Sergio Pérez did not fuel

Pérez was the only one with the two Lotuses of Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean for not having set a time in EL1 this morning at Sepang. And for good reason, the fuel supply system of the VJM07 presented a malfunction which could not be resolved in time. Starting again in EL2, the Mexican set the 16th time. “It wasn't an easy day because I missed most of the morning session, and that limited my time on track with the hard tires. In the afternoon we tried to improve the car, as well as learning about the tires, but I feel we still have to take a big step to be ready for qualifying. The performance gap between the medium and hard compounds is not very big, but we suffered from a lot of degradation on the tires. » Checo explains.

Most of the teams drove a lot in FP2 with Pirelli's medium compounds to analyze the degree of degradation on the Sepang track. With the ambient heat, the most diligent drivers approached 17-18 laps with these tires.