The first day of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend brought the predicted tight battle between McLaren and Ferrari, but also a few surprises, not least Jenson Button fourth fastest for Honda and Giancarlo Fisichella ninth for Force India. All 22 men report back from Sepang (note - times and positions refer to practice two)...

Lewis Hamilton, McLaren (1st, 1m 35.055ss):
"I am pretty happy with today's results as the car showed consistent pace throughout the session and good overall speed. Unfortunately the morning session was not perfect as I had a slight problem on the car right at the end, but this didn't really have any effect on our planned programme of tyre evaluation and race set-up work."

Felipe Massa, Ferrari (2nd, +0.151s):
"I am very happy with these two sessions. The car proved to be very quick and consistent on both types of tyre. It's a shame I was unable to get the most out of the second set of soft tyres, when I found myself behind Hamilton who was going slowly. We are working in the right direction for qualifying and the race."

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari (3rd, +0.373ss):
"This morning I lost time because of a communication problem within the team, but we made up for it in the second session. The car seems to be going well and I am pleased with the work we have done. I worked mainly on the harder tyres, but I think that even with the softs, from what we have seen, we can be competitive. It is always difficult to say where we are compared to our rivals, but I think we can face the rest of the weekend with confidence."

Jenson Button, Honda (4th, +0.982s):
"The track here at Sepang has been completely resurfaced since last year, so it was important to see how much of a difference this has made. We also ran through the usual tyre evaluation and set-up work and we have completed a lot of running, which is good. All in all, a very valuable day of testing in preparation for the weekend.

"We have made good progress over the day and I'm happy with the car and the balance, which is positive. It's always difficult to know where we stand on a Friday versus the rest of the field but I'm hopeful that we can continue to improve the car through this evening and tomorrow."

Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso (4th, +1.419s):
"Laptimes don't always tell the full story, but I think we can be happy with the afternoon, when we did quite a lot of laps. Unfortunately, this morning we had a brake problem, but in the end it did not cost us too much time and we were able to continue with our programme in the afternoon. We spent most of the time fine-tuning the car and finding the right balance, sorting out tyre choice. It has been a good day and we have got plenty of data to study for tomorrow."

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