there is not much involvement with the track outside of this weekend, grip was hard to achieve, and besides Raikkonen, Hamilton found himself backwards early in the session, facing the wrong way at turn 10. Rodolfo Gonzalez, testing only in this session for Marussia, hit the wall early after running wide on turn 11 and lost his grip on the Astroturf.

In comparison to the opening session, the afternoon event was a little bit easier, as Estaban Gutierrez spun his Sauber at turn one, and Charles Pic lost his Caterham late in the session at turn nine. Fernando Alonso nearly had the same incident as Raikkonen when the Spaniard had to correct his oversteer on the last turn of the circuit and ran extremely close to the wall.

The last session had a strange event occur when Lotus driver Roamain Grosjean moved over to let Nico Hulkenberg by on the track, but the German decided to pull in front of the Frenchman and slowed heavily while blocking his path.

The day’s events were quite interesting, and could lead to more as the week continues on.

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