Schumacher leads quiet rain-affected first practice in Korea

Schumacher set the fastest time in the dying minutes

Michael Schumacher topped the timesheets for first practice for the Korean Grand Prix, in a session heavily disrupted by rain.

The first 30 minutes of the session were mostly silent, as only Lewis Hamilton set exploratory times on extreme wet tyres.

The track burst into life with half an hour to go, however. Hamilton, Sebastien Buemi and Adrian Sutil all briefly headed the timesheets with less than a minute to go.

Right at the end of the 90 minutes, Schumacher set a 2:02.784 to lead Sebastian Vettel and Paul di Resta. The new 2011 world champion had a slight scare near the end, almost running into the back of a Virgin car.

Managing only 5 laps, Mark Webber was 10th, 2.3 seconds off the pace. Karun Chandhok was 11th, while Jean-Eric Vergne was 13th for Toro Rosso in his first ever official practice session in F1.

Both Ferraris and Renaults, as well as Heikki Kovalainen and Jenson Button, opted not to set a time in FP1.

Times from FP1:

 1.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes                2:02.784           10
 2.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault        2:02.840   0.056    8
 3.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes    2:02.912   0.128   12
 4.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes    2:03.141   0.357   12
 5.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari      2:03.182   0.398    9
 6.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari          2:03.292   0.508   13
 7.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes        2:03.391   0.607    6
 8.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes                2:04.311   1.527   12
 9.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari          2:04.797   2.013    8
10.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault        2:05.183   2.399    5
11.  Karun Chandhok        Lotus-Renault           2:06.350   3.566   11
12.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth       2:06.852   4.068   11
13.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari      2:07.541   4.757    9
14.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth       2:08.218   5.434    5
15.  Narian Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth            2:08.832   6.048   14
16.  Daniel Ricciardo      HRT-Cosworth            2:09.232   6.448   14
17.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth         2:12.658   9.874    7
18.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth         2:14.508   11.724   4
19.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari                 N/A                 0
20.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                 N/A                 0
21.  Bruno Senna           Renault                 N/A                 0
22.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault                 N/A                 0
23.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault           N/A                 0
24.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes        N/A                 0

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