Vettel leads Abu Dhabi FP1

Sebastian Vettel laid down the gauntlet for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend, by setting the fastest time in Friday Practice 1 today. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were 2nd and 3rd, followed by Mark Webber.

Sebastian Vettel was the fastest in FP1

The session began on a damp track, but it dried out throughout the day. However, the first half an hour was a waste for many, as the drivers sat in the garages waiting for the track to clear. In fact, it took until 50 minutes in for the fast laps to began to be set.

Robert Kubica was 5th, and Fernando Alonso 6th. The Mercedes and Sauber drivers filled the top 10.

Felipe Massa was 11th, and 2.4 seconds off the pace of the leaders. Having said that though, he was forced to abort one of his runs after a problem with the car’s telemetry data, meaning that the team wouldn’t have been able to fully collect data if he had continued.

Rubens Barrichello was 13th, despite stopping out on track. He still managed to beat his team-mate Nico Hulkenberg by 1.2 seconds.

Timo Glock led the way at the back, just ahead of Jarno Trulli, who in turn was nearly a second faster than Lucas di Grassi. Bruno Senna beat Christian Klien by 7 tenths, while Fairuz Fauzy, who replaced Heikki Kovalainen for FP1, was last, and despite setting more laps than most of the new teams, was 8.9 seconds off the pace. However, it was reported that the Lotus was experiencing overheating problems.

Times from FP1:

Pos.		Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap	Laps
1		Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’42.760		18
2		Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’43.369	0.609	16
3		Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’43.785	1.025	19
4		Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’43.840	1.080	19
5		Robert Kubica	Renault	1’44.080	1.320	19
6		Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’44.121	1.361	17
7		Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’44.199	1.439	19
8		Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’44.604	1.844	18
9		Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’44.718	1.958	19
10		Nick Heidfeld	Sauber-Ferrari	1’44.737	1.977	19
11		Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’45.160	2.400	18
12		Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1’45.445	2.685	21
13		Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1’45.474	2.714	15
14		Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1’45.552	2.792	20
15		Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes	1’45.585	2.825	14
16		Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’46.003	3.243	20
17		Nico Hülkenberg	Williams-Cosworth	1’46.664	3.904	19
18		Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’47.105	4.345	22
19		Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1’48.450	5.690	19
20		Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth	1’48.472	5.712	17
21		Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth	1’49.375	6.615	13
22		Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth	1’49.590	6.830	18
23		Christian Klien	HRT-Cosworth	1’50.274	7.514	17
24		Fairuz Fauzy	Lotus-Cosworth	1’51.705	8.945	18

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