Greater Noida: Defending champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull pipped his team-mate Mark Webber by 0.289 seconds to set the pace for Sunday's Indian Grand Prix by emerging the fastest driver in both the practice sessions with impressive performance here on Friday.
Vettel, who has the chance to wrap up his fourth world title this weekend, bettered his timing of 1:26.683s set in the morning by clocking a new lap record of 1:25.722s in the second practice session at the Buddh International Circuit. Vettel just needs to finish fifth or better to win four titles in a row and become the youngest quadruple champion.
Only seven-time champion Michael Schumacher and the late Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio have won four successive titles since the championship started in 1950. Alain Prost of France is the sport's only other four-time champion.
Meanwhile, in-form Romain Grosjean of Lotus (1.26:220s), who finished fourth in the morning, pushed hard in the intense second practice session but the two Red Bull cars were strong enough to come out on top in the end. Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton (1:26.339s) too improved his FP1 timing to emerge as the fourth fastest. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso finished fifth fastest with a timing of 1:26.430s in the afternoon session.
Speaking about the practice, Vettel said, “The soft tyre is not lasting so long here, but it’s Friday and the track is still rubbering in; it’s normally improving for Saturday, plus we haven’t used this compound for a long time, so tomorrow it should be better.”
Meanwhile, Mark Webber said, “The track was pretty good at the start of today’s sessions, better than last year I would say. However, the conditions in P2 are normally different to what we have in the race, so it’s hard to say how we will go tomorrow and Sunday, but hopefully we have the pace and can control the race. The car is very consistent, but we need to work on the tyres and make sure we get the most out of them.”