Hamilton leads McLaren 1-2 in Turkish Friday Practice 1

Lewis Hamilton in Turkish Friday Practice 1

Lewis Hamilton was in front of Jenson Button for FP1 in Turkey today, as he was an entire second faster than any of his opposition. Also, Red Bull and Force India tested out their interpretations of the F-duct system.

Behind the McLaren 1-2, the Mercedes drivers of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were 3rd and 4th. Sebastian Vettel was 5th for Red Bull, and the two Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov were 6th and 7th. Petrov was only 0.004 seconds slower than Kubica, a great performance for a rookie.

Mark Webber was 8th, and was 1.444 seconds slower than the leader. Fernando Alonso and Adrian Sutil topped off the top 10. Kamui Kobayashi was 11th, and Vitantonio Liuzzi was 12th, 0.4 seconds slower than team-mate Sutil. Felipe Massa was 13th, Sebastien Buemi was 14th, and Pedro de la Rosa was 15th. The two Williams cars of Hulkenberg and Barrichello were 16th and 17th, with Jaime Alguersuari slowest of the midfield.

As normal, Lotus were the best of the new teams, and again closed the gap considerably to the rest of the grid, with a new rear wing this weekend. Heikki Kovalainen led Jarno Trulli, while Karun Chandhok was behind them in 21st. Lucas di Grassi and Timo Glock were 22nd and 23rd. Instead of Bruno Senna, the HRT team elected to run Sakon Yamamoto, who was signed as the team’s reserve driver a few weeks ago. He was dissapointingly slow though, as he was 24th, and half a second behind Glock.

While Sebastian Vettel ran the F-duct on his car, Mark Webber stayed with the original version of the car. Adrian Sutil crashed his Force India with only 3 minutes to go in this session, as a driver error caused the car to understeer off at Turn 8 and slam into the barriers, removing the front wing, nosecone and both front wheels in the process.

Karun Chandhok also suffered problems, as his HRT car had an electrical problem, and was forced to crawl back to the pits. He was able to rejoin with 15 minutes left in the session though.

Times from Friday Practice 1:

	Driver	Team	Best Lap	Gap	# of laps
1	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1.28.653		20
2	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1.29.615	0.962	21
3	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	1.29.750	1.097	24
4	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	1.29.855	1.202	25
5	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1.29.867	1.214	30
6	Robert Kubica	Renault	1.30.061	1.408	23
7	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1.30.065	1.412	24
8	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1.30.097	1.444	26
9	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1.30.294	1.641	20
10	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1.30.501	1.848	17
11	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1.30.615	1.962	20
12	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1.30.853	2.2	21
13	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1.30.867	2.214	22
14	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1.31.011	2.358	24
15	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber-Ferrari	1.31.238	2.585	18
16	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1.31.355	2.702	23
17	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1.31.464	2.811	19
18	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1.31.735	3.082	27
19	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth	1.32.161	3.508	24
20	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1.32.990	4.337	23
21	Karun Chandhok	HRT-Cosworth	1.34.876	6.223	13
22	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	1.35.137	6.484	21
23	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1.35.583	6.93	15
24	Sakon Yamamoto	HRT-Cosworth	1.36.137	7.484	26

About these ads