Felipe Massa moved to 4th place after overtaking Hamilton who was suffering from an anti-roll bar failure on his car, which led him to lose couple of places in the race. Lewis Hamilton lost his third place to Alonso on first lap, while his team mate Jenson Button had to retire after a collision with Kobayashi, who also collided with Nico Rosberg of Mercedes. Mark Webber, who qualified on pole, lost his lead at start to teammate Sebastian Vettel at the first turn. Pérez was able to safely park the car, allowing the session to continue uninterrupted. Like the first session, the second passed without incident, although Sergio Pérez was forced out after forty-five minutes of running when his Sauber lost all power and ground to a halt at Turn 12. Sebastian Vettel was fastest in the second session, leading teammate Webber and Alonso in third. Lewis Hamilton ended the session as fastest driver, three tenths of a second ahead of Fernando Alonso - who had led most of the ninety-minute session - with Mark Webber in third place.
In contrast to the practice sessions of the 20 races, the first free practice session of the 2012 race took place in dry conditions. They would finish the race in 5th and 4th respectively Giedo van der Garde drove in place of Caterham's Vitaly Petrov, while Jules Bianchi replaced Nico Hülkenberg at Force India, Valtteri Bottas drove Bruno Senna's Williams and Dani Clos took Narain Karthikeyan's place at HRT.
Several reserve drivers took the place of regular drivers for the first free practice session. Marussia's Charles Pic was given a ten-place grid penalty for exceeding the maximum number of engines that he was permitted to use over the course of the season. Like the 2011 Korean Grand Prix, tyre supplier Pirelli brought its yellow-banded soft compound tyre as the harder "prime" tyre and the red-banded supersoft compound tyre as the softer "option" tyre. The detection point will also be brought forward in 2011, it was positioned between the first two corners, but for 2012, it was moved to be 90 metres (300 ft) before the first corner. In the week before the race, the FIA announced that the drag reduction system zone on the circuit would be altered from its 2011 position, bringing the activation point forward by 200 metres (660 ft).
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