FP2 - Raikkonen quickest as Ferrari edge clear

Ferrari threw down the gauntlet to chief rivals Mercedes by finishing one-two in Friday afternoon’s second practice session in China, with Kimi Raikkonen leading team mate Sebastian Vettel by 0.1s.

Raikkonen’s table-topping time came forty minutes into the session, after all of the top runners had switched to supersoft tyres.

Morning pacesetter Nico Rosberg could only get within 0.237s of the Finn as he finished third quickest, with team mate Lewis Hamilton fourth fastest in the second Silver Arrow. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo completed the top five, but was a full 1.2s slower than Raikkonen’s benchmark.

After an incident-filled first session, FP2 began with more drama as Esteban Gutierrez - sidelined this morning with an electrical issue - ran into problems as the brakes on his Haas caught fire.

The Mexican limped back to the pits and did not return to the track for the remainder of the session. Even so his tally of four laps was more than Kevin Magnussen could manage; the Dane spending the entire 90 minutes confined to the Renault garage as the team continued to investigate his FP1 tyre failure.

He could only watch, therefore, as the session began with the sight of his former team mate Jenson Button putting McLaren at the top of the timesheets. The Briton's spell didn't last long before Rosberg took over, with the session taking a more familiar aspect as the German then trimmed down to 1m 37.133s on supersofts. Hamilton's effort on similar rubber came up short with 1m 37.329s, an off at Turn 6 later indicating the Briton's lingering set-up woes.

Shortly after the Briton's lap, however, Vettel put a cat among the pigeons to go fastest on supersofts for Ferrari with 1m 37.005s, before Raikkonen bettered that with 1m 36.896s even though his lap wasn't particularly clean.

Behind the top four, Ricciardo narrowly shaded Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen in the fight for fifth. It was mighty close however - one second split Ricciardo down to team mate Daniil Kvyat in 13th, with Toro Rosso, Force India, Williams and McLaren all represented in that group.

WATCH: Gutierrez limps back to the pits with his brakes on fire