Both Renaults were subject to suspension failures in first practice at Sepang on Friday. With the weekend’s on-track action underway, Nick Heidfeld’s right-front wheel became jammed solid before team-mate and Melbourne podium finisher Vitaly Petrov suffered a sudden breakage approaching the Turn 9 hairpin.
“Both Vitaly and Nick suffered failures under braking in the front uprights early in the first session,” team Technical Director James Allison explained. “As a precaution we stopped running the cars until we had understood the problem.
“We quickly established that the two failed items had come from the same material batch and that nothing from this batch had run prior to today.
“It took a little longer to rule out other potential causes but, once we were confident that the failures were related to a material problem, we released the cars for the second half of afternoon practice where they ran without problems.”
Petrov's Turn 9 failure and spin can be viewed on GPUpdate TV
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Nick Heidfeld
James Allison
Vitaly Petrov
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:37.651 | 22 |
| 2. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:39.316 | 16 |
| 3. | M. Schumacher | Mercedes | 01:39.791 | 29 |
| 4. | N. Hulkenberg | Force India | 01:40.377 | 23 |
| 5. | P. Maldonado | Williams | 01:40.443 | 31 |
| 6. | F. Massa | Ferrari | 01:40.453 | 22 |
| 7. | N. Heidfeld | Lotus Renault | 01:40.525 | 6 |
| 8. | R. Barrichello | Williams | 01:40.581 | 21 |
| 9. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:40.601 | 23 |
| 10. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 01:40.646 | 29 |
| Full results | ||||
| Vitaly Petrov | |||
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| More Vitaly Petrov photos | |||
| James Allison | |||
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| More James Allison photos | |||
| Nick Heidfeld | |||
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| More Nick Heidfeld photos | |||
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